With digital buyer penetration predicted to edge near about 50% of overall Internet users in 2018, the e-commerce industry is ready to evolve and expand. Last year more than 1 Billion Internet users made an online purchase and the numbers are continuously growing. This is probably the best time to jump in the line and start your online business if you have some amazing products to sell online. However, an online business requires an eCommerce platform to start with and choosing the best e-Commerce CMS can be a lot of work. Apart from being visually appealing, your eCommerce website needs to be functional and cheap. There are some out-of-the-box free or little fee e-Commerce solutions that you can choose to kick start your online business.

Best E-commerce CMS Platform for Your Online Business

You will have two options when building an e-Commerce Website – #1. Hosted eCommerce Hosted eCommerce websites are based on SaaS (Software as a service) system, wherein you can sign up with the company and begin the store. You will not have any access to software for coding and modification. #2. Self-Hosted Self-Hosted platforms are generally based on open-source software, which you can download, run and edit as per your need. Here are some best eCommerce CMS (hosted and self-hosted) you can consider when starting your online business.

Best e-Commerce CMS Platforms (Hosted)

#1. Shopify Shopify is by far the best eCommerce platform for small to medium scale businesses that are just starting with an online store. You will find many ready-to-use templates yet can be customized to meet business requirements. The system allows selling physical or digital goods. Shopify eCommerce platform is flexible, easy-to-use and lets you expand with required features using add-ons or third-party apps. Shopify Pricing – 14 days of Free trail

• Shopify Lite - $9 per month
• Basic Shopify - $29 per month
• Shopify - $79 per month
• Advanced Shopify - $299 per month
• Shopify Plus' - NA

#2. BigCommerce BigCommerce is cloud-based, user-friendly software that allows the user to build beautiful, responsive web store without any design knowledge. BigCommerce can handle everything from products, payments, shipping, checkouts, coupons, integration and more. BigCommerce platform also has more than 320 add-ons, some of which are at low cost and others are free. BigCommerce Pricing – 15 days of Free trial

• • Standard –- $29.95/month
  • Plus –- $79.95/month
  • Pro –-Starting at $249.95/month
  • Enterprise – NA

#3. Volusion Volusion is another best e-Commerce CMS offering fully cloud-based solution to users. Volusion’s built in features directly to the dashboard (no need to buy add-on from any app store) is what sets them apart from their competitors. Volusion is also loaded with features such as “deal of day” MyRewards program, Amazon and eBay integration and more that will help users to retain customers and build brands. Volusion Pricing – 14 days of Free trial

• Mini - $15 per month
• Plus - $35 per month
• Pro - $75 per month
• Premium - $135 per month

#4. Wix Wix eCommerce platform helps you build a functional online store for selling your products. The best thing about Wix eCommerce is its ability to easily integrate with advanced eCommerce tools in the store such social media, marketing, promoting, third-party apps etc. Wix offers ready templates, and drag-and-drop editor to make your store look professional without any design experience. This platform is best for small level enterprises that are looking to keep their online store simple, clean and straightforward. Wix Pricing – Free

• eCommerce – 485 rs per month
• Unlimited – 372 rs per month
• Combo – 247 rs per month
• Connect Domain – 122 rs per month

#5. 3dCart 3dCart eCommerce website allows the user to sell physical as well as digital goods. Apart from having powerful API for integration like no other platform, 3dCart also offers plenty selling tools such as mobile selling and social selling on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. From the attractive interface to SEO friendly, 3dCart has everything you need from a good eCommerce CMS. 3dCart Pricing – 14 days Free trial

• Starter - $35.99 per month
• Professional - $65.99 per month
• Professional Plus - $99.99 per month

Best eCommerce CMS Platforms (Self-Hosted)

#1. Magento Magento is the best eCommerce CMS you will come across if you are a pro in web development. Magento eCommerce provides the highest level of flexibility and control over developing the store with splendid add-ons and extensions. The platform is also highly-scalable, so you would never want to move on once comfortable with Magento. The community version of Magento is free and mostly sufficient for small and medium sized businesses. Magento Pricing – Free Community Edition

• Enterprise – NA

#2. PrestaShop PrestaShop is free, open source and downloadable eCommerce CMS platform for managing your online store in real time. It’s easy to install and can be customized with little web development experience. PrestaShop comes with over 275 features including product management, store management, SEO, Checkouts and Shipping, Marketing, Reporting and more PrestaShop – Free #3. OpenCart OpenCart is fairly a light weight eCommerce platform that is free to use and upgrade. OpenCart is best suitable for people with some web design and development experience. It is good to start off, but might not be perfect to scale. Some of the best features of OpenCart eCommerce solution includes – Unlimited categories, products, and manufacturers, Multilingual, PCI Compliant, more than 20 payment gateways, reporting and more. OpenCart Pricing - Free #4. osCommerce For more than a decade, osCommerce has been the most trusted e-Commerce Platform for CMS in the open-source category. The platform has vast network support and more than 7000 add-ons created by osCommerce community. The interface of osCommerce is easy-to-use and has great customization options for the online storefront. osCommerce Pricing – Free #5. WooCommerce WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin for developing an eCommerce store/website on the WordPress platform. The plugin is easy to install and boasts almost all the features one can expect from an open-source CMS. WooCommerce also has one of the largest communities available for the e-Commerce platform. WooCommerce Pricing – Free These are some of the best eCommerce CMS platforms worth trying for your online business. All eCommerce platforms are unique in nature and need to be chosen according to the business module and requirements.

YouTube is not just for posting silly, weird and pointless video contents, it’s a visual social network poised for serious content marketing. It’s a highly effective business tool to demonstrate your expertise, create brand awareness, share knowledge, promote events, engage with the customer and build credibility. When done with a proper strategy, marketing on YouTube can be the best tool in your social media arsenal. Moreover, YouTube marks the 3rd most popular website in the world and most popular search engine on the web after Google. You can be sure of improving your search engine rankings, boost visibility and attract new customers when doing business using YouTube. However, like any other marketing plan, you will need a strategy to promote YouTube Videos that are recorded and uploaded. With estimated 300 hours of video being uploaded to YouTube every minute, you will need a promotion strategy to get them found. Because the more opportunities you give audience to interact with your brand, the chances are better for success. No matter, if you are uploading video tutorials, offering fitness/beauty tips or coming up with short films, you will first need a great list of subscriber driven by huge traffic. So, here is how to promote YouTube Videos effectively:

Smart Ways to Promote Your YouTube Videos

 

#1. Channel Customization

First impression is the best impression and in the case of YouTube, the first impression also decides the return rate of visitors. Don’t leave your YouTube Channel barren; customize it with colors, images, links, information, logo, slogans and more. You can also create a trailer video that will be displayed for the first time and recurring visitors. It is recommended to add a little bit of introduction and explanation of what your YouTube channel has to offer in this trailer video. This is the first step towards building a loyal list of viewers.  

#2. Embed Call to Action (CTAs)

Embedding Call to Action overlay is a great way for promoting YouTube Videos. Businesses that are looking to direct people to other related videos for examples – white papers, downloadable, detailed information etc can keep their CTA overlay available to the video you are displaying. A CTA overlay can also be a solution for their next inquiry or interest. In simple terms, the possibilities of Calls-to-action overlay are endless – ask your audience to subscribe, share, like, comment and let this little overlay do the best video content marketing for you.  

#3. Use Keywords, Titles, Descriptions and Optimize them

There is no escaping from Search Engine Optimization (SEO) if you want your video to be graded well in search engine result. Let your video be rich in keywords, titles, descriptions, and phrases. Some of the best ways would be to add a keyword in the title, create a descriptive title, and keep it to-the-point. But, remember Google disqualifies or push back the videos and sites that are stuffed with the keyword. So, just have your primary keyword in the title and secondary keywords and phrases in the description that can be long. Finally, to add more relevant keywords make use of video tag box.  

#4. Share on Social Media

It’s no brainer, Social media networks are perhaps the most powerful content marketing tool you need to promote your YouTube Channel. With Facebook generating 8 billion staggering video views per day and 82% of overall Twitter user enjoys watching the only video on content on Twitter, promoting your YouTube channel on these various platforms can surely drive huge traffic. Through social media, your video content gets exposed to the wide audience. Every time fan likes. comments or share your video, their friends and followers view that activity. This promotes your video and increases audience engagement towards your channel.  

#5. Create Playlist

Create a playlist once you have uploaded quite a few videos, as this will make significantly easy for your audience to watch all of them effortlessly. And when a viewer is hooked up for several videos in created playlist, the overall watch time shoots up. Just make sure to be strategic when creating a playlist on YouTube. Segregate them according to relevant topic and again optimize them for better visibility.  

#6. Become a Pro Uploader

Consistency plays a vital role in developing a long-lasting relationship with subscribers on YouTube. People subscribe to your channel because they love your work and don’t mind viewing more. So, by uploading more and more videos you will be able to keep a match with your subscribers’ demands. It would be great to have a schedule for posting videos and letting the subscriber know about it well in advance can build credibility.  

#7. Promote with Real-Life People

In today’s digital age and a day where friends and family interact more online than real, it is definitely a good idea to promote your videos with real-life friends, clients, and relatives. Encourage them to watch, like and share them with their online friends.  

#8. Include them with Email marketing

Stop believing in those rumors that say “email marketing is dead”. According to McKinsey & Company, Email is almost 40x better at acquiring new customers than Facebook and Twitter. So you can make a clever choice of starting an email newsletter for updating your audience about your new video upload.  

#9. Collaborate with other YouTube Video Creators

Your YouTube video promotion can gain best results by collaborating with another YouTuber who is targeting the same audience as you do. It’s a win-win situation for both collaborators. This tactic captures the attention of your collaborator’s audiences, but make sure he or she is not your direct competitor.  

#10. Use Digital PR and Online PR Tactics

Digital Pr and Online PR both are a cost-effective and simple way to promote YouTube videos to a wider audience. It is similar to traditional PR, instead of sharing stories with newspapers and magazine, you connect with influential people online. Share your high-quality videos with popular bloggers, influencers, reporters, journalists and media personalities. If you have a great video, they may share your content with their readers by adding it in a blog post.  

#11. Interact with Audience

Audience interaction is extremely crucial to building a relationship with subscriber and viewers. There are a number of ways to interact with the audience such as responding to comments, using Google Hangouts, starting a community page on Google+, hosting Twitter chats, creating a Facebook Fan page and so on.  

#12. Be Creative with Thumbnails

One of the best ways to promote YouTube Videos is to create Thumbnail icon of every video on the channel. Apart from adding a relevant screenshot for the thumbnail image, make sure you also add legible text to the icon, which can be keyword rich again. Be creative when trying different thumbnail image, layouts, and designs.  

#13. Appreciate and Reward your Audience

With a little help of analytical tool you will come to know who is sharing your content. Do encourage these supporters by sending them to thank you mail, giving recognition in your next video or sending a free give away. It’s a feel-good factor for your audience, which is important to retain subscribers.  

#14. Get a TubeBuddy Account

To get most out of YouTube you will need a TubeBuddy account. This tool can automate your entire YouTube process from posting, publishing, scheduling, and help you find more viewers.  

#15. Promote using Quora and Forums

Quora and Forums are generally designed to ask a question and receive an answer. So, you need to be careful about YouTube Video Promotion on Quora and other Forums. Post a link to your video only if it can answer or addresses some of the questions there.

Conclusion

By following all these aforementioned steps, you’ll be able to utilise the widespread platform of YouTube to efficiently practice the useful strategy of social media marketing, and increase the awareness of your brand and/or product among the masses.  

There are reasons why some CMS platforms would be considered the best e-commerce platform and be considered superior to others. The Magento eCommerce platform is one of those CMS platforms that you can be, rest assured, is one of the best online shopping platforms available. Listed are some of the reasons why.

#1. Made for eCommerce

Unlike WordPress and other such CMS platforms, Magento was created to be an eCommerce platform. Some of the more common e-commerce features include User Dashboards, Inventory Management, Advanced shipping and supplier management, Allows bundling of products, Built-in cross-sells and upsells capabilities, CMS option, Newsletters, and so on. Apart from being e-commerce-friendly, they are also designed to ensure that they are easy to use and work with.

#2. Easy Integration

More often than not though the CMS platforms have core functionalities, not all solutions are solved within the system. They often need other apps or plugins to make working with the platform easier. The Magento eCommerce platform comes with the advantage of having an online shopping platform that can be easily integrated with ready-made plugins and apps from other developers. Magento’s APIs are also extensible to connect to different apps like analytics, shipping and tracking, payment gateways and so on.

#3. Modular and Customizable

Each industry that uses CMS platforms has different needs and has to use the CMS differently. In the sense that what works with the fashion industry doesn’t work with the furniture industry. The Magento ecommerce platform gives its users the flexibility to customize based on their specific industry needs. Given that it is an open source platform and also built primarily for ecommerce, it is highly modular and customizable. The modular elements of this online shopping platform enable you to retain the robust back end while altering the front-end to give your users an experience that is both pleasurable and efficient.

#4. SEO friendly

As one of the best eCommerce platforms that are SEO friendly, apart from hosting all your information it also aids your websites such that they show up in the search engine space. You can configure the Magento eCommerce platform to offer metadata and descriptions for products and categories, sitemaps for search engines including for Google, control over URLs and so on. Its source code comes built in with all this information to make its customers transition seamless and easy, saving your time while making it search friendly.

#5. Freedom to select hosting service

The Magento platform enables you to pick the host you want to go with, for your website. This means you can scout for the most economical options available and the most flexible one as well. Additionally, it also supports seamless switching to other hosting services, provided you are not satisfied with the one you are associated with. Also, Magento Go offers you the options to switch combined with the benefits that are available with the Magento Community edition platform.

#6. Efficiency

Websites cannot afford to load slowly anymore. Users want instant gratification and want web pages to load instantly or they get bored and move on to the next website. Given this, you need a solution that is on top of its game, collects all the data, and so on. It enables you to cache data, retrieves data in no time, and gives you all the tools to make sure you succeed in the ecommerce space. It uses Varnish for most of these things and has created a name for itself over the years as one of the best ecommerce platforms.

#7. Open Source

Magento has 3 versions, namely, the Magento Community Edition that is free, the Magento Enterprise Edition that is paid and Magento Go that is paid and hosted on Magento’s servers; the Community Edition being the most popular of them all. They have their own large community that is active and supports their own developer and user community. After downloading and installing this online shopping platform for free, you can install extensions and do a whole lot of customization using the Magento Connect Marketplace. Additionally, because it is open source the platform gets updated from time to time making it more secure and reliable to protect you from hackers. Should you have any issues, the extensive community is something you can turn to for any solutions that you might need.

#8. Mobile friendly

Mobiles are not going anywhere, that too with the increasing growth of smartphones, and the decrease in desktop uses more and more people are using their phones to access websites and are instead accessing stuff with mobiles. It has never been more important for an online shopping website to be mobile friendly. The Magento eCommerce Platform comes packed with mobile friendly technology such that its customers can not just use websites to promote the product but can also give them the same experience in the smartphone space. It lets users ease into drag and drop options, audiovisuals, and control on screen size to make it accessible to mobiles and websites.

#9. Multiple websites with common backend

Typically eCommerce websites have one site per set up. This isn’t the case with this online shopping platform. Magento allows users to create separate and independent websites for the products such that one can run multiple websites while not needing different backend systems. Additionally, it enables you to give a different look and feel to each of the websites, as a user, to entice your customers based on their needs.

#10. Analytical and tracking

Magento’s ecommerce platform has recently introduced its own analytical and tracking tool called Magento’s Business Intelligence. This tool is fully customizable and is growing to be used by both business and technical users. Finally, Magento is not afraid of its customer’s growth. This means that despite what the customer grows to and how well he or she performs; the best ecommerce platform – Magento - will work and continue to strive without penalizing you for your growth. Therefore Magento is one of the best platforms for your eCommerce business.

A Shopping cart software is a particular class of software designed for e-commerce. The main purpose of an online shopping cart is to enable users to accept payments, track orders, guide checkouts, manage catalogue, and calculate products and shipping costs. A well-designed eCommerce development platform is capable of storing customer data and is also mobile friendly. If your business sells products and services online, then you will need open-source shopping cart software such as Shopify and Bigcommerce, but if you want software that can be installed on your own server - there is no better choice than Magento.

What is Magento?

Owned by retail water-ox eBay, Magento is the leading eCommerce development company offering free open-source eCommerce solution for online retail stores. If you are one with professional web development experience, Magento will truly be a worthwhile eCommerce solution. Because it is open-source software, you are free to use and edit as per your business suitability. With Magento come numerous customization options such as plugins and extensions, which can be obtained from either third-party developers or from massive Magento community. This eCommerce development platform is also capable of driving maximum user engagement, generate more sales and increase the conversion rates. The main selling point of Magento is its features, which includes everything from marketing to SEO and customer segmentation.

Features of Magento Ecommerce Website Development Platform

Magento features are comprehensive and you are likely to find every feature you need to build and run your online store. Here are top 10 cool features of Magento Ecommerce Website Development Platform

#1. Catalog Management

Whether you are selling beauty products, electronics, clothing, or accessories – your catalog is the key component for the online shop. And Magento undoubtedly offers extensive catalog management features including –

• Supports virtual products
• Allows downloading digital products – music, videos, etc
• Effortlessly edit and delete product reviews
• Complete inventory management
• Import and export products for batch update offline.
• Attribute sets for quick product creation of different item types
• Highly customizable options such as resizing and watermarking
• RSS Feeds and lots more

#2. Tools for Advertising and Marketing

Magento not only handles your online store effortlessly but also helps you with promotion, marketing, and conversion. It offers numerous tools to make your advertising easier. These tools include –

• Cross-sell products
• Promotional pricing restricted to selected products or categories
• Option to distribute coupon codes across email, newsletter and offline.
• Monitor coupon usage, manage newsletters and polls
• Offers free shipping and promote new products list.
• Allows price variation based on quantity and groups
• Landing page tools for PPC, new product promotional tools, URL tools, and more

#3. Fully SEO Centred

Magento features include a list of options to make search engine optimization smoothly for your online store/website. Magento SEO features -

• Generates Google Sitemaps
• Automatically sort popular searches and modifies
• Supports Search Engine Friendly URLs
• Easy to Meta-tag products and information
• Faster loading options such as less usage of minimizes .css and .js files

#4. Mobile Friendly Commerce

This is one of the coolest Magento features, wherein it allows browsing full site store catalogue or selected products particularly personalized for mobile users.

• Mobile HTML5 technology for creating online mobile friendly storefront
• Open for iPhone, Android, and Mobile Opera browsers
• Clear and user-friendly product display
• Supports media files such as audio and video
• Swipe, zoom, and multi-touch
• Drag and drop and more

#5. Order Management

Magento eCommerce development platform offers unparallel order management system. Users have lot options including –

• Viewing, creating, editing and fulfilling orders directly from admin panel
• Complete Call center support product configuration and change
• Allows creating one or more invoices, shipments and credit memos per orders
• Helps to print invoices, packing slips and shipping labels
• Email notification, RSS feed for fresh orders and more

#6. Complete Site Management

Magento being a great eCommerce web design company understands the importance of complete site management. In fact, it allows users to control multiple website and store within a single installation.

• Control sites from admin panel and share only required information
• Templates with fully customizable design
• Multiple language options and currencies
• Integration between Magento and third-party apps
• Tax rates based on location, product type, and group
• Captcha enabled websites and more

#7. Checkout, Shipping, and Payment

Shipping and payment are the biggest concern for users when choosing the best platform for the shopping cart. Magento brilliantly incorporates a plethora of alternatives for payment and shipping options.

• One-page checkout
• Ship to multiple orders in one order
• Complete SSL security support for front-end/back-end orders
• Estimates for shopping cart tax and shipping costs
• Integration with Paypal and Authorize.net
• Flat rate shipping, Free Shipping and Order tracking and more

#8. User Account

It’s pretty easy to manage user account with lots of capabilities and options.

• Simple to understand account dashboard
• Recent orders, history, and status
• Store unlimited address
• Save wish list with comments
• Newsletter subscription management

#9. Customer Service and International Support

Magento eCommerce development platform comprises of great back-end tools and community for customer support.

• Contact Us form
• Support for local and international currencies and tax rates
• Order tracking, history, and email updates
• Option for International site registration, shipping destination, and payment
• EU cookie notification and more

#10. Tracking, Analytics, and Reporting

Magento features include numerous options for tracking, analyzing and reporting.

• Google Analytics
• Sales and tax reports
• Abandoned shopping cart and low stock report
• Total sales and refunded invoice
• Product review report and more

If you don’t mind doing little web development for setting up the shopping cart, then you will find Magento as a wealth of features and capabilities. Download the free Magento version and see how it works!

Today, the ubiquity of digital marketing is such that no marketer can overlook it. Especially the small and medium businesses are catching up with modern technologies by incorporating their existing marketing efforts with digital marketing strategies – in an attempt to capture the developing and productive online marketplace. The digital consumption, in fact, has revolutionized the way businesses are performed and what seems like a daily proliferation of social media contents, marketers are left with more choice than ever when considering how they prefer to reach their consumers. Digital marketing gives an opportunity to reach out to leads and customer through various digital channels that can speed up the sales cycle and maintain customer loyalty. If you are one looking to start up your digital marketing business, then for sure you will need some best digital marketing tools to manage your analytics, content marketing, publishing, visualization etc. However, with a ton of digital marketing tools out there, it is more than a daunting task to choose few that can really help.

Here are 17 must have digital marketing tools you can use when starting a business:

#1. SproutSocial – SproutSocial is the most powerful and effective social media management tools for small to large social business. SproutSocial helps businesses to grow their social media presence across all social platforms. It offers a single-stream message smart inbox feature for all networks so that you never miss any important message. The tool seamlessly posts, monitor, collaborate, measure and schedule message to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google+, Feedly, Google Analytics, LinkedIn, Zendesk, and UserVoice. It has a great built-in social image editing and stunning interface that’s easy to grasp. #2. Buffer – Buffer is a smart and easy to use tool for scheduling content across Facebook (profiles and pages), Twitter, LinkedIn (profiles and pages), Google+ and Pinterest. With Buffer, you have total control over schedule posting for all week long without worrying about managing the delivery timings. It gives you a bunch of default time slots to schedule your post, which is optimized according to the most active times of day on social media. This amazing tool also provides you with important analytics associated with viewer’s engagement and reach of your posts. #3. IFTTT – IFTTT (if this then that) is a free marketing tool for automation. This tool allows you to create a trigger called “recipe” or “Applet” for web services like Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, Instagram, and Reddit. You can also use and customize recipes from IFTTT’s repository. Whether you want to automate a tweet or an upcoming blog post or even receiving an email regarding your favorite match, IFTTT can do it all for you. This tool also integrates with Buffer and Hootsuite, making it a must-have tool for a serious digital marketing professional. #4. Oktopost – Oktopost is an indispensable social media management tool that let B2B marketers manage their online presence with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+. The tool is uniquely designed for B2B marketers, which follow every lead your business generates, and offers a best analytical report on which network, profiles, posts, and Tweet that are most effective for your business. Use Oktopost for measuring all your social media marketing activities, impression, engagement, conversion and relevant discover content. #5. Zapier – Zapier is a cloud-based web tool that automates tasks between two online apps you might be using for your life or business by creating “Zaps”. The tool follows an “if this, then that” otherwise known as “Trigger – Action” structure, and a Zap can be created without any coding knowledge. Zapier recently updated its service by making Zaps possible between 3 or more apps/services. Currently, Zapier integrates with more than 500 web apps including Paypal, Google Spreadsheet, Twitter, Facebook, Wufoo, Dropbox, Evernote, Aweber, etc. #6. Outbrain – Outbrain is perhaps the gold standard of content marketing tools. This platform can amplify your audience for any type of content including video, infographics, or blog. This is a pay-to-play option, where your content will appear as promoted suggested similar content along with other popular websites. If you want to reach out to the huge and highly relevant audience, then Outbrain is a must try! #7. CrowdBooster – CrowdBooster is one of the most effective social media analytics tools that can optimize your social media marketing choices. Consistently, CrowdBooster automatically updates your social media analytics. It is also possible to generate custom reports, which can be very useful for client submission. #8. MailChimp – MailChimp is currently the best email marketing tool available out there. It integrates well with WordPress, Shopify, Magneto and other platforms. MailChimp let you send 12,000 emails every month provided you have less than 2,000 subscribers. Other features include easy email creator, autoresponders, segmenting, tracking, analytics and more. #9. Bit.ly – Url Shortener is a must for people that are new to digital marketing. Bit.ly not only shortens the URL but also work as an all-in-one click reporting tool. It is best for short posting on Twitter and tracks the clicks on posts to understand how well your content brings traffic to your website. #10. Green Lotus – Green Lotus has launched 35+ SEO and Social Media Tools in one place, especially for small business entrepreneurs. This helps business owners with their Search engine optimization and search engine rankings. #11. TweetDeck – If you are looking to manage and monitor your Twitter feeds, then TweetDeck is the best choice. It allows scheduling tweets and alerts for new tweets. TweetDeck is now available for Chrome, Windows and Mac desktops as well. #12. Tweepi – At some point, you will surely need Tweepi, which is a Twitter management tool. It does a great cleaning job by flushing out unfollowers, removing inactive, counter following and follows what’s interesting. #13. Google Keyword Planner – Google Keyword Planners is a keyword research tool helping you find targeted keywords. Just enter a keyword in the tool and Google will give you stats, search volume, and competition to play your keyword strategy. #14. SEOCentroRank Checker – SEOCentro is an excellent keyword checking tool that checks your keyword performance not just in Google, but also in Yahoo, Bing, and other search engines. #15. Yoast SEO for WordPress – Yoast SEO for WordPress is a great tool for completely optimizing a WordPress blog. It helps to boost your WordPress blog’s visibility to Google’s search engine and has many advanced Social SEO features. #16. LiveChat – You will surely need LiveChat when starting a new business so as to converse with people coming to your website. The “Chat Now” box proactively let your prospective client reach out your service representative for any quires. #17. BuzzStream – BuzzStream is web-based software that helps the world’s best marketers promote their products, services and content to build links, buzz, and brands. Choosing the right digital marketing tools for your business will require you to understand your business needs. While the tools mentioned here may seem good, but might not be applicable to you. So, do a thorough research on the digital marketing tools that can improve your current social media strategy and business. #18. HubSpot - HubSpot is an inbound marketing and sales platform that helps companies attract visitors, convert leads, and close customers. HubSpot’s Growth Stack includes CRM and sales enablement tools, but the foundation of the Growth Stack is HubSpot Marketing. HubSpot Marketing allows organizations to bring all the tools they use to support their marketing under one umbrella that shares the same data. It includes everything a marketer needs to increase website traffic, convert website visitors into leads, and “close the loop” to deliver a measurable ROI. We are a leading Hubspot Partner based in India. Our experience on the HubSpot platform includes 7 implementations, native and custom CRM integrations (including Salesforce), lead scoring and conversion focused COS development. So, which are your preferred one for business? Drop a comment! Conclusion The utilization of these latest digital marketing tools is important for a business, if it wishes to efficiently market their brand and product/service. However, it’s important that these companies avail the services of an agency that provides quality digital marketing services, since they will be able to utilise these tools to their fullest extent. In order to enlist these services, contact us now!

Over the past decade, if you have been someone in SEO world then chances are there that you have regurgitated the phrase, “Content is King.” However, many marketers miss understood this concept and simply crammed up their website with as many keywords as possible for getting maximum links back. Less to their understanding, this technique worked only for websites that wanted to get maximum clicks on advertisements and not for people who were concerned to get back visitors. Today, SEO isn’t for con websites, more and more respectable businesses are learning the art of optimizing their sites so that it can be found by people who are looking for their products and services. SEO’s landscape is constantly evolving with time, technology and social media environment. If you have a website, blog, or an ecommerce store, SEO can help meeting the business objectives. Digital marketers have realized the potentials of using content marketing and social media for attracting visitors, building brands and selling products/services. Meaning, all three content marketing, social media, and SEO have combined role to play for a brand’s success. When you have an organic marketing plan, it is important to understand how Content and Social Media can help you achieve the desired SEO results.

10 Reasons Why Content Marketing and Social Media are most Powerful SEO Weapons

Link Building

Social media helps foster relationships, which ultimately helps to build links. Most basically, social networking sites offer the simplest way to share and distribute your message. If your content - be it in any form (written, picture, or video) is seen by right people then it will probably lead to a new link back. Every social network platform such as Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook has become a logical medium for performing link outreach. In other words, Content marketing and Social Media are the two peas in a pod, and link building is a brilliant way to make use of their synergy.

Increase Conversation

Social Media relies on high-quality content, which is strong, convincing and believable and when you have that - it increases conversation across networks. When people start talking about your brand, your social media presence gets a boost, which greatly increases your search rankings. Remember, a good copy breeds sales, while a bad copy would repel even the most eager audience, leading to an adverse effect on SEO ranking. Reciprocate to Google’s Algorithms – Google’s Algorithms keep getting updating but one thing remain same is that it intensely favour fresh content. Using content marketing along with social media will build real, natural links that Google is going to love and reward accordingly. One thing digital marketers need to understand is that links in Social Media do not directly have an impact on your search rankings, but the amplified reach your content gets via social media can attract more inbound links.

Generate Leads

Social media today is much more than a way to develop your brand and connect with customer. In fact, social media can actually be responsible for generating leads for your business, when done correctly. If you have been hunting over new tactics of SEO to generate leads, then it's time you design gated content, video marketing, and email marketing that are aimed at pushing potential customer to your sales funnel. And the icing on the cake is that content marketing and social media are cost effective way of generating leads.

Quality Traffic

Internet business is all about traffic, which is also the most important aspect of understanding the impact of social signals on SEO efforts. These signals let search engines know that your website/blog is been talked about, and is useful. The actual worth comes into play when important social signals such as likes, followers, tweets etc turn into social shares, which brings quality traffic to your SEO efforts. Moreover, Google considers factors such as the number of retweets, the number of people tweeted the content and the time taken to index the content. Content indexation is key to SEO because the faster your content gets indexed, the faster you will be rewarded with organic traffic to your website.

Boost Authority and Credibility

It is simple, if you are a credible source, search engines will rank your content and website higher. In order to be credible, your website needs to be real and accurate. If you are promoting it on social networks, chances are that your credibility is getting strengthened. Google also considers your social media influence in forming your credibility, because influencer’s endorsements have a positive impact on SEO and have the power of client retention by 37%.

Better User-Experience (UX)

SEO is not only about blogs, keywords, and backlinks; it is more about optimizing the technical aspect of a website such as robot.txt. metatag, and sitemaps. It is somehow tangentially associated with content marketing. When optimizing the site technically you are allowing the user to search, select and read your content effortlessly. Now, it’s accurate to say that this enhances user experience (UX), which helps them promote your content over social networks. Hence, the relation between content, social media and SEO and is inextricable.

Reduce bounce Rate

Bounce rate is the percentage of all visitors landing and moving from the same page to other without any clicks. If you see high bounce rate on your website’s landing page, then it’s a sign that it requires strong content marketing strategy. The most effective and important benefit of incorporating content marketing and social media to your SEO plan is that it will reduce bounce rate.

Improve SERPs

You can find millions of pages over the internet, but none are more important to digital marketers than search engine results pages, (SERPs). Google considers more at the kind of content that is shared across the web instead of a number of keywords to measure SERPs. So when you develop real content that matters for people, your SERPs automatically goes high.

Encourage Shares

Article or a blog post that has a high potential for shareability will encourage users to share them. This will earn your more signals, inbound links and genuine audiences to support your brand success.

MainAd, an international Retargeting company headquartered at Italy, ventured into the Indian affiliate market with ProfiliAd. Profiliad is an affiliate marketing network in a technological partnership with Infospica to innovate and develop technological solutions for their target audience. Hina Mittal Nayar, CEO ProfiliAd carries industry experience of over a decade and sets on her first entrepreneurial stint with Profiliad. The leadership team consists of industry stalwarts Marco Cotumaccio and Marino Gualano of MainAd, Hina Mittal Nayar and Sumit Nayar. Sumit with an experience of 15 years brings to the table his expertise from diverse industries with a focus on market research.

Digital Marketing industry in India

Digital Marketing industry in India is one of the fastest growing industry with a growth rate of 40%. It is one of the most powerful and result-oriented marketing industry on the global map. Government’s ‘Digital India’ campaign signals at the changing trend in India. The change is propelled by the rising technology savvy young generation, and companies are developing their ways to engage with their target audience via digital media. The penetration of internet across the country has led to the booming of the e-commerce industry. According, to studies 2017, India will have around 600 million internet users that ultimately create a fascinating business opportunity to sell services and products to a growing population of tech-savvy internet users. Digital Marketing Agency offers a wide array of benefits like cost-effectiveness, instant response, convenience, increased reach, etc. it is getting more and more used by the marketers. Out of 100 million Indians accessing the internet from mobile devices in 2010, the number has increased to around 300 million at the end of 2014. It is expected to grow up to 600 million internet users surfing via mobile devices by 2020. Currently, mobile is becoming the most valuable demographic tool for marketers. Industry pain points that Profiliad is trying to solve with its services As the digital marketing industry is not a full-grown segment, it is battling a series of safety and security concerns. With the might of technology, it also becomes important to restraint it’s power. Some of the areas we are focusing on developing technological solutions are-

• Fraudulent Activities: Profiliad is in the process of building the technology to track the fraudulent activities, thus minimising the fraud.
• Tracking Concerns: Profiliad is working closely with their technology partners to come up with the customised technological solutions to counter the tracking concerns.
• Targeting incapabilities: Profiliad has established an internal QA function which keenly observes and analyses the output based on an in-depth algorithm. This enables us to maintain the targeting standards as required by the clients.

Role of Ad Tech in Digital Marketing

Ad Tech is a forum where today’s leading marketers go to learn from their peers and to get hands - on with the latest marketing and advertising innovations. It is the place where the marketing pioneers, innovators, and brand trailblazers all converge to unravel experiences and discover new ways of thinking. It provides an unparalleled networking and business matching opportunity. The objective is to discuss the important issues which call for attention in digital marketing like fraud, tracking, programmatic buying, viewability and measuring digital media. This conference gets unbiased, actionable advice on the trends, tools, technologies and techniques you need to master your craft.

New industry developments that will drive efficiency & scale for brands

• Influencer Marketing: Influencer marketing has been a game changer in the industry. The year 2016 has been a good year regarding growth for Influencer marketing, and this trend is expected to continue in 2017. Influencer marketing will become a regular part of the Social, and Video digital ad spends of marketing strategies in the coming years. There has been a fall in the number of business houses who didn’t include influencer marketing from 85% in 2015 to 57% in 2016 and is expected to further go down to 50% in 2017.
• Digital Payments: Demonetization has impacted digital marketing industry in a positive manner. People have resorted to cashless transactions which have tremendously boosted the use of mobile wallets to make transactions and the transactions on e-commerce websites & apps. Unified payments interface (UPI) will also be a game changer.
• Usage of Smart Phones: In the current scenario, it has been noticed that 60% of the traffic on the websites is through smartphones and thus amounts to 45% of the sales being generated through mobile. This trend is expected to increase in 2017 as usage of smartphones will continue to grow.

While exhibitions are a gateway to participate in industry affairs, expand the horizon and utilize the opportunities to maximize marketing measures. In an age of cut through competition, every activity needs the right set of communication to get recognition.

If you are an exhibitor in a national or international event like CES, ad tech India, Tech Crunch, Hackathon India, etc., the opportunities available can be channelized into strategic actions in line with your business goals.

Here are the five quick, insightful ways to get the best out of your participation in events

1. Identify the target audience & defined Digital PR objectives

Research is essential in bringing efficiency in the marketing & PR strategy. It accentuates the possibility of targeting the right audience. Communication strategy is then developed to ensure maximum return. Industry analysis, a close study of the participation list in the events aids in optimizing the time at the day of the event.
The next step is to develop a robust communication strategy using traditional, digital, new media and experiential platforms.

2. Drive traffic to your booth:

There are various diverse approaches to attract attendees to your stall, and the event application is an immaculate setting for that. Be vibrant with activities aligned, exciting giveaways, etc.

A plan of action should be ready for the shop floor which shall be engaging and informing. Driving higher footfall at the both will generate talk points for organizations to leverage through communication strategy.

Example:
1) Facebook Remarketing
2) Twitter Communication Planning & having a major share of voice in official hashtags of the event.
Ex: #CES2017 for CES 2017, #adtechIN - For adtech India
3) Twitter List - Create Twitter list to optimize your marketing process. For example, setting up a process with which all the Twitter users will be mentioning the official hashtag can be added into it. You can use services like IFTTT to have this marketing automation.

3.Real Time content dissemination & Digital PR amplification

Content is one of the contributing factors to determine returns from an event. Real-time content marketing adds value to the brand strategy. Beyond networking, quality content is important to attract potential clients.

Content creation: pre-event, during event and post event; content should be different for every stage. In the pre -event stage the focus should be more on building the buzz, during the event real time updates should be disseminated in different formats across platforms, post event the focus on sustaining the momentum through the right usage of the properties developed in the event.

4. Survey for leads:

Exhibitors majorly rely on attendees, exhibitors and participants to turn into potential leads. To maximize lead generation and seize the opportunities, surveys are the way out. It helps in distribution of business information to the potential leads, and simultaneously helps in generation of surveyee’s business details.

Surveys offer better insight of the opportunities and challenges; it allows the company to lay better impressions on the potential customers/clients.

5. Presence across platforms:

Events open the way to networking and socializing, to showcase and analyze, to map the competitors and build on the USPs. The process; from engagement to content curation should be omnipresent for those days. The initiatives should reach out to the TG through, content marketing, influencer engagement, brand advocacy, video marketing, Geo- targeting, etc.

Amazon India cites a classic example of utilizing the New Delhi Book Fair every year. It ensures to reach out to the bookworms across the city and connect with it’s TG through a 360-degree communication strategy. Look at it’s Twitter campaign here.

>> Things you cannot afford to miss about Influencer Marketer and Digital PR.

With the markets expanding, competition has accentuated for industry players across every sector. From one-sided communication, it has now come to an interactive model between the owners and consumers across multiple platforms. Corporates are massively investing on two pillars - Customer attention and retention in their minds. Higher the visibility, greater are the chances to be in the consumer mind. If you are an exhibitor in any event like CES, MWC, adtech India, Tech Crunch Disrupt, Hackathon India etc, then you should keep a knack on all these pointers. Few pre-requisites to get the best out of any events are summarized below in quick points, you can use these tips & easily incorporate it into your existing marketing tactics:

Agenda setting

Agenda setting is crucial to achieving the targeted goals. It has been proved that communication agenda influences public choices. There is an intricate relation between communication – events and agenda setting, different events have different agenda’s, for example: ad tech India's agenda for this year is “Accelerating the Evolution”. With sound media mapping, industry analysis and competition audit the right frame of agenda can be developed and leveraged during the event days. With tools of communication, you can create the right momentum for the brand through effective communication tools.

Plan of Action

Successful implementation calls for a sound plan of Action. The role and responsibilities should be well mapped and designated such that there is no duplication of work, no ambiguity in the roles and no important misses. Every member should have individual targets which would cumulate to the overall business goal. Some of the tasks are as follows-

• Media interactions: Face to face conversation with key media, coffee table with influencers etc. This enables the brand to communicate the brand vision in a personal way to the advocates of the society. PR today is no more confined only to the traditional platform. In the digital age it has given rise to digital PR or Digital First PR
• Release dissemination: Blast the media with brand information. Releases are short crisp and to the point content pieces which communicates the key factors to the TG (target group).
• Social media marketing: To rise and hail in today's populated business world it is vital to have a strong, clear social media strategy. It builds or breaks your image. Right strategy is vital else the traction is extremely low
• SEO: Search Engine Optimization is a gameplay of keywords. The right set of words gets you higher visibility. There are various other hacks to get maximum outreach from any event using SEO like, using event hashtag in bio or title of your twitter profile. We will to a full feature on this in our next post & list down results we received post attending events like CES & Techcrunch Disrupt.

Mapping strengths

Competition analysis is a major step to put the right efforts on marketing. Work on the strengths and highlight the USPs. Previous work, case studies, brochures capturing the business agenda should be handy. Information dissemination should not be stalled due to lack of logistics. Eg. Identifying the right set of key words for increased media visibility.

Steps to map your strengths:

• SWOT analysis: Measure the industry trends with respect to the brand's current standing. This gives an understanding of the competition, the possible threats and the channels of opportunity.
• Past experiences/ case studies: Good work showcases your merit. Carry your past work/portfolio to voice your credibility

To hit the bull's eye, homework is essential. Planning not only gives a fair idea of the future opportunities but also helps map the current weaknesses which requires attention. To know more about the processes refer to the below link. Reference:https://www.advadm.com/using-swot-analysis-strategic-planning-tool-ophthalmology-practice/

Tested Processes

It is safer to play smart. It is good to be adventurous, but the risk attached to it is high. It can always be the flip side. Tested techniques should be implemented to ensure optimization of resources. The event is not the right place to apply techniques which you are not well accustomed to, either does a pilot survey of it or look for consultants in case it looks indispensable.

Create Buzz and Sustain it

The ultimate agenda is to ensure maximum visibility. Communication to the stakeholders is the objective, and the real audience is outside the event premise. There are many events like, CES, adtech India, Tech Crunch etc use the new age techniques like content marketing, video marketing, social media amplification, etc. to ensure your brand trends on every platform. The below mentioned are the techniques to bring lime light to a company’s actions-

• Content marketing: Content marketing is a way to communicate to your stakeholders through different platforms. Event marketing is successful if the content generated from the event is rightly spread across different platforms.

#TeaforTrump campaign is a classic example of core integrated digital campaign highlighting real-time content marketing,  digital PR & social media amplification.  Reference https://armdigital.in/blog/secret-behind-tea-for-trump-real-time-marketing-campaign/

• Video marketing: Graphics and videos attract more eye balls in today's time constraint life, video marketing is a way to talk with your TG with the relevant videos. Video marketing adds in leverage the best of event marketing.
• Visibility on the traditional and digital platform: Communication through different channels and mediums to reach out to the maximum audience. Digital first PR is the new way to build brand image.

You can reach out to us on anasua.mitra(at)armdigital(dot)in for any queries on event marketing using integrated PR.

We are glad to announce that ARM Worldwide has been awarded with another gold. This time, India PR & Corporate Communications Awards 2016 (IPRCCA) for most innovative use of Social Media in “A hilarious attempt by TE-A-ME to "Purify" Donald Trump”. e4m IPRCCA 2016 is the path breaking initiative to salute and recognise the contribution of PR Consultancies and Corporate Communications.

A big cheers for all the team for bagging one of the 16 gold awards @ IPRCCA.

We have been nominated as the finalist of 2 categories, Most innovative use of Social Media & Integrated Campaign.

Checkout our Content Marketing Framework

For the first 72 hours of this campaign execution, a team of 11 members @armdigital were working day & night. The recipe behind the perfect execution of this campaign lies in an exact and opportune mix of timing, audience targeting, distribution channels, amplification, seeding, and cross promotion on multiple platforms. Velocity is what we wanted to achieve = (views + articles + conversations + impressions) / time. Checkout the detailed post on strategy behind Tea For Trump campaign execution.

• Website - https://www.teafortrump.com
• LighthouseInsights - https://lighthouseinsights.in/teafortrump.html/
• PR Moment:
• Mashable - https://mashable.com/2016/07/14/donald-trump-india-tea-bags/