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8 Tips to Writing Captivating Social Media Captions

Did you know that the shelf life of a Facebook post is only 5 hours and a Twitter post is even shorter, ranging from 15 to 20 minutes? After that your content will be drowned out by newer and more exciting content. Therefore, it is important that you have captivating social media posts that will continue to generate interest even after its shelf life. Insignificant as it seems, a good social media caption has the power to attract, engage, and convert fans.

Yet captions are often overlooked by brands and businesses.

If you take advantage of this powerful tool today, you can level up your online presence and win your audience over. 

In this article, we will go over the practical tips you can use to write captivating social media captions that transform.

Social media captions 101

Before we get technical, we need to understand the basic rules of social media captions 

Check your grammar and spelling

Always double check your post before posting. Even though grammar rules are much looser on social media and you have more freedom to play with words and spelling, a good caption should be easy to read. Various grammar and spelling errors can throw your audience off  and hinder their attention to the message you are trying to get across.

Keep it simple

It’s important to keep in mind that our audience has a lot of information to absorb in their daily life and especially on social media. So make sure you don’t bombard them with a surplus of information in one caption. Keep your captions simple and be intentional with your message, which we will get to in a bit.

Mind the word count

The number of character limit is different on each platform:

  • Instagram 2,200
  • Facebook 63,206
  • Twitter 280
  • LinkedIn Company Update: 700
  • Tiktok: 140 characters

Get close and personal

Long gone the day where social media content sounds robotic or a research paper. As common as third person usage, captions can be written in first person to create a sense of closeness to your audience. 

Now that we have covered the basis of how social media captions should be, let’s get into the keys to captivating social media captions.

1. Know your audience

The key to success for many brands on social media is to attract the right audience. Learning and understanding your target audience can help you create relevant and valuable content and grow a strong audience base. 

Determine the demographics of your customers such as age, gender, and location by asking what they do, where they live, and what social platforms they are on. If you are targeting a niche market and its audience, It is also important to find out what their interests are and what topics they mostly talk about so you can tailor their content to serve them. 

Social listening can help you discover what your target audience is talking about. Without social monitoring, businesses usually exercise their effort aimlessly and are more likely to fail to make any return on their investment.

2. Set you intention for each post

“What do you want to achieve with this post?” is the question you should ask before creating your caption that helps you achieve your purpose. 

Some common intents for content marketing are:

Increase brand awareness

You will need to utilize your brand elements such as voice, personality and brand philosophy in your captions, so that your audience can get to know your brand.

Drive traffic to your website

Your post can include a piece of your website content and a call to action to redirect traffic to your website or elements that induce a sense of urgency such as 

  • Use our discount code before x date
  • Place an order today and receive x
  • Visit our website for more information

For more tips on how to increase website traffic, check out

“How to Get Traffic to Your Website – What’s Working NOW”

Sell a product or service

You will need to include a link and product description if this is your outcome. Give as much information as possible including sizes, colors, materials, and delivery time.

Engage your audience

If this is the case, then you will need to use language that resonates with your audience and make reference to topics that they are interested in.

You don’t need to strategize every post, but you need to have an outcome for them.

3. Write the important stuff first

As important as a headline of a website or an article is, the first line of your caption should immediately captivate your audience’s attention and make them want to continue reading.

That is partly to grab short attention spans but also to avoid your important text disappearing below the “Read More” cut off.

The maximum character count for an Instagram caption is 2,200 characters, but after 3-4 lines, your text is cut off. The same happens on Facebook and Linkedin plus Twitter, which only allows 280 characters. So, on Twitter additional text would need to be added as additional tweets on the thread.

So state what your audience will get out of your social media post on every platform and elaborate on them through your post. The point is to make sure your message comes across in the first line. Take a look at this social media post by the skincare brand, Then I Met You.

social media caption

They hook you in with the announcement of your latest product and create a sense of urgency to get it before it’s gone. Then they go into the attributes of this product in a moderate length just enough to get their followers excited. 

4. Make it legible

Legibility is extremely important in creating a great user experience. It is important to understand that a legible caption doesn’t mean a short one. If you were to have a longer caption, make sure to break it into smaller and more digestible bullet points.

In addition, you can use emoji to separate ideas and draw your audience’s attention to the message. They add fun to captions for all industries and stop the eye mid-scroll.

The post below by Kilig Candle co. is a great example of a legible and well-sectioned caption:

social media caption

By incorporating relevant emojis into their long caption, Kilig Candle co. managed to emphasize the benefits of coconut-wax candles over other types of wax and encourage conversation over this topic. This leads to our next tip to captivating captions.

5. Encourage conversation

The more people engage with your post, the longer its shelf life is prolonged. Engagement is usually measured by the amount of likes, comments and action that a post generates. Besides captivating graphics, your caption is a great way to engage your audience by posing questions that encourage them to respond.

If you want to evoke interest in your product or service, you can present a related fact that not a lot of people know about or share your personal experience on a relevant topic and ask for theirs. People love sharing their opinions and are even more willing to share when asked. That’s why user-generated content is increasingly popular nowadays.

6. Align with your brand personality

Brand social media accounts tend to have some personality. For some, it’s professional and informative and for others, it’s witty and humorous. 

If you already have a brand voice established for your overall marketing strategy, you can extend that to social media with a tailored approach by social platforms. 

Captions should share the same voice and tone guide, which should embody the brand persona, personality traits and vocabulary. 

For example, McDonald’s tone is well known to be quirky and fun, so their graphics and captions are usually short and casual, sometimes with abbreviations and usually in lowercase letters. 

social media caption

On the other hand, Red Bull stands out as an exciting brand, loud and clear. With their extreme sports events and crazy stunts, Red Bull comes across as fun-loving and fearless. And their captions reflect this.

social media caption

Overall, though the tone and voice of each brand vary on social media, the language is generally more casual than that of websites and professional platforms like LinkedIn.

7. Align it with the medium

In order for social media to have an impact and reach your desired target audience, your brand needs to be on the right social media platforms. Each social media platform serves a different purpose and people who log in to these platforms use each of them in different ways.

By understanding the nature of each platform, you can better tailor your caption accordingly. For example, since Instagram is more visual-oriented, your caption should be tied to the graphic and explain what the visual means. 

As for Facebook, users engage with the platform for a number of reasons, from picture viewing to review reading, information collection to product selling and much more. For that reason, the captions you create for Facebook should gear toward those purposes. 

8. Don’t forget hashtags

Hashtags are great for connecting users around a particular subject, sparking virality around a launch or sale, and raising awareness for important issues.  They’re an increasingly important part of a caption.

Attaching relevant hashtags to your post will help increase your exposure and chances of getting discovered by new audiences. All of these factors are needed to beat the Instagram algorithm. 

PRO tips: In order to get the rights hashtags for your post, type “#” with specific keywords in the search bar or in your caption and Instagram will reveal to you relevant hashtags ranking from most popular to least popular.

Now you know the tricks to writing engaging social media captions that will eventually help you grow a strong audience base and increase brand awareness. Caption is an important factor of a winning social media strategy. In order to build a strong online presence and reach more potential customers, captions should go hand in hand with high-quality content and good social media management. Check out our other insights and news on social media to stay up-to-date.

Want to take the next step in advancing your social media in no time? Contact Advesa on how we can help you do so.

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What is Niche Market? Definition and How to Find One

One of the most ever intriguing questions of any generation is “would you rather be a generalist or a specialist?” While a generalist can do everything decently, a specialist does one thing extremely well. The same dilemma holds true when you’re a small business owner. Should one cater to a large market or a niche market?

A niche market refers to a segment of a larger market that caters to a specific group of consumers with unique needs and preferences. Unlike mass markets, which aim to appeal to a wide range of consumers, niche markets focus on serving a specific and well-defined segment of the population. 

From your unique value proposition, positioning yourself as the go-to brand for a specific audience within your niche market will help you establish brand credibility over competing generalists and build a loyal customer base. In this article, we will delve into the world of niche markets, exploring what they are, how you can identify a niche market you can master and that has a viable audience of customers and how to market to it. 

What is a niche market?

A niche market is a market segment within a broader market that can be defined and segmented by needs, interests, geography or other identities. something that sets it apart from the rest of the market as a whole.

For example, within the food and beverage (F&B) market, there are many different market segments or niches. Fat-free beverages can be a niche market. 

Choosing to focus on a niche market means that the business will serve a certain target group, at which point the business will have more advantages than competitors who are targeting large markets.

Niche business examples

Here are some examples of niche businesses:

  1. Specialty food stores: A store that specializes in selling a particular type of food, such as gluten-free or imported organic products.
  2. Pet grooming services: A business that provides grooming services for dogs only, such as bathing, clipping, and styling.
  3. Handmade crafts: A business that sells handmade items such as jewelry, clothing, or home decor.
  4. Eco-friendly products: A business that specializes in selling environmentally-friendly products such as reusable bags, biodegradable cleaning products, and sustainable clothing.
  5. Fitness studios: A business that offers specialized workout classes such as yoga, Pilates, or kickboxing.
  6. Outdoor gear: A business that sells specialized outdoor gear such as camping equipment, backpacks, and hiking boots.
  7. Artisanal products: A business that sells unique, handcrafted products such as soap, candles, or pottery.
  8. Vintage and retro products: A business that sells vintage and retro items such as clothing, furniture, or home decor.

How to identify your niche market

Choosing a niche gives your online business a competitive edge from the get-go. Even when you have already established a business, narrowing down your target market can help you stand out in a crowded product category or market and increase your brand exposure. Here are step by step methods for identifying your niche market:

Step 1: Reflect on your unique selling points

A Unique Selling Proposition, often called a USP, is the “x-factor” that makes your business stand out from the competition. Your product or business model’s defining feature or features is the distinct advantage you have over other businesses that provide similar products or services. 

For example, fashion and apparel is not a niche market. It is an industry or a large market. A segment of that market could be “customizable clothing for plus size women”. A compelling Unique Selling Proposition considers what your audience cares about and what your brand has to offer to help solve their pain points.

Reflecting on your unique selling points (USPs) can help you differentiate yourself from others and identify your strengths. To do this, follow these steps:

  1. Write down your skills and qualities: Make a list of your skills, experiences, and personal qualities that you feel are unique to you.
  2. Analyze your experiences: Think about the experiences and projects you have worked on and highlight any achievements or areas where you have excelled.
  3. Get feedback from others: Ask family, friends, colleagues, or mentors for their perspective on your strengths and how they see you differentiating yourself from others.
  4. Evaluate market demand: Consider what the market or industry you want to work in values and look for opportunities to highlight your USPs in a way that resonates with your target audience.
  5. Refine your list: Based on the information you have gathered, refine your list of USPs to focus on the strengths that are most relevant and unique to you.
  6. Use your USPs in your personal branding: Once you have identified your USPs, make sure to incorporate them into your personal branding and marketing materials, such as your resume, LinkedIn profile, and cover letters.

Following the steps above will help you identify your core strengths. This allows you to build a niche market idea you already love. 

Step 2: Specify your target audience

At this opening, you need to clearly define background information such as who you want to do business with or cooperate with, who to sell to, or what type of business (model) you are aiming for. You need to be specific about the portrait of the target customer groups that you will serve them.

If you look at the market, you will find that there is rarely a product that is “for everyone”.

Also, because you’re building an outreach strategy for a niche market – a narrowed down market–your target audience’s portrait needs to be specific.

For example, instead of choosing your target group as Gen Z, you need to detail a Gen Z audience, such as their gender, income, location, spending habits etc.

Conducting market research will help you determine the buying behaviours and challenges of customers. 

Step 3: Research the competition

Knowing who you will be up against will help you better prepare and equip yourself when you enter a niche market. The best way to start brainstorming niche ideas is by understanding what other online retailers are selling in a product category or to a certain audience. 

Starting your niche selection with Google Trends is a great way to get the lay of the land. What’s best is that this tool is completely free and therefore it is an ideal place to get started on your research.

Let’s say “waterproof shoes” from the footwear market. A competitive research tool like Google Trends helps you know how frequently people search for this term.

As you can see below, the interest in the term has been rising steadily for the past 5 years in Canada.

niche market

With this data, you can get an idea of market size and demand.

Some other free tools you can use are:

Use these tools to explore the best-selling products consumers are researching and see if your new business can meet their needs.

Step 4: Define your niche product and service

If you’re dedicating your resources and time to a small or medium business, it should have the ability to become profitable and sustainable. Overall, markets can be segmented into different niches or segments according to needs and preferences. You can identify your niche products based on:

  • Price (high, moderate, cheap): Do you want to sell luxury items or will you price them moderately?
  • Demographics (gender, age, income level, education level): What’s their age range, education, and income level?
  • Quality level (premium, handmade, economical): Is your product handmade, eco-friendly, or premium?
  • Psychology (values, preferences, attitudes): Are you targeting vegans, environmental enthusiasts, travelers, or sports lovers?
  • Geography (residents of a country, city or even neighboring regions): Where is your target audience? Are they in a certain country or region?

After doing competitor research, you will have a better understanding of how much your product and service should be priced in order to stand out to your target market. It’s important to understand your customer value in order to know your competitive edge. 

Resources like Amazon (for products), G2 (for software), agency directories (for services), and PRICEFY.IO (for price monitoring) are helpful in evaluating competitor pricing and determining prices for your products and services. 

Step 5: Test your product or service

Once you have identified a niche market for your business and what you can offer, it is time to bring your product or service to market. You can implement a soft launch or offer a free trial to see how much your target audience is interested in your product or service. This initial test period should not cost a large amount of money. However, you can certainly use paid ads to drive traffic to your website to increase awareness and exposure. 

If the test does not generate the result you desire, don’t scratch the whole idea. You can alway go back to the previous steps and identify areas of improvement to better target your niche market. 

Why targeting niche market is preferred over targeting mass market

In such a large and crowded mass market, products or services tend to become commoditized in terms of usage and features.

In the context of economics, a product is considered a common good when consumers do not care who produces them because they are essentially the same in terms of use, purpose and many other product features.

Take for example coffee, rice or pepper, which have been common commodities for decades until some businesses or competitors realize that their customers have more needs instead of the mindset that “coffee is coffee”.

In this context, finding a new niche market or a segment in which customers are still not well met their (basic) needs is a very wise strategy that businesses can consider.

While the number of customers in that niche may be less, the business will be less competitive and may find it easier to become a market leader through differentiated products.

Related to this strategy, when it comes to SEO activities. If you can find relevant (usually long-tail) keywords that most other websites aren’t already using, you have more ways to tank on top of search engines and get discovered by your target customers. 

Carving out a niche market and catering to it can help your business grow sustainably with increased brand trust and customer loyalty. Once you have established yourself in your target market, it’s important to utilize different marketing strategies to communicate and nurture your relationships with your customer base and stay up to date with market trends and insights in order to stay relevant. 

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How to Get Traffic to Your Website — What’s Working NOW

In today’s world, having a website is one of the most important steps toward small businesses’ success. It is the foundation that allows you to build your online presence and grow your business even in times of economic uncertainty.

An effective website is one that generates regular traffic and converts visitors into customers. Therefore, increasing website traffic equates to increasing the number of potential customers. So if you don’t see enough traffic to your website, the following strategies will help you see an improvement in the number of visitors to your site in no time.

1. Invest in building website content

Good and relevant content makes it easier for search engines to understand what your website is about and for users to find it when they search for related keywords and phrases. Visitors are more likely to stay on your website longer, which increases the likelihood of conversions, when the content is engaging and high quality.

So what is considered engaging content?

They are pieces of content that are helpful to your potential customers, in a sense that they can help them achieve a goal, solve a pain point or simply entertain them. Your content can involve but is not limited to:

  • Product and service education, thorough answers to frequently-asked-questions 
  • Guides to help customers solve a problem or pain point
  • Exclusive content that only you can offer to your customers

The easiest way to deliver content is to have a blog so you can consistently deliver in-depth, well-informed information on your site. Businesses that blog get 55% more traffic to their website than businesses that don’t blog. 

Focus your resources on topics that your audience will always find interesting. Over time, these evergreen posts will attract traffic and links, especially if you update them regularly (more on that later). Therefore, create engaging content that focuses on thriving to retain users.

TIPs: It pays to set a schedule to update your blog content regularly to make sure all your information is relevant and up-to-date. For more information on this, check out “The Beginner Guide to Content Marketing in 2023”

2. Maximize Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

All of the aforementioned strategies won’t work if your target audience can’t find you on search engines. Content marketing needs to be coupled with SEO strategies to reach your potential customers. 

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) helps your website rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) for relevant keywords and phrases. This higher ranking leads to increased visibility and, as a result, more organic traffic to your website. For small businesses, investing in local SEO is a plus in order to reach more local customers. 

According to Google, 71% of traffic from Google click on the results on the first page. Therefore, it is extremely important to rank on page 1 of Google 

Here are key SEO tips that will help you level up your ranking:

Keyword research – focus on long-tail keywords

how to increase website traffic
Comparision in volume between two similar keywords

People look for content related to their topics of interest by entering words and phrases into search engines, and as you might expect, some terms are searched for more often than others. 

For example, you can see that the phrase “how to increase website engagement” only gets about 10 searches per month, while the keyword “how to increase website website” gets 300 searches.

Traffic is likely to increase with search volume. Many extremely popular keywords are also extremely broad and difficult to rank for (for example, “website” has 143,000 searches per month). On the other hand, long tail keywords rank simpler and will drive the most targeted traffic to your website.

TIPs: Keyword research needs ideas and goals. Therefore, you should use research tools such as Keyword Planner, Keyword Surfer, etc. to develop a set of strategies and get to know how to rank high for each keyword.

Put your keywords in important places

The foundation of on-page SEO is optimizing your content so that search engines can recognize its topic and rank it in the appropriate queries. Make sure your target keywords appear in the following places:

  • Name tag (Meta title)
  • Title 1
  • Two or more H2 headings
  • The first 100 words
  • Alt text and caption of images
  • Meta description
On-page SEO keyword placement

TIPs: Place the featured keyword at the beginning of the Meta title, no longer than 60 characters, and mention a benefit or value you can offer to your audience.

Make use of internal links

When creating and publishing content, be sure to add at least 1-3 internal links to other pages on your site to that page to increase traffic to those pages, this will:

  • Keep users on your site longer.
  • Encourage them to view more pages.
  • Allow them to get more value from your site.
  • All these actions will improve your ranking and increase traffic to your website.

Speed ​​up page loading on Desktop and Mobile

Have you ever waited for a web page to load for thirty seconds? Now your bounce rate will be quite high if your site takes a long time to load. With improved page experience, speed is now much more important as a ranking criterion. 

Make sure that all parts of your pages, including image file sizes, page layout, and the operation of third-party plugins, are as technically optimized as possible. Better yet, the faster your site loads, the longer people stay on it. 

Website speed test is evaluated by Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool, which will also make recommendations to improve your Core Web Strength and other factors.

Today, mobile devices get more traffic than desktops, so forcing users to pinch and scroll to navigate your site will drive them away. Even if your website is simple, you still need to make sure it can be viewed easily and conveniently on a wide range of devices, including smaller smartphones.

3. Increase website traffic with social media

Referrals to your website are one of the advantages of social media marketing. Here are some strategies for using these sizable platforms to drive visitors to your website. 

Creating high-quality and relevant content is also a way to increase website traffic but hoping that people will find it is not enough. It’s helpful to promote your content on the social media platforms where your audience uses most often. While Google My Business posts can help your site appear in local search results, Twitter is best for quick, concise, and engaging links. 

Not only will this help increase traffic to your site, but the more people read your content, the more likely you are to get the previously mentioned backlinks. Here are some social media tips to have under your wings to attract traffic from social media to your website. The last tip is extremely effective, yet not a lot of people and businesses are taking advantage of it. 

Make use of viral marketing

In Featured and Why? by Rand Fishkin, he emphasizes the importance of producing “resources” for future target topics as well as potential customers. These amplifiers include:

  • Industry information, such as news sources, blogs from famous brands, and social media influencers.
  • Influencers outside your area, such as media journalists and social media influencers.
  • Customers who use and recommend you, including your brand advocates anf key opinion leaders (KOL), who are clients with large networks and followings.

Use social sharing buttons

This is a simple win for website traffic. With just a few clicks, readers can quickly share the content they are reading with their social networks using social sharing buttons – how to increase organic website traffic to help grow your site sustainably .

If you want to be more specific, you can also look at your social media stats to determine the hours of the day and days of the week when your audience is most active and then share the link to your blog posts at times. Start by looking at the overall average best time, then explore the data to make adjustments.

Post original content on LinkedIn

You should regularly post your own blog article links or written content on LinkedIn, as it is the largest professional social network and valuable publishing platform. This way, you can improve your website traffic, drive more people to your LinkedIn’s company page, and level up your profile in your niche. Furthermore, there is no need to start from scratch; simply reflect on a current issue or reuse previously published material.

Although this strategy is more ideal for B2B business, B2C businesses can benefit from it to network with leaders and influencers in their communities to to build a strong backlink system for your business’s website. 

Level up your website, up your business revenue

If you have a website that is up and running, all the strategies mentioned above will help you see an improvement in your site traffic in a short time. If you don’t have a website yet for your business yet, then we need to talk!

You can completely create or optimize your own websites. However, for small to medium-sized businesses with limited resources and time, it is extremely helpful to consult marketing and website experts to help build and maintain a SEO-standard websites and generate good traffic

Do not hesitate, contact Advesa now to create or optimize a website with the best foundation for your business.

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What is CDAP? Everything You Need to Know about the Canadian Digital Adoption Program

The Canadian Digital Adoption Program (CDAP) is a government-led initiative aimed at increasing the digital literacy and competitiveness of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Canada. Launched in 2020, the program is designed to support businesses as they adopt and integrate digital technologies into their operations

CDAP offers a range of services and resources to small and medium businesses, including:

  1. Digital assessments: CDAP provides a free, personalized digital assessment to help businesses understand their current level of digital maturity and identify areas for improvement.
  2. Training and support: CDAP offers a variety of training and support services, including online courses, workshops, and one-on-one coaching sessions. These resources are designed to help SMEs develop the skills they need to effectively implement and use digital technologies.
  3. Funding and financing: CDAP provides funding and financing opportunities to SMEs to help them invest in digital technologies and infrastructure. This includes grants, loans, and tax credits.
  4. Networking and collaboration: CDAP facilitates collaboration and networking opportunities between SMEs, government agencies, and other organizations. This helps businesses learn from one another and access new markets and business opportunities.
  5. Industry-specific resources: CDAP provides industry-specific resources and support to help businesses in sectors such as manufacturing, retail, and technology adopt and integrate digital technologies.

The CDAP program is designed to help SMEs stay competitive in an increasingly digital economy. By providing businesses with the resources and support they need to adopt and effectively use digital technologies, CDAP is helping businesses to improve sales and marketing efforts. 

Eligibility

The CDAP program is designed to help SMEs stay competitive in an increasingly digital economy. By providing businesses with the resources and support they need to adopt and effectively use digital technologies, CDAP is helping businesses to improve sales and marketing efforts. 

To participate in CDAP, businesses must meet certain eligibility criteria, including being a small or medium-sized enterprise with a presence in Canada. The Government of Canada has outlined four mandatory criteria for eligible applicants to apply for The Boost Your Business Technology grant:

  • Incorporated at the national or provincial level; or be a Canadian resident sole proprietor.
  • Privately-owned for-profit entity
  • Maximum full-time employees of less than 500
  • Not more than 100 million or less than 500,000 in revenue in the last 3 tax years.

This program consists of two grant streams as following:

Boost your Business Technology Grant

This stream is for SMEs with $500,000.00 or more in gross revenues during any one of the previous three tax years. With this grant, you will have the resources to hire and work with an accredited digital advisor to help you craft a tailored digital plan. 

Grow Your Business Online Program

This stream is for SMEs with less than $500,000.00 in revenue. It provides such applicants with a “micro-grant” of $2,400.00 to help cover costs relating to the adoption of digital technologies. This stream does not provide any additional funding to cover the cost of developing a Digital Action Plan”.

Interested businesses can apply for the program by visiting the CDAP website and filling out an application form here

As long as you meet the requirements, there’s a good chance you’ll get approved for the Canadian Digital Adoption Program, which can have a massively positive impact on your business going forward. If you need help with your application process or have further questions on this digital grant application, feel free to contact Advesa.

Not eligible for CDAP or you want to explore further options for financial support? Check out Small Business Grants You Might Be Eligible For

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Why Google and Meta Do Not Have Their Own AI like ChatGPT

The AI Specialist, Yan LeCun, at Meta stated that ChatGPT is overrated, and they don’t release such similar AI-driven tools because there might be more losses than gains. 

It’s not that Google and Meta are not capable of rolling out their own ChatGPT. They are indeed thinking long-term and cautiously, said Yann LeCun in the online webinar on AI last week. In 2019, LeCun won the Turing award, an annual prize given by the Association for Computing Machinery for contributions of lasting and major technical importance to computer science. He’s currently a professor at New York University and the Chief AI Scientist for Meta AI Research. 

ChatGPT is an AI-powered language processing model developed by OpenAI, which is said to be the market leader in generative AI. ChatGPT has taken the world by storm ever since its release in late November, 2022. Lecun, however, begs to differ

“It’s nothing revolutionary, although that’s the way it’s perceived in the public,” said LeCun. “It’s just that, you know, it’s well put together, it’s nicely done.” 

Such data-driven AI systems have been built in the past by many companies and research labs, said LeCun. The idea of OpenAI being alone in its type of work is inaccurate, he said

ChatGPT uses Transformer architectures that are pre-trained in this self-supervised manner Transformer is an invention published by Google in 2017, which then becomes the basis of a vast array of language programs, including GPT-3, the predecessor of GPT-3.5 – the technology behind ChatGPT. The work of such language programs goes back decades, said LeCun. 

chatGPT

OpenAI’s program has, moreover, made extensive use of a technique called reinforcement learning through human feedback (RLHF), which gets human agents to help rank output of the machine in order to improve it, much like Google’s Page Rank for the web. That approach was pioneered not at OpenAI, but at Google’s DeepMind unit, he said. 

Even with Large Language models (LLMs), such solutions like ChatGPT are only beneficial as a writing assistant; it is not advanced enough to serve as a search engine. The RLHF framework might help minimizing but not completely eliminating common errors by AI.

According to Digital Trends, Google and Meta have long ago utilized AI in identifying misleading information or programming it into search engines. However, their concern is the extent to which AI is used in interacting with their audiences. In particular, Meta usually receives backlash in facilitating the spread of fake news. Therefore, the application of AI-powered language models might cause big tech companies more disaster if not managed properly and cautiously. 

Besides its popular functions and advantages, ChatGPT generates certain concerns for its limit. Thanks to how popular it’s become, the AI text generator ChatGPT has often been “at capacity” recently, meaning frustratingly long waits. In addition, Lecun explained on his own Twitter that Google, Meta and other tech giants are reluctant to release their own AI program for public use, since such systems are also capable of creating toxic content such as fake news, hate speeches, etc. 

Lecun also revealed that Meta’s upcoming AI will have the ability to design graphics and ads to meet ever-increasing advertising needs. 

“There’s something like 12 million shops that advertise on Facebook, and most of them are mom and pop shops, and they just don’t have the resources to design a new, nicely designed ad,” observed LeCun. “So for them, generative art could help a lot.”

With this upcoming invention, Meta will be able to help small businesses promote themselves by automatically producing media that promote a brand and business, he offered. 

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Why Your Lead Magnet Isn’t Working — & How to Fix It!

Are you struggling to get people to download your email opt-in or lead magnet?

Getting your lead magnet to work well is quite a common barrier for new small business owners who haven’t had to market a business before. And it feels so frustrating, right?

You’re doing everything you think you should be doing to grow your email list. But no matter how hard you try, you can’t quite get the results you were hoping for. And building an email list of qualified leads feels like it’s virtually impossible!

What if we tell you it is possible to fix your lead magnets with a few tweaks and attract the clients you desire? In this article, we will go over the most common lead magnet mistakes and how to fix them to help you attract more leads and dream clients.

What is a lead magnet?

A lead magnet is a marketing term for a free item or service that is given away for the purpose of gathering contact details. For example, lead magnets can be trial subscriptions, samples, white papers, e-newsletters, and free consultations. 

So what is it used for? When your customers want to access the lead magnet, they need to provide the information to you. This information is what your company needs to be able to attract potential customers. However, your lead magnet should be useful enough for your potential customers to exchange their information. 

Lead magnet exists to generated leads for your business and increase your customer conversion rate. The trick here is that you have to use a lead magnet that hits their pain point, solving the problem they are having. With that being said, here is the first common mistake people make with lead magnets:

Your opt-in isn’t click-worthy enough

There’s so much content on the internet these days that your piece of content must capture your audience’s attention right away in order for them to pause and click. 

What is the first thing that draws them to an article or a post? Of course, it is its headline. A catchy opt-in title is essential if you want people to download your lead magnet. 

Check out “Homepage Headline Makeovers: 3 Simple Formulas That Sell”

It is advisable to use sales words and triggers that will catch the eye of your target market as they are scrolling away through their online feed. 

There are a few standard techniques you can use to enhance your title and make it more click-worthy, including:

  • Using numbers
  • Adding more emotive words
  • Including words to describe your target market

Your offer is not what you potential consumers are looking for

If you want people to download your lead magnet, it needs to be relevant and valuable. 

The purpose of creating valuable content is to answer questions and satisfy the needs of customers looking for information about a certain area that they are interested in. The satisfaction of customers when they get the information they want through the content you provide will create the cohesion and trust that customers have for the brand. This is also a factor that helps retain customers, indirectly promoting conversion in their buyer’s journey, thereby boosting sales for businesses.

So one of the most effective types of lead magnets addresses a pain point or problem that your target market commonly has.It needs to be a specific pain point and one that can be solved relatively quickly and give your potential client a quick win.

When you help your potential client, it will assist you with building trust and credibility, which

It’s too promotional

16% of consumers are upset by promotional content about something they have purchased. Consider the types of content you serve to both customers and non-customers. From a content strategy perspective; consider it a best practice to avoid publishing too many explicit promotional content and ads to potential customers.

When people opt-in to download a lead magnet, they’re looking for quick wins and fixes.

They aren’t looking for information that will solve all the pain points in their entire life or business. Sometimes we feel like we must give lots and lots of information to make something feel more valuable and to convert customers. But the reality is that it’s making things more confusing, overwhelming, and complicated for our clients.

So, what should you do instead? Focus on creating a specific lead magnet or email opt-in.

If you have a pain point in mind that you are creating a lead magnet to help someone address, consider the first step in solving that pain point.

That’s where you’ll want to focus when it comes to your lead magnet content. If you give your potential client a quick win with something specific and easy, then you will stand out from your competition.

Lack of exposure and traffic

If you have done all of the things mentioned above but still generate minimal results from your lead magnet, it could most likely be because you are distributing them at all the wrong time and places.

To determine effective delivery strategy, you need to understand your customer journey in order to determine what content you need and where to distribute them. 

The customer journey simulates the process of a customer going from the stage of knowing nothing about your product/service to becoming a loyal customer supporting your business. What type of hearing will depend on their receiving stage, and where delivery will be based on the touch points on each stage.

For example, during the awareness stage, the target customer recognizes the problem and needs to find a solution. However, sometimes they are only vaguely aware, not knowing exactly what the real problem that needs to be solved.

For this file, you can produce hearing types to provide information, knowledge around their problem so that they clearly define the problem.

Based on the target customer’s journey in the awareness stage, you can distribute your hearing on search engines, social networks, media partners, etc. If the budget is large, you can invest in advertising reports and hiring KOLs to increase reach. 

Your opt-in is not connected to your offered services

The whole point of lead magnet is to attract the right types of customers and build a relationship from there, moving them from someone who doesn’t know who you are and doesn’t know they need your service to a perfect customer who is ready to work with you or buy from you.

Therefore your lead magnet should align with what it is you offer and charge for. In many cases, it is showing them how to DIY a really simple version of what you can offer them. For example, if you are a trucking delivery company, you can produce content to teach people how to handle and deliver different types of produce. When they have more problems that arise and struggle to handle them on their own, they will think of you and your services because they trust that you have the expertise and capability to help them. 

Attract your target customers with proper lead magnet

Don’t get frustrated if your lead magnets aren’t working! Whatever the issue, know that it can be fixed. The key is to figure out what is causing your lead magnet to fail and then addressing the issue at the root of the problem. Maybe you are not getting the kind of exposure that you need or are not creating the suitable content. It is important to write content that your target customers are interested in and create the customer experience that serves them.  

Take a close look at your lead magnet, your strategy, and see if you can identify where the issue is. Go through the items listed above to make sure that you have addressed each one and made the changes if needed. Make some adjustments and test your results to see if there is a change. Rest assured you will see improvement almost immediately.

Remember lead magnet is only a factor in your marketing plan. The next step is to check out “5 Marketing Strategies During Inflation and Imminent Recession”

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What Will the Blockchain Market Look Like in 2023?

Experts predict that Web3 will be a factor to help develop blockchain games, NFTs, DAOs, and even help end the crypto winter.

2022 is considered a challenging year in the blockchain field, when a series of leading projects like Luna or FTX collapse. However, experts say that traditional companies that adopt Web3 can help end the “winter” earlier, while blockchain games will promote cryptocurrency popularity.

There is optimism

“In 2022, I have seen a number of Web2 companies accept payments in cryptocurrencies, as well as integrate an innovative form of blockchain like NFT into the service. This trend will continue, as more people become aware of blockchain,” Alex Onufriychuk, leader of Corite, a blockchain-based music crowdfunding platform, told Forkast.

According to Onufriychuk, the key to the “crypto summer” – the period of recovery and acceleration of cryptocurrencies – is the mass adoption of Web3 applications by traditional Web2 companies. “As this transition accelerates, interface design and intuitive experiences will come into focus, serving more users,” he predicts.

Slava Demchuk, CEO of blockchain company AMLBot, thinks that decentralized finance (DeFi) will have practical applications for traditional banking. “Integrating DeFi protocols into the back end of the traditional banking system is necessary to provide customers with a more attractive and reliable alternative to current financial services,” said Demchuk. .

Meanwhile, Yat Siu, Co-Founder and President of Animoca Brands, predicts gaming will be the factor that will help expand blockchain culture this year, mainly through NFTs. The world of 2023 and early 2024 will see a wave of high-quality blockchain games hit the market, adopted by millions. This makes blockchain widely accepted.

According to Randy Wasinger, founder and CEO of data aggregator NFT CryptoSlam, the game development platform will not be Ethereum, but rather Polygon or another more powerful blockchain. The game will attract Asian users first, then Africa, Europe, and South America.

As for Gary Liu, founder and CEO of Artifact Labs, the future NFT is not merely a speculative asset, something that users buy in the hope of an increase in price over time. According to him, it is the next piece of the Internet trend, applied in more fields in the future.

Concerns about the crypto winter

Contrary to the above optimistic view, some experts believe that the winter of cryptocurrencies may last for another year.

“I think 2023 will be the cold period for cryptocurrencies. During the year, this market continues to be subdued, it will take at least two years to recover,” said Alex Au, founder of asset management firm Alphalex Capital in Hong Kong, told Nikkei Asia.

According to Au, most investors will wait for a recession. They choose to store digital assets in “cold wallets”, spending the rest of the money in other areas during the economic downturn. “The market can freeze for long periods of time,” Au said.

Meanwhile, Annabelle Huang of financial firm Amber Group thinks the cryptocurrency market will be “clinically dead” this year. “Everybody was panicking and didn’t know where to trade. They were just waiting for things to settle down,” she predicted.

After a period of growth, blockchain companies have laid off employees and tightened spending. Meanwhile, some governments have also moved to tighten control. Thailand recently restricted the approval of digital asset trading licenses to exchanges. In October, Singapore proposed rules banning credit lines from funding cryptocurrency purchases.

However, some think that this is also an opportunity to buy into digital currencies. According to financial services firm Matrixport, when the price of this currency is low, up to 80% of individuals holding a lot of cash and 70% of family offices in some Asian regions are looking to buy into the cryptocurrency. and wait for price increase.

“Our research shows that nearly half of investors see digital assets as the trend of the future. Their interest in the currency remains high, even as the crypto winter rolls on. harsh,” said Eugene Lim, head of private wealth management at Matrix Port.

If you find this article helpful, don’t forget to check out our other insights.

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Digital Marketing Trends in 2023

In today’s constantly changing world, businesses must always find ways to adapt to innovations and take advantage of opportunities to reach customers quickly and efficiently. 

That means it’s more important for brands to be transparent and think about their messaging and research or tweak their strategy in the coming year. It also means that marketers need to know the trends coming down the line so they can plan and take advantage of any new developments. 

To help you kick 2023 off with a bang, we’ve identified the most notable digital marketing trends in 2023 you should prepare your business for:

1. Brand communication has ideals and spreads good values

When consumers were polled about the messages they would like to receive from their favorite brands, the results showed: 47% said they would prefer motivational messages, which is slightly lower than the 57% that said they want content that is entertaining. 

In addition, 36% of customers also expect brands to take meaningful action in addressing social issues such as inequality and poverty. At the same time, 24% of consumers prefer brands that have nothing to do with politics.

So the question here is, what should marketers and brands do with such a split? To win the hearts of consumers, in 2023, when implementing activities, brands should know how to balance between addressing the most important problems in the world and infusing humor into their marketing and social content.

Check out “The Beginner’s Guide to Content Marketing in 2023”

“In an uncertain world where consumers are increasingly concerned with the value aspect, while also mercilessly punishing mistakes made by brands, brands that have clear purposes and objectives can win the race” – Tom Knox, president of IPA once shared.

Also according to recent Deloitte labor market surveys, Gen Z and Millennials share that they don’t want to stick with brands that don’t have a lofty purpose or aren’t inspiring.

In 2023, marketers need to focus on building a strong, impressive and engaging brand image. It takes a lot more time and resources to create a reliable and distinct brand image. 

2. Personalized brand interactions

For brand marketing, it is no longer appropriate to send generic mass messages to millions of customers. Personalized marketing is the new way to win a place in the hearts of consumers.

Therefore, methods such as Conversational Marketing, AI application, and machine learning into the omnichannel customer interaction process are something businesses should not miss.

One user was “scouring” Amazon for Olive green running shoes but left the search halfway. Shortly after, Amazon sent this email:

Personalized shopping recommendations
Amazon's personalized feed

To create this powerful recommendation, Amazon has access to data points such as customer’s full name, search queries, average time spent searching, past purchase history, catalog browsing habits, past purchase time, average spending amounts, etc and thereby create a recommendation email system that goes beyond personalization.

Compared to other e-commerce brands, conversions from Amazon’s onsite recommendations are 60% higher.

In 2023, there’s going to be a shift in mindset from technical-based marketing to anticipation marketing. This will enable marketers to anticipate what customers want and then feed it into automation processes. 

This new mindset will now only make things more efficient but will enable personalization, which is highly favored by Gen Z and Millennial consumers. This applies to platforms like Google Ads and also seems to be where Facebook and other social channels are heading.

3. Mobile Optimization

Since the pandemic, most companies have been looking for ways to optimize their apps for mobile devices. It is worth noting that more than half of online website traffic comes from mobile devices. Also, Millennials and Gen Z purchasing power is growing, so mobile-optimized experiences are skyrocketing in popularity and are likely to grow even more in the future.

According to Hubspot, 84% of companies that have now invested in mobile web design plan to do the same, if not more, by 2023. At the same time, 64% of SEO professionals consider mobile optimization a worthwhile investment.

There is no doubt that mobile will be irreplaceable and will continue to grow beyond 2023. Businesses that master and make good use of this strategy will see great results in the long run.

4. Influencer marketing will continue to thrive

An Influencer's promotional post

Gone are the days where influencers promoted products by simply snapping a picture of them to endorse it. Influencer marketing, which has been at the forefront of social media marketing has become interestingly intricate and engaging. With the surge of Gen Z social media users, authenticity and personal identity become the new way to sell on social media.  

Influencers seamlessly incorporate products that they endorse into their paid and unpaid content and let it do the talking. There’s no need for explicit advertising content when followers are genuinely interested in their lifestyle and products that they use. That’s why they followed them in the first place right? That’s the magic of social media. 100,000 followers mean 100,000 potential customers.  

In fact, 61% of consumers trust influencers’ recommendations–more than the 38% who trust branded (and often biased) social media content. Each influencer already has built a niche community of their own. In fact, smaller influencers have higher engagement and are in large supply. So, it is no surprise that brands and markets prefer to work with micro influencers than traditional celebrities for their promotional campaigns. Collaborating with the ones that align with your brand value and mission will bring you closer to your target audience.   

According to Hubspot, 34% of global marketing professionals say that by 2023, they will invest more money in Influencer Marketing and make it their top priority strategy. This means spending more on marketing through short videos and mobile web design. Additionally, 57% of marketers using influencer marketing say it’s a good strategy, while 11% say it yields maximum return on investment, and 46% plan to increase their investment by 2023.

Check out “Key Strategies for Influencer Marketing: How to Get More Social Media Followers and Sales”

5. Third-Party Cookies are Going Away

Google announced that they will end support for third-party cookies for all users of the popular chrome browser. For this reason, marketers are also expecting significant changes to future digital marketing campaigns. It is estimated that 70% of all browser users rely on chrome, meaning there will be a big shift towards businesses using cookies as a marketing and branding strategy.

This is expected to make a significant difference but is not the only concern. Most brands use cookies to find the needs of their target customers and track their web usage. Brands and marketers have found this user approach essential and beneficial in shaping how they reach their audience and plan their marketing.

Therefore, Google’s failure to support third-party cookies will make a big change in the way businesses approach, collect and use data from users.

6. Video, video, and more short video

One constant concern consumers have is that they don’t want to spend more time on advertising. Therefore, marketers will need to keep the brand’s promotional video concise and memorable. A HubSpot survey found that short-form content is the second most effective marketing trend that brands are currently using.

These types of videos have skyrocketed over the last few years thanks to platforms like TikTok and Snapchat. Reels are indeed more than just a fad. They are here to stay, as evident in the features and tools that these platforms continue to update, leading to more content creation. Yet amid the rising hype around short-form content, a lot of brands have yet capitalized on this promising feature. This could present a significant opportunity for brands to get more attention by creating a diversity of content, including reels to reach and engage with more audience. 

According to the survey, over 31% of brands and marketers invest in short content, with 46% seeing it as an effective strategy to engage and work. Additionally, 89% of global marketers plan to increase their investment in this tactic or continue to invest in it. This shows the outstanding development potential of this form.

7. Artificial Intelligence and the launch of GPT-4

What ChatGPT can do
ChatGPT generating a poem as requested

You may not have heard of GPT-4 (Generative Pre-trained Transformer 4) but it’s a cutting-edge tool that can help marketers automate many tasks.

GPT-3 (Generative Pretraining Transformer 3) is the most advanced AI-powered language processing model developed by OpenAI. It is capable of generating human-like text and has many applications, including language translation, language modeling, and text generation for applications such as chatbots. This is one of the largest and most powerful language processing models to date, with 175 billion parameters. 

Specifically, its power lies in its speed and understanding of complex issues. While we can spend hours researching, learning and writing a paper on quantum mechanics, ChatGPT can create a well-written alternative in seconds. Though novel, ChatGPT has the potential to support brands and marketers to create content more effectively with less time and cost. 

According to Clark Boyd, a Digital Strategy Consultant it could open up new opportunities for marketers. “We’re going to start seeing specific business applications (with GPT-4). There’s a lot of funding going into startups at the minute that is trying to build, for example, social media content generation tools. So, you could just put in a bit of information about your brand, and these tools would come up with 50 ideas for your content, and you just drag and drop the ones you’re most interested in.”

Future proof your business

Complex and unpredictable consumer behaviors are the main reason for changes in marketing trends. To capture the market in 2023, marketers should maintain a constant conversation and interaction with consumers. In particular, the best way for brands to maintain a direct and positive conversation is to listen to consumers and be responsive to changing times.

It is important to note that businesses don’t have to invest in all of the above strategies, but they at least need to choose the most optimal combination of these trends to apply to their business. It is best to work with a marketing specialist to seamlessly develop or integrate these marketing trends into your existing marketing strategy. 

If you find this article helpful, make sure to check out “Social Media Trends in 2023” and other insights.

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