10 Ways to Grow Instagram Followers and Engagement

“Instagram Famous” is a term that has worked its way in to social media lexicon.
Forget the YouTube stars of the past – it’s all about how many followers, likes and comments everyone can garner from the endless recesses of the internet. And claiming your favorite celeb as another member of your own personal fan club is now cooler than a Grammy, just sayin’.
But you can’t buy fame.
There’s plenty of hacks and shortcuts and “sketchy” companies out there claiming to be able to double your following in seconds or share a delicious secret to instant Instagram fame that everyone else just happened to overlook.
Don’t believe any of it.
When Momma said there’s no substitute for an honest day’s work, she was actually right.
Here’s 10 ways to grow your Instagram following and engagement the new old fashioned way.

1. Keep your photos consistent with your brand

Your Instagram is an extension of your business and your brand, so make sure that the photos you post stay true to what you’re all about. People that follow you chose to do so because there’s something they like about your brand. They want more of it, so give it to them.
Think about what your brand is all about. What words best define and describe it? Keep your images aligned to those core traits.

For instance, a high-brow interior design company would want to focus on modern, minimalist photos of chic living spaces that exemplify good taste and clean lines. If an account like that were to include images of the mess after a crazy office party or someone’s fabulous-looking salad the overall theme would be completely disrupted.
Consistency in photos will keep attracting the right kind of followers, ones who appreciate your brand and who will thoughtfully engage. It also demonstrates professionalism and your authority as an expert in your space.

2. Focus on liking and commenting on photos within your niche

When someone gives you a compliment, you want to give them one back, right?
It’s kinda like that on Instagram, too.
One of the best ways to get people coming to your Instagram and seeing what you’re all about is by liking or commenting on a photo on their page so they can follow your handle back to your account. And hopefully, like or comment on your photo or maybe even follow you.
Carve out the time to find accounts within your niche market and like 5-10 photos and leave a comment or two. Every day.
Why is focusing on accounts within your niche so important? Because they’re managed by the people most likely to be interested enough in your brand to like or comment back.
Think about it – if you’re a beverage brand and you go liking and commenting all over a footwear designer’s Instagram, chances are that followers on that page are more interested in something to add to their closets, not their refrigerators. So your chances of engaging with the right people on there would be slim.

3. Captions matter, seriously

Of course Instagram is image-based. Everyone knows that.
But how many times have you gone to like or comment on that hilarious cat photo…only to be so annoyed by the lack of wit in the comment that you can’t even bring yourself to like it. Because if one’s brand is all about hilarious cat photos, then one better have some equally hilarious comments to go along with them.
Captions help solidify a consistent tone to tie together your theme of images. They also help you connect to your followers and show that you put thought into what you do as an expert in your field.
Treat your captions as though you’re speaking right to your best customers. What’s important to them? How is what you say a reflection of your brand?
Careless captions turn away knowledgeable people within your niche and confuse your brand message.
Thoughtful captions inspire thoughtful responses and genuine followers.

4. Ask for action

Duh! Just ask people to like you, right? It’s just that easy!
Well, almost.
When you’re posting to your account, think about adding a call to action into your caption to solicit a response from your viewers and/or followers.
It doesn’t have to be complicated. Just something short and sweet. For instance, under a photo of a massive ice cream cone with a text overlay that reads “Ice Cream Cures All,” you could add the caption, “Like if you agree!”
This incites a no-brainer action by the viewer vs. just adding the caption, “I love ice cream!” which doesn’t necessarily incite any active response.
Make it easy for your followers to engage by telling them exactly what to do.

5. Use and create relevant and thoughtful hashtags

As on all social media platforms, hashtags help build community and bring together people with similar likes and interests.
The people you want liking and following you.
So with hashtags consistent with your brand and tone, you’ll be attracting people within your niche who will be more likely to engage and help build your following.
Focus on hashtags that are highly relevant within your industry, such as #motivation and #fitness if you’re a personal trainer or #organic and #cleaneating if you’re a vegan chef.

You can even create your own hashtags pertaining to perhaps a social campaign you’re currently running. When your followers start using it, you can then like or comment on their photos, repost them and create a dialogue.
Combine hashtags with thoughtful messaging to caption your themed photos and you’ll be well on your way to Instagram stardom. Or at least more engagement and a larger following.

6. Don’t forget to geotag

So simple, yet so often forgotten.
When you post your photos, remember to geotag them with your current location.
Doing so helps build camaraderie with followers who may also have a connection to that particular city, restaurant, gym, etc. or share common sentiment toward the place you’re posting from.
Because kinship breeds commentary.
For example, say you’re a food critic and you’re visiting a highly acclaimed restaurant in San Diego.
When you share a photo of your exquisitely crafted meal, be sure to geotag that restaurant as a location in your post.
This way, others who have eaten there or who live locally will be inspired to perhaps share what their thoughts were on their meals, like your photos or follow you thinking that by doing so they’ll get more insider scoop on great restaurants in their hometown.

7. Ask people to follow you via your other social accounts

Believe it or not, having additional social media accounts like Twitter and Facebook can actually help you build your following and engagement levels on Instagram.
Generally, any avenue to get your name and brand out there online will help generate interest around your brand, and thus, interest in your social channels.
But you can also use your other social channels to ask your current followers there to also follow you on Instagram.
Think about it. If they already like you and your brand enough to follow you on one account, it’s probably a pretty safe bet that they’ll be more than willing to follow you on another one.
And you can even give them a little sample of what they’re going to get on your Instagram by linking it to your Facebook page. So whatever you post to Instagram will also show up on your Facebook page.
Asking followers on one social account to follow you on another is a smart way to earn more of the “right” followers who have a genuine interest in your brand and who will be more likely to comment and create a thoughtful dialogue.

8. Consider mixing business with pleasure

In most areas of business, combining your business and personal accounts isn’t always a recommended activity.
But if your daily life can somehow compliment your brand, or vice-versa, it may be a smart idea to incorporate your personal photos into what you’re posting for business purposes.
For instance, say you promote an energy-boosting green drink, made of organic, locally harvested produce. Along with posts of your bottles as part of a well-balanced breakfast and of customers drinking it at their local gyms, you may consider posts of you harvesting your own vegetables in your home garden or shopping at a farmer’s market.
Not only do images like this reinforce your embracing the essence of your brand in your everyday life, but doing so helps potential customers and followers better connect with you, as a person. And when that happens, it leads to a deeper connection with your brand.

9. Research and learn from other successful accounts

The cool thing about social media is that the whole purpose of it is to share.
Share posts, share pictures, share copy, share…ideas.
There are tons of people out there just killing it when it comes to earning a constant stream of new followers and above-average levels of engagement. So they’re doing something right.
What?
Do they run awesome campaigns? Have a really solid brand message exemplified throughout their photo stream, hashtags and captions? Are their photos done off-the-cuff and spontaneously? Or are they highly orchestrated down to the last detail?
You definitely want to make your brand your own and stay true to your own persona and voice.
But looking for ideas that have been successful on other top accounts and applying that general framework to your overall strategy can help you take your efforts to the next level.

10. Start using Iconosquare, Schedugram or InstaEasy

Using various social tools to help you better manage your Instagram account can help you save time and strengthen your efforts to build your following and boost your engagement.
Iconosquare can help you better manage your account by offering you an easy-to-use dashboard with more detailed search and engagement capabilities involving other Instagram accounts.
Schedugram is a great tool to use if you’re looking to schedule out future posts in advance. You can set times and stay organized with what you’re featuring and how it plays into your greater brand initiatives.
InstaEasy allows you to grow your Instagram following on autopilot. You can follow by hashtags or another user’s followers. Plus you can automatically like images based on hashtags and unfollow users. Did I mention that once this is setup, it runs automatically?
If neither of those tools give you what you are looking for, you can browse this list of over 500 social media tools – many of which work for Instagram.

Growing your following and engagement isn’t an overnight achievement

Rome wasn’t built in a day.
We’ve all heard that one before. But in today’s world of instant gratification, patience is at an all-time low. For everything.
If you’re looking to work your way to Instagram fame the right way, by earning followers who really care about your brand and who want to contribute to intelligent conversations, the investment of your time and energy is an absolute must.
You’ve got to regularly engage with people within your niche, upgrade your caption copy, seek out popular hashtags, ask people to take action and to follow you – and don’t forget to geotag.
At the end of the day, your potential to gain a mass following and high engagement depends on the kind of effort you’re willing to put into each one of these tactics. Of course, you can choose to use an automation tool like InstaEasy to help you skip the mindless and redundant necessities of you Instagram account.
And with the right amount of work and the right amount of patience, you’d better start planning what you’re going to do with all that newfound fame.
Because in the right amount of time, you’ll have Instagram success in the bag.
Ready to become “Instagram Famous”?
Let me know how you plan to do it in the comments below. Or if you are already a star, why not spill the beans on how you did it?

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7 Easy Tips to Creating Stellar Email Content

 Once a subscriber opens your email, you’ve got just a few seconds to grab his or her attention. Stellar content can keep them glued to the screen. To help you connect with your readers, we have seven tips to help bolster your email content. 

1. Host a brainstorming session

If you feel like your content is a little drab, host a brainstorming session to help generate some new ideas, says marketer Izabela Socha with Cooking Planit. This company, which is an online site that helps people plan meals, holds bi-weekly brainstorming sessions.

Even if your staff is small, ask everyone – not just marketing – to come to a meeting and toss around ideas. New topic ideas can elevate your writing. And, if you’re a team of one like many small business owners, don’t fret. We’ve got a guide with inspiring ideas and a blog post with even more. 

2. Ask for input

Ideas shouldn’t just come from your staff; they should come from your subscribers, too. Send an email asking recipients what kind of email content they want to see. This gives your customers a voice and gives you more content ideas. Check out the example. This particular online retailer is offering an incentive to participate, which is never a bad idea.

 3. Less is more

With the right design and images, your email doesn’t need a ton of text. A promotional email, for example, may only need the sale details. Take a look at the example below. Notice there’s very little text, but the reader gets the point instantly. 

 

4. Write teaser content

Write short and snappy content, then direct readers to the meat of your content on a blog or a landing page like the folks at Cooking Planit. Tease your readers. Get them to click on your call-to-action button, and lead them to more content, such as specific recipes in the example below.

5. Focus on the reader

When you’re writing, use the word “you” rather than “we.” By doing so, you’ll focus on the customer. Take a look at the example below. Instead of saying, “We offer the following benefits” it says, “As a registered user you can.” The Home Depot focuses on the customer, not the business. 

6. Write with a single goal

As you’re writing, focus your efforts on one goal. Don’t try to cram too many topics into an email. Unless you’re writing a newsletter, the rule of thumb is one topic per email. Keep it simple, like the example below. It’s clear the goal of this email is to introduce recipients to a new pizza.

7. Say it with video

Try adding some video to your next email to mix up your content (you simply include an image of the video and link to where the video is hosted like on YouTube). Whether you record your company’s CEO thanking customers or showing subscribers a new product like the email below does, video is a great way to spice up an email. For a little help creating a video, check out a recent post on this very topic.

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6 Simple Photo Tools for Creating Social Media Visuals

Are you including images in your social media content?
Looking for easy-to-use tools to help you create images for your content strategy?
If the idea of using Photoshop makes your head spin or hiring a graphic designer isn’t an option, there are many easy-to-use, low-cost alternatives available to you to create social media graphics.
In this article, I’ll show you 6 easy tools that will help you create compelling graphics for social media.

#1: Use PicMonkey’s Online Photo Editor to Take Your Images From Good to Glorious

PicMonkey‘s free option has a wide variety of frames, special effects and font types to choose from.
With a touch of a button, you can crop and resize your photo, and add text to your images.

Choose from a wide variety of free fonts on PicMonkey to create appealing images like this one with PicMonkey.

The paid option offers additional features that include more frames and photo effects.
PicMonkey is a great solution for all types of social media images. Not only can you create graphics for your posts, you also can make banners and buttons for your social media accounts, such as Facebook.

#2: Express Yourself Through Photos and Creations on LiveLuvCreate

LiveLuvCreate is an image-creation website most anyone will find easy to use.
With LiveLuvCreate, you pick from a variety of design layouts—from one image as a background to a collage of graphics. You can use images from your computer or choose from LiveLuvCreate’s library.
Choose up to three text areas with a range of font types, colors and styles.
You may also select borders, filters and photo effects for additional image enhancements.

An example of a social media graphic you can create on LiveLuvCreate.com.

Once you complete your graphic, you can share your creation on Pinterest, Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook, or download the image to your computer.

#3: Create Your Own Designs With Canva

Canva is a free application that offers a myriad of graphic types for use in everything from presentations and posters, to business cards and invitations. For social media use, consider Canva to help you design Facebook cover photos and blog images.

Canva offers many different layouts to help you create compelling and shareable social media images.

If you’re signed into Facebook, Canva can pull in your photos. You can also upload your own graphics from your computer, or purchase from Canva’s stock image library (most images are only $1 US).
Additionally, Canva has a unique feature where you can collaborate with other users, which is great if you need to share or edit your images with someone else.
Canva is currently under closed beta, but you can reserve your username and be placed on a waiting list. Then, you can try Canva out once you gain access to the beta version.

#4: Use Image and Photo Editing Software From Paint.NET

If you want some of PhotoShop’s capabilities, check out Paint.NET as an alternative.

Paint.NET is a free download for PCs and offers many of the same features available in PhotoShop.
It supports layers, has unlimited undo capability and offers special photo effects, including red-eye removal. You can also draw shapes, add text and recolor your images with Paint.NET.

You can easily crop any image on Paint.NET and then resize to your specifications.

Because Paint.NET is a free download, tapping into the user community is the best way to get help with how to use it. Check out Paint.NET’s online forum for help, tutorials and plugins.

#5: Design Unique and Compelling Presentations With PowerPoint

It may come as a surprise to see PowerPoint on this list, but it offers another easy way to create social media images.
Any PowerPoint slide can be saved as a JPEG or PNG. Just click on Save As, and then select JPEG or PNG from the Save as Type drop-down menu.
PowerPoint then asks if you want to export every slide or just the current slide. Select Current Slide Only, and you have an image file of your PowerPoint slide. If you’re comfortable using PowerPoint, take advantage of this capability to create social media images.

#6: Make Awesome Collages With PicCollage

Don’t forget that compelling social media images can include snapshots, and when you want to creatively display these types of photos, check out PicCollage.
PicCollage is an app for iPhone, iPad and Android devices.
Once you download the app, use photos from your Facebook account or camera stream to create collages.
Select a background on PicCollage, add your photos, then text and stickers to your image. PicCollage also allows you to resize, rotate, edit and delete any of your creations. When you complete your collage, you can share your image on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

You can choose from many different layouts for your collage. Photo courtesy of PicCollage.

Use PicCollage to creatively display photos from a client event, office party or conference. Or pull in a favorite quote and surround it with images.
With a little creativity, PicCollage helps you create social media graphics that show a more personal side to your business.

Final Thoughts
While hiring a graphic designer or learning to use PhotoShop may be the best solution, it’s nice to know you have alternatives to help you design graphics to share on social media.
When you need help to create social media graphics, consider any of these tools to help you get the job done.
Do your research. Finding the right image design tool is a bit like trying on shoes; you need to choose the best one to fit your needs. You may find that it’s best to use multiple platforms to create your social media graphics, like KJ Ammerman who likes to use Picmonkey and Canva.

KJ Ammerman likes to use Picmonkey for backdrops, Canva for layout and then back to Picmonkey for text.

What do you think? Do you use other image-creation tools besides PhotoShop? What other sites or apps would you recommend? Share your comments and suggestions in the comments box below.

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A Definitive Guide to Growth Hacking for Content Marketing

Search online and you will see articles about growth hacking everywhere. The only problem is many times growth hacking seems an abstract concept that only big companies can use.
This couldn’t be further from the truth.

Any company or website can use growth hacking to grow. Do you know why?
Because growth hacking is a mindset, not just a bunch of tactics used to improve your conversion rate.
If you are wondering what this mindset is all about and how to use it, fear not.
Since 93% of B2B marketers and 86% of B2C marketers use content marketing as their main acquisition channel, in this post, you will learn how the growth hacking mindset works and how to use it for your content marketing strategy.

Think like a growth hacker

Let’s start by taking this out of the picture: growth hacking isn’t “something” you do, rather it’s a mindset and a process you implement to a set of tactics to achieve a specific goal. Therefore, if you want to be a growth hacker, you need to think like one.
What is growth hacking all about? I could give you all sorts of explanations and definitions, but the fact is growth hacking is all about getting results.
Instead of wasting your time thinking things through and looking at the “right way” of doing things like any conventional marketer would do, you “hack” your way through until you get the results you want.
Growth hackers, however, aren’t disorganized when it comes to “hacking” their way through results. Growth hackers think like scientists:

• They start by creating a hypothesis around a tactic and goal.
• They design a test around that hypothesis.
• They run the test.
• They get the results.
• If the test fails, they learn and try again with a different set of hypothesis.
• If it works, they keep the winning version.

Whatever the result, every time a growth hacker tests a hypothesis he or she learns something that gets them closer to reality.
The key of a growth hacker mindset, the one that separates them from a “regular” marketer, is they use inductive reasoning. Let me explain.
Most marketers use deductive reasoning when testing a marketing tactic. That is:

• They come up with a theory of how things work, which can be based on “marketing rules”, facts, or technical definitions.
• They create a hypothesis around those ideas.
• They run the test and learn based on the results.

That thinking process isn’t bad per se, it’s just inefficient when you are a small startup and you need to get results fast. If you pick the wrong hypothesis, you may lose a lot of time implementing a tactic and trying to grow a channel that has no potential.
As a growth hacker, you don’t have the privilege of time or resources. You need to deliver results fast. That’s why you need to use inductive reasoning. That means when you want to test a new tactic, you would:

• Make observations on what pieces of content people share and link to.
• Find patterns within those successful pieces of content (e.g. “the articles that got the most shares have lots of screenshots”).
• Tie a probability of success to those patterns (e.g. “using screenshots in our articles have a higher likelihood of getting shares”).
• Create a theory behind those patterns (e.g. “our users like articles with screenshots”).
• Create a test to see if those patterns provide the results you observed before.

Before moving on, let me say this process isn’t as scientific as the ones real scientists use in the biotech industry and the like. Rather, it’s a highly simplified version of this thought process that you need to use.
Instead of wasting your time to find theories to back your ideas, you flip the coin and focus on what works and how you can replicate those results.
As you can see, this methodology is much leaner and iterative than the theory-based one most marketers use. You make observations, test hypothesis, and find new insights that give you an edge over your competitors.
To sum up, as a content marketing growth hacker, your job will be to:

• Find successful campaigns from your own company or your competitors.
• Find patterns of success within those campaigns that have a high likelihood of causing that success.
• Come up with a different set of hypothesis based on the patterns previously found.
• Create tests around these hypothesis to validate or refute them.
• Get results, which will help you learn what works and what doesn’t.

If growth hackers focus on results, then how do you use this same mindset for your content marketing campaigns? According to a Content Marketing Institute study, only 42% of B2B marketers say they’re effective at content marketing. This means there’s a big gap between what content marketers want and what they achieve.
That may have to do with the fact most B2B content marketers use 13 tactics to achieve their results. That dilutes their efforts in a way that makes content marketing fall short of its potential.
Brian Balfour, former VP of Growth at Hubspot, referred to this problem when he wrote:

A lot of teams take a shotgun approach to growth by trying a little bit of everything, but never a lot of one thing. It is harder to focus than it is to try everything. As a result they end up just scratching the surface rather than digging a layer deeper to find what really works. There are two things to remember. One, most successful companies get the majority of their scale from a single channel. Two, there are only a few ways to scale.

In other words, you should focus on making content marketing work. In order to do that, you need to have a clear idea on how content marketing can help you grow. Otherwise, you may fall in the 58% of content marketers that say they aren’t effective at doing it.
In the simplest terms, content marketing can help you fulfill three goals:

• Attract traffic.
• Generate leads.
• Nurture those leads into customers.

All the content you create within your strategy must be focused on achieving those goals. As the Metallica song goes, nothing else matters.
How do you attract traffic these days? By creating content that’s share-worthy and link-worthy.
How do you generate leads? By giving people something they want badly enough so they are willing to give you their email address. With the absurd amount of content out there, that’s something that gets harder each day that goes by.
How do you nurture leads into becoming customers? By creating a full-funnel content strategy that gives them the information they need when they need it the most.
But how do you create content that’s shared and link-worthy? How do you find what people want? And how do you find what content people need at each stage of their buying process?
In the next section of this post, I will show you three hacks you can implement today to achieve two of the three goals for your content marketing strategy.

Hack #1: How to get more traffic with reverse engineering

Your content marketing strategy can be focused on many types of traffic, including referral, social, or email. But according to Andrew Chen, one of the few that can be scaled is organic traffic. If your website has enough domain authority, you can expect to get thousands, if not millions, of visitors per month thanks to the traffic brought by search engines.
In order to get organic traffic, both your website and your content need to be optimized for search engines, especially Google, which in the United States has a market share of 63.8%.
As a former SEO consultant, optimizing a website is as simple as doing two things right:

• Optimize your most important pages for one main keyword with moderate to high traffic levels.
• Attract inbound links to your most important pages and to your homepage.

SEO doesn’t get any harder than that. How you can optimize your pages and get inbound links is the big question.
The first part of that equation, the on-site optimization, deserves a separate article. That’s why I will focus on the second one: inbound links.
Inbound links still are one of the most important factors of Google’s ranking algorithm. You need to attract as many high-quality links to your pages through the use of link building tactics to rank them for your given keywords.
There are many link building techniques you can use. The best one, however, is creating great content. Yes, I know “great content” can be a thrilling set of words these days. After all, 76% of B2B marketers blog. Yet, as you may already know, most of them don’t get any results. That’s why you need to create content that makes people want to link to it and share it.
To create high-quality content, you could use the typical deductive reasoning most marketers use, which consists of:

• Coming up with an idea.
• Create it.
• Promote it hoping people will care.

As a growth hacker, you can do better. Instead of spraying and praying, you can deduce that the content that’s likely to perform best is the one that has already performed well before.
In other words, if a piece of content got a lot of shares and inbound links, it means people find that article (and the topic it covers) interesting. If you recreated that article, you could easily get the same results the original one got. You could also change the content type and create an infographic, ebook, video, or podcast based on the topic idea of the successful article you found.
In order to find the content that has performed well in your industry, you need to reverse engineer your competitors. To do that, you need to define some features of what makes a piece of content successful. There are many attributes you can select, from a number of comments to social shares to inbound links. The last two, however, are the most important ones.
In 2015, Shareaholic found that social media is the largest driver of all referral traffic. As of December 2014, 31.24% of all referral traffic came from social media. That means your social shares can help you bring more referral traffic to your site.
What’s more, according to BuzzSumo, longer content can help get the most shares, with 3000-10000 word pieces getting the most average shares (8859 total average shares).



On the other hand, inbound links are one of the largest drivers of organic traffic. A joint-study made by Brian Dean and Eric Van Buskirk found that “the number of domains linking to a page correlated with rankings more than any other factor”.



The best tools that can help you reverse engineer your competitors are BuzzSumo and Ahrefs. The former is a competitor intelligence tool that will help you find what articles got the most shares on five different social media channels: Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest, and Google Plus. The latter is an SEO tool that can help you find keywords, analyze your competitor’s backlinks, among other things.
Let’s say you work for a non-profit that focuses on providing shelter to stray dogs and cats in the United States. Your goal is to bring awareness to your cause. In order to achieve that goal, you would need to create share and link-worthy content that drives traffic to your site.
The first thing you would need to do is head to BuzzSumo and input some keywords related to your organization’s cause. In this case, I used the keyword “animal shelter”:



The top articles shared related to that topic were about the emotional news: cops adopting stray dogs, an animal shelter that celebrates having adopted all their animals, and so on. They are all histories that are surprising, sweet, and most importantly, emotional.
There may be a pattern of success here: people like reading stories that provide good news and bring a smile to their faces. People want emotional stories.
This may not mean emotional stories will necessary give you more traffic, but at the least, there may be a correlation between both variables. This is a good enough pattern for you to come up with a hypothesis and a test.
You could repeat that process with keywords like “stray dogs”, “abandoned cats”, and other related ones to make sure you see the same pattern. I would recommend you to analyze at least 10 articles in your industry and see what people like sharing. From there, keep looking for patterns and define what specific attributes could be driving those shares.
After you are done with BuzzSumo, repeat the same process with Ahrefs. Instead of using keywords, like the ones you used in BuzzSumo, you want to take the articles you analyzed and see how many backlinks each one got. Since a link requires a larger investment than a share, we can assume that an article that gets many inbound links is highly valuable in its industry.
First, go to Ahrefs and put one of the most shared links in the search box:



Then you will see the list of results, with the total number of backlinks, the number of domains pointing to the page, how much organic traffic that page gets, and much more.

There’s no right or wrong set of results you are looking for. Rather, you are looking to get a feel for the article and compare that with the other results.
In this case, the article got over 350 backlinks, which is a high amount of links for a page like that. This means the article is popular in its industry. You would need to repeat that for the other 5-10 results for the keyword “animal shelter” and the other related keywords to see if the other ones are better or worse. Then, based on what you find, you can decide which articles are the most successful both share and link-wise.
Once you are done with the social and links analysis, you will have a good idea of:

• What topics people like in your industry.
• What attributes those articles had that made people want to share and link to them.
• What attributes your articles need to have to, at the least, match the quality of those articles.

You can’t just recreate what worked before and hope that will work again, however. You need to bring value to the table. Once you find a topic idea that has worked in the past, you will make it better and promote it to the same people that shared the original one. That way, you are guaranteed an audience who will likely want to hear from you and will link to your piece of content.
If an article used a happy emotional story, like the examples shown before, you know you will have to feature stories in your articles. But you could also add some statistics to back your idea better, so the contrast between the happy story and the reality impact your readers even more. You could also show pictures of the subjects being featured in the story.
Peep Laja, the conversion expert and founder of ConversionXL, got 100k visitors in his first year thanks to finding a gap, using research-backed data, and optimizing for shares and links. In other words, he followed a similar number of steps as the one I’ve just shown you and he got those incredible results.
In his own words:

The secret of success is doing something that others are not willing to do for a long, long time.

Once you have finished developing your article, you will need to grab the list of people that shared and linked to the other articles and reach out to them.
In the case of a share, you can send that person a direct message or email. I prefer the latter, which despite being more time-consuming, can be more effective and personal.
Reaching out to people who shared an article, however, can be hit-or-miss. Many people share articles automatically, without even reading them, so the likelihood of them remembering the article you refer to, and the fact they even care makes this outreach a bit less effective.
Outreaching to people who linked to a similar article, on the other hand, can be much better. Not to mention the fact that finding a blog’s manager email is much easier than the previous case. In most cases, you will find the email right on the site itself, on the Contact page.
In the case that you can’t find the manager’s email, you will have to do the following. Grab the site’s URL and paste it in Hunter.io.



Before doing anything else, you have to have the blog’s manager name at hand. If you don’t know it, take the time to find it. In most cases, it won’t take you more than 5 minutes checking the About Us and Contact pages. Once you have it, add it in the search box that says “Find Someone..”.



In this case, the confidence level is not large enough, so go to Email Checker, and add that email into the search box.


Now we have the email, we need to send an email letting the blog manager know about the new article. The following email template can help you do that:
Hi NAME,
I just stumbled upon your post at SITE and it caught my attention the fact you linked to this amazing guide on TOPIC.
I recently wrote a more in-depth article on the same topic you might find interesting.
Here’s the link: LINK.
Would love to know your opinion on that article. And if you’ll find it useful, please consider linking to it from that post of yours, or perhaps mentioning it in your future writing.
Cheers,
Ivan
This process can take some time to execute in its entirety, but if done properly, can help you land high-quality inbound links for your content. And this will help you increase your organic traffic.

Hack #2: How to get more social shares

Despite not driving as much traffic as organic search, having a social presence can help you bring consistent traffic that complements the organic one.
But how do you get more social traffic? Having a social sharing plugin installed and a well-functioning Facebook and Twitter presence is a good start, but it won’t be enough. That is too deductive. “People share content if they are given the chance”. Nice theory. But will that alone make people share your content? Not really.
People don’t share content because it’s easy to do so. If that was true, you could put random “Like” buttons around your content and people would share your content. There’s a different reason why people share anything, and it’s not related to any plugin.
Jonah Berger, author of Contagious: Why Things Catch On, explains there are six psychological attributes behind viral content:

• Social currency: Sharable information that makes us look good holds social currency.
• Triggers: By Berger’s definition, a “trigger” is something that is easy to remember about a product or idea, helping to ensure it stays top of mind.
• Emotion: If a piece of content touches one of our core emotions, like sadness or mercy, we share.
• Public: If something is public, it can be shared.
• Practical Value: People share what’s useful and relevant.
• Stories: People are inherent storytellers, and all great brands also learn to tell stories. Information travels under the guise of idle chatter.

There’s no denying that if you want to get more social shares for your content, it needs to have as many of these six attributes as possible. The more it has, the more likely it will become “viral”.
However, this article isn’t about theory. Remember, this article is about doing what works. There are two main ways you can make your content more viral-worthy.
Have you ever read an article and found a small box that featured a quote from that article and a link that said: “Click to Tweet”? That’s exactly what you need to use.
The “Click to Tweet” is a simple plugin you can add to your content which can help you increase the social currency of the reader, give them a trigger for them to share while helping them make it public and giving practical value to their friends, all at the same time. Also, you make it easier for them to share right in the article itself.



The key to a successful “Click to Tweet” isn’t just adding a random or promotional quote, like “This article is awesome! Check it out: URL” What social currency would the reader get if he or she shared that? Rather, what you need to do is add a soundbite, something memorable, short, and a bit mysterious that will help you give as much value as possible while making people want to know more.
For example, a good “Click to Tweet” for this article would be one that said: “Marketers think deductively, growth hackers think inductively”. It gives a lot of value while being a bit mysterious, which will make the reader’s followers want to click to read more.
There are a number of WordPress plugins you can use to add a “Click to Tweet” to your content, my favorite being the one developed by CoSchedule.
The second hack to get more social shares is even simpler than the previous one. It’s so simple that I will go ahead and tell you right away: when creating content, use images. I’m not talking about stock photos. I’m not talking about random photos of nature either. I’m talking about custom-made graphics and images that give your content more context, more relevancy, and a more pleasurable reading experience.
Why images? you may be wondering. To start, 37% of marketers said visual marketing was the most important form of content for their business. Not only that, but images can help your readers remember your content better while getting more retweets and likes. In other words, it’s a win-win for both parties.
The easiest kind of image you should use is screenshots. They give a lot of context and help visualize what you explain. Some other custom images you could create for your content are:

• Quotes from the article
• Summary of an idea or concept
• Graphical representation of an idea

Make sure to get a designer to help you create these images, and in the case you can’t or don’t have one, use a tool like Canva.

Hack #3: How to get leads with high-conversion lead magnets

Throughout this article, you have learned about how to attract traffic with SEO and social media. Content marketing isn’t just about traffic, however. As you learned at the beginning of this article, content marketing can also help you attract leads and convert them into customers.
The question then becomes, how do you convert your visitors into leads? There are many ways you can convince a lead to become a customer, but there’s only one effective way to convert a visitor into a lead: lead magnets.
Lead magnets are pieces of content that you offer to your visitors in exchange for their emails. Once you do that, you can begin to “nurture” them until they become customers. Some examples of lead magnets are:

• Ebooks
• Webinars
• Checklists
• Templates
• Reports

DebtHelper, a non-profit credit counseling company, offers a “Free Budget Spreadsheet” to their readers. This is perfect for their audience, as they are in need of help regarding their expenditures. Giving something relevant and useful to them is likely to make them convert at a higher rate.



The way most content marketers approach lead magnets is, as usual, deductive:

• They define what people like.
• They create the lead magnet.
• They offer it hoping to get them to convert.

If you are lucky or smart, like the people of DebtHelper, you may convert a decent amount of visitors into leads. But you can’t do business hoping to succeed. As a growth hacker, you only play to win.
The way a growth hacker creates a lead magnet is by repeating the same process as in the first hack: you reverse engineer what’s already working. In other words, you find something that people already like, you create a lead magnet, you offer it. Simple, powerful, and effective.
There are two ways you can find high-performance ideas for your lead magnets:

• You can analyze what has worked on your own site and then you create a lead magnet based on what you find.
• You can analyze what has worked for your competitors and then you create a lead magnet based on what you find.

The first way to find lead magnet ideas is the most effective, as you are giving your visitors what they already like. This will also make the content creation process much easier for you because you will need to expand on what you have already developed before. That’s a big time and money-saver.
To get started, go to your Google Analytics account. Once you are in there, go to Behavior > Site Content > All Pages.

In there, take a look at all the articles that got the most traffic and lowest bounce rate. You can even see which ones have the highest page value if that’s something you already track. The most popular articles, based on the metrics previously mentioned, are the ones you should consider expanding to create a lead magnet.



The second way mentioned, similar to the one explained in hack #1, will repeat the same process as before. You will have to go to BuzzSumo, add your competitors’ URLs, and analyze their most shared articles. Then you will repeat the process with Ahrefs and see which pieces of content got the most inbound links. From there, you need to analyze and see what topics are the most popular. Take notes, look for patterns, and start creating your lead magnet.
Just like it happened with the images, you should get a professional designer to help you out with your lead magnet creation. The other option is to use Beacon, a tool that can help you create resource pages, checklists, ebooks, and more.

Wrap up

If you have been a marketer all your life, this article may seem a bit odd and counterintuitive. You’ve been thinking deductively all your life, focusing on theory and certainty.
This article showed you there’s another way of thinking about marketing. It’s a way that focuses on reality and uncertainty. You focus on what works. You focus on what your visitors and customers tell you. You double-down on what succeeds and discard the rest.
That’s how growth hackers think. That’s how they act.
Now it’s your turn to take the leap and start thinking like a growth hacker. Even if you still want to respect the theory behind your actions, this new way of thinking will help you grow faster.


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6 design tips to make your email newsletter visually appealing

Many businesses rely on email newsletters to build customer relationships and keep their companies top of mind with their audiences. A well-executed newsletter is a powerful email tool with multiple benefits, which is why it’s crucial to ensure your newsletter design is visually appealing. If it looks good, readers are more likely to click.

To help you start, we’ve created a list of six design tips to make your email newsletter visually appealing.

1. Create a header

No question, your newsletter needs a header. It’s the equivalent of a magazine, newspaper or website name. It sits at the very top of your newsletter and should include the newsletter title (if you have one), your company name and your logo.

Fortunately, there are online DIY tools to help you with your headers, such as Stencil or Pixlr. With these programs, you don’t need any graphic design experience to create and save graphics to your computer. Just create your header once, and use it again and again.

Here are a couple of examples:

2. Let your logo dictate color scheme

Your newsletter needs a color scheme. Because your logo is part of your header, consider using its colors throughout your email newsletter as font colors, borders or other elements. After all, your logo’s colors should already be the color palette for your entire branding.

3. Stick to standard fonts

When selecting fonts for your newsletter, the top priority is legibility. Stick with basic fonts like Times New Roman, Helvetica or Arial. Refrain from using several different fonts in one newsletter: Too many fonts together gives a cluttered, disorganized look that can easily distract the reader. Pick one or, at the most, two fonts for your entire newsletter — and consider sticking with them for each newsletter you create.

4. Use subheadings

Your newsletter should have several different pieces of content that are broken up by subheadings. It should look a lot like a newspaper. The subheadings should be in one of the clear fonts that you selected. The size of the subheadings should be smaller than what’s used in your header, but larger than the text you use for articles. Here’s an example from a real estate broker’s newsletter to her readership:

5. Stack content

If you’re using a newsletter template through an email service provider like VerticalResponse, you’ll be able to add content easily. For a layout that looks good to readers and scrolls smoothly on mobile devices, stack your content.

Here’s an example from the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco:

6. Use pictures

A well-designed email is a good balance of text and images. When a recipient opens your email, images instantly grab his or her attention. By adding a few pictures, you pull in your reader and enhance the effectiveness of your message at the same time.

When you create your next newsletter, add pictures that are easy to snap with your digital camera. For example, take a picture of an employee that you plan to highlight or grab a shot of your newest product to include in the next edition. Here’s an example from San Francisco Bay Area-based The Spanish Table:



Of course, some businesses don’t have a lot of photo-worthy opportunities. An online magazine that sells monthly subscriptions, for example, might not have a lot to take pictures of. If you’re in the same position, use simple graphics, or consider buying stock images from sites like iStock to incorporate into your newsletter.

When you’re creating your next email newsletter, remember that you want it to grab your readers’ attention. A clean, organized layout that makes it easy for the reader to digest your content is the best way to do that. Use these six tips to spruce up your design, increase readability and create an email newsletter that your audience looks forward to receiving.


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Six Tips to Avoid the Dreadful Gmail Promotional Tab

THE Gmail “Promotional Tab.”

To an email marketer, it’s almost as bad as landing in a spam or junk mail box. But, here’s the good news: it’s not AS bad. Statistically, your emails will still get read and clicked on, just expect a decrease in interaction.

Let’s start here, because first of all, you have to determine the moment you started seeing your emails end up in the folder.

It’s time to “fight your way” out of the promotional tab… with WORDS! And it can be done, I’ve seen it done over and over (including with my own emails).

So use this as a guide. It’s not the 100% definite way to remove yourself from the promotional tab, but if you follow these 6 guidelines, you’ll have a better chance of going back to the primary tab in gmail.

Here are the main reasons why you could end up in promo:

1. Set Templates and Signatures

I know they look nice. The same format every time, the same look.

Guess who else does this? Large companies like Apple or Facebook. Why? Because it’s the corporate look.

If you own a company that requires this type of branding, then the promotional box will most likely be your home.

2. Big “Company or Keywords”

Just to list a few: Google, Facebook, Bing, Yahoo, Twitter, and Youtube… all these are “authority” key words. Avoid them. Try to be creative.

Here’s some creative ways to avoid it:

Google = The Big G or The Largest Search Engine in the World

Facebook = FB or The largest social media platform or

YouTube = YT or Th Tube or something that is more vague

3. Google for SEO

Copy and pasting no longer works in email marketing.

Think about this… you are promoting a product that probably 100-200, or maybe 500 affiliates are promoting.

10% of them copy and paste and based on 500, that’s 50 people who just copy and paste the “email” and hit send.

Gmail sees 50 people with an average list of 2,500… that means 1,250,000 million emails get sent out with the SAME exact email copy!

What do you think your chances of hitting the promotional or spam box are?

They just GREATLY increased!

4. Pictures and Images

They HAVE to be unique.

With the recent release of Google and Image Search, every image is now scrubbed through Google’s system when you send an email. If the image is considered a stock image or non-unique it’ll increase your Promotional Tab chances!

5. Symbols or Formatting

We’ve been taught that symbols are great!!! If I use the RIGHT exclamation points with tons of question marks with bolding and highlighting, people will pay more attention right?

Well… Gmail finds it as obnoxious as I do if you use too many. Here are a few examples:

==> Click Here

Check this out!!!

Are you READY????

FIND OUT MORE HERE!

Make $215 a day!!

6. Email Curse Words

You know the words, I’ve made a great post here about them!

You really need to stop using them as much as possible, because… first – it’s going to first land you in the promotional box… then – most likely in the spam box!

You get the point, if it looks “spammy,” it’s going to affect your delivery. Think before you use it!

Now these 6 tips aren’t the MUST DO’s… as if you have a strong enough interaction, I can do all 6 of these and still maintain presence in the primary inbox. But chances are you don’t… as most people don’t. I’ve even seen Facebook end up in my spam box!

So take these tips as general knowledge and apply them to your email marketing – it’s good practice either way.

Oh and these things ALSO apply to subject lines as well, not just the body.

I hope this helps!  Take a minute and let me know what your favorite tip was or what your best “AH HA” moment was from this list!

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