Jan 19, 2021 | Blog
Google confirms a core algorithm update, the December 2020 Core Update, which rolled out on December 3. This is the third core algorithm update of the calendar year. A fair amount of time has passed since the last core update, compared to the average time between these types of updates. The last core update rolled out on what the internet refers to as “Star Wars Day,” also known as May 4th.
It’s likely the pandemic delayed the rollout of Google’s next core update. As more time than usual has passed, could that mean the impact of today’s update will be more impactful? We won’t know the answer to that today, or even tomorrow, as the rollout process of a core update can take weeks.
Background Information on Core Updates
Unsurprisingly, the immediate response from the SEO community to the announcement of this core update is anxiety and panic. Though brushing up on the basics of core updates may help quell some of the concern. That’s especially true for sites negatively impacted by previous core updates. With a new core update, Google will reassess how content should rank following changes made to the site since the last update.
Sites that have been diligently working toward improving their rankings may see a reversal of fortunes, so to speak. On the other hand, sites that have not made a concerted effort to optimise their content may see results reflective of that effort.
One thing that’s certain is there will be a noticeable impact. Broad core updates are designed to produce widely noticeable effects across search results in all countries in all languages. Sites will inevitably notice drops or gains in search rankings when a core update rolls out. Changes in search rankings, either positive or negative, are indicative of content relevancy.
If content has become more relevant since the last core update, then it’s likely to be moved higher up in rankings. The opposite is also true. Adding more depth to a piece of content is an effective way to send signals to Google about how relevant it is for particular queries.
Content may also end up being seen as more relevant if there’s a general shift in search interest toward a particular topic. For example, content about business meetings may be seen as more relevant now if they’re geared toward remote working. Then there’s newly published content that didn’t exist at the time of the last update. New content all has to be reassessed against previously existing content.
To be sure, rankings can move around quite a bit over the coming weeks.
Source: searchenginejournal.com
Jan 15, 2021 | Blog
It’s the end of the year and it’s the holiday season. It’s the time when store and business owners get busy with their year-end sale and trying to get the word out.
It is a good move to get your business in the holiday sales earlier than expected. It’s not too early to start having a big sale because most shoppers are researching and planning for gift ideas as early as November. It’s no doubt that the searches for “gift ideas” on Google have been skyrocketing since October and continue peaking in December. So what can you make out of this detail? Implement the gift guide strategy.
What exactly is a gift guide? If you have never heard or seen one before, a gift guide is an article that comes in a form of a list of things that caters to a certain topic or category. A relevant example for this holiday season would be Christmas Gift Guides. Perhaps you have seen other gift guides with other focus or theme, but never really noticed the role it plays in marketing. This is how subtle a gift guide can help boost your online store sales.
A gift guide is curated to give the readers an idea of what gifts to purchase based on the relationship with them, special occasions, shared interest, or the age. They are usually featured in an online magazine, blogs or just any websites with relatively high traffic.
Here are a few examples of gift guides topics:
Based on the relationship –
-17 Ideal Gifts to Get for Your Sister
-10 Items You Never Knew You and Your Significant Other Needed
-8 Gifts to Get for Your Long-Term Boyfriend
-30 Thoughtful Gifts for Your BFF
Based on special occasions –
-25 Gift Ideas for Mother’s Day
-18 Things You Should Get This Father’s Day
-10 Ideas to Celebrate Your Anniversary
Based on shared interests –
-19 Gift Ideas for Plant Lovers
-10 Things Every Pet Owner Need
-7 Places All Coffee Lovers Should Visit
-9 Things New Mothers Need To Own
Gift guides are curated in such a way it will get people reading. Readers know immediately that these articles are easy and fast reading material that is neatly listed out for them to scroll through. If you have read gift guides, you noticed it got your attention and some of the items listed on the guide do appeal to you which made you click on the link provided.
Also, most of the items you see on the gift guides are items you have not seen or heard of before. This is because gift guides are curated in such a way to actually promote new businesses and products for brands. If your online business is relatively new or if you have a certain product you want to promote, you can have them featured in a gift guide.
“Gift guides usually offer a high return on investment for your time. If you’re featured, you’ll get in front of new, targeted shoppers with high intent to purchase, all for a few minutes spent writing a compelling pitch. Relatively unique or niche products do especially well in most gift guides.”
– Corey Ferreira
A gift guide marketing is subtle and does not look desperate because your product is being placed together with relevant and similar products on the list. And people who clicked to read the gift guide often times are people who show an interest in that particular category. If your product is targeted to pet owners, it will be in a gift guide that perhaps has a title like “10 Things Every Dog Parent Can’t Live Without”. The focus is so niched because it is targeted to dog owners. Your product will be featured amongst the other 9 items in the list and the chances of it receiving more exposure are very high.
That being said, you need to find the right outlet to get your product listed and featured in a gift guide. Outlets like blogs and online magazines are the ideal ones but it is important that the outlet you picked gives promising results. It has to be a high traffic and popular blog or magazine amongst the readers.
You can easily reach out to these websites or writers/bloggers to help curate a gift guide for your product. Perhaps you can have them add your brand or product in one of their lists of gift guides and give your brand a head start on your holiday sales. You will need the contact information for the person who runs the blogs or online magazine. You can usually find them on the “Contact Us” page.
Send them a personal email telling them that you like what they wrote on their blog or online magazine and you are putting up a holiday sale on your website and would like to engage them to write about it if they are planning on doing another gift guide. You can send them samples if you’d like them to try them on and don’t forget to include your website in your email for them to check it out. Don’t be shy to follow up with them if you have not heard back from them.
It may take a bit of time and effort to engage with the blogs and online magazine to get your brand featured, but the outcome and result will not disappoint you. It is a great way to get your brand known to the public and might also bring in repeat customers because you have targeted the niche market that will be interested in your products.
If you do not know whom to engage or reach out to for gift guides, Weave Asia is more than pleased to help you with this service. At Weave Asia, we do not just provide digital marketing services, but we also personalize solutions for your online marketing needs. Feel free to contact us via phone at +60 088-718 418 or email us at hello@weave.asia.
Jan 15, 2021 | Blog
It’s a new year, and your business deserves some loving and lots of likes, especially on its Instagram account. You may think that Instagram followers are not important and do not affect your business, this is where you’re wrong. Instagram followers are not just your potential customers and loyal fans of your brand they are also the ones that determine the “legitimacy” of your brand.
When someone visits your Instagram account and sees that you only have a couple of hundred followers, it leaves an impression that your business is somewhat amateurish and not “there” yet. Here are some tips on getting more followers on your Instagram that you may find handy.
1. Post Quality Content
The most important element of getting people to follow you is the things you post on your social media account. On Instagram, people scroll on their feed pretty quickly. If the content you post is not attractive or appealing, your followers will start to lose interest and might unfollow you. Post relevant content that fits your brand. Start taking pictures of your product and you can edit them to look more aesthetically pleasing. Check out our Tips to New Update on Instagram to learn how to use Instagram’s new features such as Reels, Shop, and Guide Features.
2. Consistency
Once you get a grasp of what content to post, keep it going. We understand that you may not have so many contents to post on a daily basis. However, be sure to post at least 3-4 times a week to remind your followers that you exist. The best way to plan your social media content is to plan ahead. Prepare at least 2-3 weeks ahead and schedule your postings. That way you won’t forget to post and your audience remembers your existence. When you don’t post often and your followers notice it, they might unfollow your account, resulting in you losing more followers than gaining more.
3. Use hashtags
Never underestimate the power of hashtags. What is the purpose of a hashtag? Hashtagging your photos makes it easier for people to find your photos if they’re searching for that specific hashtag. For example, if you are a florist and you use the hashtag #flowers or #florist, people who are looking for a florist or simply want to look at flowers will stumble upon your picture. This gives more exposure to your Instagram account and gains more followers.
You can also include general and popular hashtags on your picture to be discovered by the public. Here are some of the most popular hashtags that you can incorporate:
#love (1,271,692,015)
#instagood (742,795,562)
#photooftheday (507,358,504)
#fashion (487,010,088)
#beautiful (463,668,566)
#happy (427,528,663)
#cute (418,686,470)
#like4like (417,887,839)
#tbt (413,049,020)
#followme (392,011,012)
4. Post at the right times
You can get a lot of great insight from Instagram Analytics for Business accounts for free, under the Followers section. In order to reach that section, make sure your Instagram account is switched to a Business Profile. Switching to this not only gives you access to insight but also more relevant features for your brand Instagram account.
In the Followers section, you can see what time your audience is most active. This is when the post scheduling comes in handy. You can automatically publish your post when your audience is most active and engaging.
You can also schedule your Instagram post using Later.com.
5. Invest a little to gain some
First of all, if you have a great post published, try spending it on the ads. Boost a really good post and reach out to relevant demographics. Your post will show up as a sponsored post on the audience’s timeline and if it stood out to them, it will convince them to visit your Instagram page.
Another way you can also get more followers would be collaborating with an influencer. Engage with an influencer that will bring your brand’s attention to audiences that will be interested in your products. For example, if you sell beauty products, you want to work with a beauty guru.
Reach out to influencers with a high engagement rate, ones with a lot of likes and comments on their posts. Send them an email and inquire about their sponsored post pricing. Send them some of your products and have them try and review on their Instagram. This is a more natural way to get engagement and followers from these followers.
There are many other ways and methods you can explore to get more followers. If you need more advice on growing followers on your Instagram, feel free to contact us via phone at +60 088-718 418 or email us at hello@weave.asia.
Jan 8, 2021 | Blog
Starting a new brand is never easy especially if you’re doing it alone with no help. The more connections you have the better you get to sell your product because they help spread the product through word of mouth. But what about driving traffic to your website? How do you get more potential customers to buy products from a new brand? People tend to believe in a product when they see reviews and results. This is where bloggers step in to help with start-up businesses and new brands.
It gets you thinking, how does a certain someone help with driving traffic and sales to your company? Isn’t that the same as a salesperson? Why not hire more salesperson instead? Continue reading on to find out how bloggers will help you grow your business.
Get Bloggers To Do Product Reviews
As mentioned earlier, you can gain a buyer’s interest and trust by showing them reviews and results. Buyers are more convinced when they see a new product being reviewed and tested out before they decide on buying it. Get in touch with a blogger to get started on promoting your brand. Send them your brand products and have them try them and do a thorough review. That goes without saying that you are expected to send your brand products to them for free. Some bloggers might charge a fee for their reviews, some don’t. However, it is practical to do a little research on which blogger to reach out to and engage with. Definitely get bloggers who are specific in certain topics, that way you get to reach out to the audience who are interested in your brand and product.
Guest Feature Writer on Blogs
If you can write contents that are interesting and draw attention, make full use of it. However, where do you publish these engaging content that will definitely get a lot of reads from potential customers? Your own website blog of course, but your new website might not get as much traffic drive as a relevant and established blog that has its pool of readers. Be a guest writer on these popular blogs! Look for blogs that have a significant number of followers and the type of audience you want to reach out to. Request if you can post your content on their blogs to drive traffic to your website. Back-linking is a terrific way to drive the audience to your website blog as well. Make sure your content topic is relevant to both the guest blog and also your brand.
Seek Advice From Experts
It’s no problem if you are not good at coming up with content topics, you can always seek help from experts. Get someone who is a well-known expert in topics that relate to your brand and products. These are the people who are knowledgeable and confident in writing the content of the topics. If you are stuck and have no idea on what topics to cover, seek advice from these experts to contribute ideas, story, or tips to your blog post. These experts might also share your posts on their own blogs, contributing to more reach from their own readers.
Get Listed In Gift Guides Or Listings
You have definitely gone on Google to search for a gift idea for your friend, spouse or parents when you were out of ideas. Your search results most likely bring you to blog pages. When you go on blogs like BuzzFeed or Upworthy, you see tons of articles with topics like “15 Budget-Friendly Gifts for Mother’s Day” or “10 Items You Never Knew You Needed” and whatnot, and these are the kind of articles that get your attention and you’d click to read. Well, why not get included in such articles? Reach out to bloggers who are likely and usually write articles like that and convince them to feature your product in one of their gift guides or list articles. It low-key and subtly gives your brand an exposure which will get potential customers to click on the back-link to get your website or research for your brand to see what it can offer.
Get Bloggers To Promote Your Product
Bloggers nowadays do not just sit around and write blog posts. They do so much more than that. Bloggers are getting more creative and original when it comes to creating content- post interesting photos, shoot videos, do polls and so much more. Go through your social media platform, see who you follow and check out their content. What you may not notice right away are the indirect ways they did product placement for some brands. This is because they curate their content so well that it somehow caught your eye on certain things without being too obvious. Engage with bloggers that have a significant amount of engaging followers and get them to promote your brand in their own creative ways!
Now that we’ve shared with you the ways and benefits bloggers can help your business grow, start doing some research and see which blogger is best for your brand promoting. It will be a fun research as well because it’s just like going through your social media feed and choose what is interesting to you. You won’t even feel it’s a chore or work! If you don’t know how to, watch this space! Next week we will be sharing how to reach out to these bloggers for a successful campaign!
Dec 11, 2020 | Blog
What is Facebook Ads & How to Use Them?
Whenever you scroll on your Facebook timeline, you will definitely see an ad or two popping up in the middle of your scrolling. Often times you will see different types of Facebook Ads by various businesses and brands. What are the different types of Facebook Ad Formats available?
There are a few Facebook ad formats that you can choose from depending on your goal and focus.
Photo
Photo ads are the most basic and simple ones you can use to portray your brand’s product and give out quick and strong impressions of what you do. Although we say it’s the most basic and simple ad out of all the other Facebook ad formats, a study shows that Photo Ads outperformed other ad formats in driving traffic. What’s great about Photo Ads is that you can easily create an ad in a matter of minutes or seconds by publishing a high-quality photo to your Facebook Page, and boosting the post with the photo. It’s that simple and fast. Photo ads are ideal if your company or brand has a tangible product and you want to specifically promote this product. It helps create awareness, engagement and reach to your product and brand.
How to create a great photo ad on Facebook
-Less text: Less is more. This phrase fits like a jigsaw when it comes to creating an effective photo ad. When there is too much text on your image, it is distracting and can result to your ad being shown to far lesser people. If you must add a text to your image, make sure that it is only 20% of the entire image.
Focus point: When we mention that too much is feeble, we don’t just say it because we think so. It is proven by Facebook itself that when your ad only focuses on one thing, it does not distract the entire point of your image. Hence, you have to make sure that your photo is powerful and meaningful enough to tell a story of its own. Draw the attention to a focus of the photo. A simple photo of your product being placed and captured properly is enough to catch the attention of your potential customers.
High-quality images: That goes without saying, your photo has to be high in resolution. This doesn’t mean you have to splurge on an expensive camera to take good quality images. Just make sure the size and the quality of your photos are within your preference and especially meeting the Facebook Ads criteria. Nobody likes to look at distorted and low-quality photos that are blurry and pixelated, so just make sure you pick the best one out of the many shots attempted.
I think a simple rule of business is, if you do the things that are easier first, then you can actually make a lot of progress.
-Mark Zuckerberg
Video
If you’ve never thought of using videos as part of your ads, it is time to consider and start practicing. A video ad tells so much more story of your product or brand with added features of sight, sounds, and motion. Ever caught yourself actually watching through an entire video of an ad on Facebook? Video ads can be as short as a few seconds or even up to minutes long.
Shorter videos have higher completion, which means the audience is more likely to watch the entire video from the start to the end. However, longer videos allow you to share more messages and information. If you think that videos are an extra bonus, it’s time to change your conception on them. Video ads are no longer an option to advertise your brand or product, in fact, it is becoming more crucial and fundamental. Consumers are more likely to pay extra attention towards video content than text content.
Why? Because people like to see visuals, things that move and make sounds. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a long video to get their attention, a simple GIF can actually work wonders too. GIF or short video ads are more likely to capture short bursts of attention in feed, which means the audience would stop their scrolling to look at the short video or GIF for a good few seconds. This is enough to leave an impression in their heads, or even better, catch their interest.
It’s very important for a video to be able to capture the attention of an audience within the first three seconds. So, make sure that all your message is conveyed in your 15-second video. Include important messages that you want your audience to pay attention to that will leave an impact.
Video ads need to be designed for sound off but still enchant with sound on. Most of the time people scroll through their Facebook feed expecting no sudden sound popping out because it can be distracting and inconsiderate to their surroundings. Make sure your video still delivers important key points without sound on, or better, include captions in your videos so audience still knows what story your video tells without having to turn their sound on.
Carousel
This is similar to the Photo Ads, but even more to offer. Carousel ads allow you to post up to 10 photos or videos in one single ad. This favors you to display different products that you would like to highlight simultaneously. With this, it increases the chances of the audience to click on the link as the swipe through the carousel images.
Other than that, you can actually tell a story with carousel ads. With the swiping, it’s almost as though the audience is reading a comic strip, which will keep them engaged to your ad.
Slideshow
Slideshow ads are like a combination of photo and video ads. Photos are displayed with motion, sound and text together to develop a story. The good thing about Slideshow ads is they load really quickly even with a poor connection. Slideshow ads are so easy to create as you can just use stock images in the ad creation process or an existing video.
Slideshow ads can be done quickly and easily with low production cost. It’s easy because ready stock images can be used on your ad according to your preference. You can also choose from a variety of free music available to make your slideshow ad more appealing.
As mentioned, slideshow ads use five times lesser data than videos. This means that an audience with a low or poor internet connection can still view your ads without any disruption.
Many a small thing been made large by the right kind of advertising.
-Mark Twain
These are the few Facebook ad formats that you can use to create awareness for your business and brand. It can be overwhelming and indecisive to pick which ad format that suits your business. It doesn’t take one attempt to identify which one is the best, although it could be a few formats too! As you constantly start using ads, you will get a gist of it and identify which format best helps your brand promotion. It is essential for you to find the best format to help with your marketing goals and strategy.
What do you think of Facebook ads? Do they work? Which format gives you the best reach?
Contact us if you need more help for your Facebook Marketing!
Dec 10, 2020 | Blog
In this modern day era, almost everyone owns a social media account. People of all ages own at least one social media account, whether it is Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter or so forth. A 9-year-old kid could even have more followers than what you have. Heck, even grandparents nowadays use social media to keep in touch with their friends and family.
Owning multiple social media accounts might get a bit too vexing and troublesome, especially if you’re handling more than just one account on each social media platform. How do you manage your social media accounts, especially your business accounts? Social media for businesses and brands is used to engage with your fans and followers, as it works as a platform to reach out to your followers, make an announcement, send out a message, and many more ways.
However, it could be a hassle if you have to manage multiple accounts and at the same time, you want to keep your social media accounts active and up to date to keep your followers’ attention glued to your business.
Plan ahead
In order to get consistency in your posting on social media, you should get a heads up and plan at least a month ahead of schedule. This is when a content calendar comes in handy. Discuss with your team on what kind of contents you want to create. Your content may also include promoting a new product, hosting a giveaway contest, making announcements of future events your company is holding, or just ask questions to get your followers to respond to you.
Consistency and efficiency
Now that you have your content calendar ready, you’re excited to post them all, aren’t you? But before you start posting on your social media recklessly and disorderly, check on your stats and analytics first. You want to check on when your followers are usually online and which days of the week are your followers most active on social media. Here’s how:
On your Facebook Page:
Go to Insights.
On the left tab, click “Posts”.
You’ll be able to retrieve information on what days all your Facebook followers are most active and even what time. There will also be information on which type of posts are more popular amongst your followers.
On your Instagram Business account:
Go to Insights, it is the icon with 4 straight lines on the top right.
Go to Audience and scroll down.
On the Followers tab, you’ll see what are the hours your followers are on
Instagram.
Switch to Days to see which day of the week your followers is most active on.
With this information, you will be able to determine when to post and how often you want to post on your social media accounts. Remember, consistency with great content is vital, but frequently posting irrelevant content that does not attract your followers’ attention will be depicted as annoying resulting in followers clicking the “Unlike” or “Unfollow” button.
Hashtags
Before social media, the symbol # was called the pound sign. Today, kids will laugh at you for calling it the pound sign because it is now widely accepted as a “hashtag”. The # symbol is so powerful now and heavily used everywhere, especially on social media.
Hashtags are essential when you’re using social media platforms such as Instagram and Twitter. If you still live in the 90s era and have no idea what a hashtag does, allow us to briefly explain it.
Placing a hashtag before a word or a group of words will create a searchable link on the social media platform. Other users who also use the hashtag will be able to search for similar content or organizations or topics related to the said hashtag. To simplify, if you post a picture of flowers on Instagram and you #flowers, and when you click on the hashtag, you will see every picture that has the same hashtag.
So how are the hashtags important to your social media accounts?
-Hashtags help to get your content seen to the public in social media
-Create your own brand’s hashtags to personalize specifically for only your brand.
-With hashtags, searching for a topic or content is made simpler as hashtags pull together all posts using that hashtag.
So the next time you want to post on your Instagram or Twitter, do a little homework and look for relevant hashtags that are significant to your content.
Schedule your posts
Now that you have all the information and ideas on what to post and when to post, you can set ahead of your posting.
With Facebook, you can schedule your posting accordingly.
- On your Facebook Page, go to Publishing Tools.
- On the left tab, hit Scheduled Posts.
- Go to Create and start scheduling your contents.
We’re lucky to have such a convenient feature on Facebook, unfortunately, Instagram does not have such feature yet. However, there are third-party apps that could ease your hassle.
Apps such as Hootsuite and Later allows you to add up to multiple Instagram accounts. From there you can start scheduling your Instagram posts based on your preferred day and time.
We hope these tips will assist you and your business to further grow and evolve especially in the digital marketing world. Try out these tips and sit back and relax while watching your social media accounts thrive and sprout.
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