How to Create Blog Content for Local Customers

Before technological advances brought us the Internet and social media, local businesses used to advertise their business in local newspapers, yellow pages or by handing out flyers with their details.

But times have changed and search engines have become the main tools to promote nearby products and services.

That means all local business owners should put in the time and effort to create quality content that gets them noticed.

However, it's not a guessing game. There are some useful tips and advice that you can follow if you have a local business and want to increase your customer base. For that reason, we created this little guide to explain how to create blog content for local customers. Welcome!

Think of the community beyond what you sell.

If you want your business to thrive locally, you need to show that you're involved in your community and know what's going on there. It depends on the niche your business operates in but you can try to include something about local news or local sports teams in an authentic way.

However, you have to be careful, as being spammy is very easy when you produce random local content. So, you have to make sure to adapt your texts to your business effortlessly. And remember that you should write not about what interests you but about what interests your audience.

You can also ask for support from local guest bloggers and contributors to post content on your website. Besides being a good idea for adding content, it can help you expand your audience to the contributor's audience.

Practices you cannot miss when creating local content.

Creating blog content for local clients also has its technical side, which means you have to implement some practices like

- Keyword research: Keyword research can be a game changer for local businesses.

If you want to leverage all the benefits that the Internet and search engines offer, be sure to add local keywords to your blog content. You should add local keywords in areas like title tags, meta description, body copy, anchor text, bold and italics tags, URLs, texts in images and H1 tags.

- Link building: Link building has also changed over the years. Getting inbound links from businesses in your community, such as chamber directories or local strategic partner pages, can get your blog and business to the top of search engines.

- Snippets: Finally, there are snippets. If you use rich snippets, you can help Google find geographic information about your business, customers and reviews. In this sense, they help users find your website when search engines refer a local place.

Include reviews if possible.

Many content creators neglect reviews but they can improve any local SEO strategy.

If you put consistent effort into getting reviews from happy customers and include them in your blog content, you can build trust among your potential customers and arouse curiosity among internet users who want to know what you offer, thus increasing the number of clicks your site receives.

Final thoughts.

Creating local content should be a priority for various reasons. For that reason, we recommend you put in some time and strive to make your local content better in order to take your business to the top. You will see results in less time than you think!

Simple Ways to use TikTok Ads For Local Businesses

Since its launch in 2016, TikTok has gained immense popularity, becoming an entertainment and information space for more than 800 million monthly users worldwide.

Thanks to its vast user base, being among the world's top five most downloaded apps, TikTok gives small businesses the opportunity to connect with local audiences and expand their reach within their community.

But what are the advantages that TikTok ads provide to local businesses? Can it help your brand or store, even if it’s small? Read on to find out!

Benefits of incorporating TikTok ads into your marketing strategy

It's important to understand that TikTok is much more than a platform for the young generation who love dance and pranks videos. Today, it can reach all age groups, including those that your small business needs.

Unlike other social media platforms that focus on providing a curated experience, TikTok focuses on creativity and authenticity. That means that local businesses have a free path to create engaging content and grow their customer base or even go viral.

Furthermore, it's a platform designed from its mobile version, allowing people to use it whenever and wherever they go without any hassle. As a result, large, local and small businesses alike can leverage this optimized experience to increase their marketing strategies' effectiveness.

How TikTok ads work

While TikTok didn't support paid advertising until 2019, its marketing platform now has several ad products available, including In-Feed Ads, Top View Ads, and more.

In addition, it includes tools that can be useful for creating quick quasi-native content, such as Smart Video, Smart Video Soundtrack, and Automated Creative Optimization (ACO).

But what benefits local businesses are most the most is TikTok's ad targeting, as the platform offers six key types of prospecting targeting: Audience (with five standard custom audience types available for creation, including Customer File, Website Traffic, App Activity, Engagement, and Lead Gen), Demographics, Interests, Behavior, Creators, and Devices.

As you can see, they are all great targeting options you can use to direct all your content efforts to local audiences that really grow your business.

Advertising with high levels of user participation.

If you want your social media ads to work, you need targeted users to fully engage with the platform you're advertising on. That's another reason why TikTok ads can be an excellent tool for small businesses.

Stats speak for themselves. Over 90% of active TikTok users use its app several times a day for around 45 minutes, making the ad cost really worthwhile.

In this sense, TikTok attracts an active and engaged audience, making users more likely to respond well to your business' ads.

Final thoughts.

Besides everything we mentioned, TikTok is easy to use and its popularity is expanding internationally.

Its latest figures show that it remains an exciting, entertaining and fresh social media platform for users. That's a big plus for local businesses, as that huge audience is an invaluable opportunity for marketers hoping to reach more people and increase their brand's exposure.

Top Social Media Tips For Small Businesses in 2022

Nowadays, social media is an essential part of any business. No matter your size or sector, making

sure that you are engaging with both existing and potential customers online can transform your

success.

However, we know how confusing the ever-changing world of social media can seem. That is why we

have put together our top tips to help you maximize your reach and engage even more followers.

1) Set your goals

One of the first things you should do is to set the goals you want to achieve. Whether it is

reaching a certain number of followers, maintaining a strong engagement rate, or driving

more web traffic, a clear goal will keep you focused and enhance your overall strategy.

2) Plan your content

The worst thing any small business can do is simply post for the sake of it. Developing a clear

content plan that has been designed around your audience will help you to get a clear vision

of how the coming weeks and months will look. In turn, this will allow you to create more

engaging strategies that tie in with your overall marketing plan.

3) Be relatable

With so many brands and individuals vying for space on people’s timelines, empathy and

relatability are going to be crucial in 2022. Tailoring your content to speak directly with your

audience and engage their primal emotions will help ensure you continue to stand out from

the crowd.

4) Utilize user-generated content

Another top tip is to ensure that you are utilizing content that your customers are making.

Sharing their content helps to develop your community and showcase your products and

services in the real world.

Need help with your social media?

Do you need help managing your social media channels? For over a decade, here at Realtime

Outsource, we have been supporting businesses just like yours to transform their digital presence.

Want to find out more? Get in touch today!

Instructions On How To Incorporate And To Create Engaging Social Media Video Ads To Your Marketing Strategy

Video marketing's popularity is soaring. It's not surprising – with people watching 16 hours of online video a week, it's an excellent way to raise brand awareness. Research also shows that 79% of people say that a video ad on Instagram has persuaded them to buy a product or software. It's no wonder businesses are turning towards social media video as a top marketing tactic. 

Social media platforms are booming, and they're fast becoming a great way to increase ROI. Even better, videos on social media channels don't require fancy recording equipment or sound studios. As a result, it's easy to raise engagement while simultaneously having fun. 

It's best to start with some customer research before choosing which social media channels to use. Find out where your ideal audience hangs out and try that platform first. For example, Gen Z tends to hang out on TikTok, while older audiences seem to prefer Facebook. 

Let's take a closer look at some of the social media channels suitable for video marketing. 

Facebook 

If you're looking to capture the attention of potential customers that will focus more on your messaging, switch to video. Research shows that Facebook videos bring in 59.3% more clicks than images.

What's more, Facebook offers a variety of video formats for brands to use, including: 

• Stories

• Newsfeed videos

• In-stream videos 

• Video lives 

To get the most out of your Facebook video ads, pay attention to your target audience. Facebook allows marketers to be very specific when it comes to selecting their potential audience (although some recent privacy changes on Apple have made this more difficult). 

Once you've targeted your audience, make sure your video resonates with their wants, needs, and pain points. 

YouTube

Most businesses use YouTube because it's the best-known video platform. There's also no restriction on the length of your video – you can create long-form or short-form content. 

The downside of YouTube is that it's more technical than creating a reel or story on Instagram. You'll need to do some editing and camera work for the video to look professional. 

However, the benefits outweigh the extra work. With over 2.3 billion users worldwide, YouTube is the ideal online search engine for your marketing. 

Try out the following tips when creating your videos: 

• Use an attention-grabbing title

• Make your videos accessible to all using captions and translations

• Link to your website or landing page using clickable CTAs

• Use keywords to boost your SEO

Instagram 

Consumers spend a lot of time on Instagram, with most users spending one to two hours a day on the app. Stories, reels, and live videos are the perfect places to highlight your brand. 

Each form of video ad has its own costs, so don't be afraid to experiment and find out which form of ad suits your brand best. 

Bear in mind that most social media users want to see entertaining videos on the apps. Adding trending music to your reels and using stickers on your stories can increase views by 83%. 

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is sometimes skipped as a social media channel and viewed more as a professional networking platform. However, it's an excellent platform for sharing more business-like and formal video content. 

Want to use LinkedIn as part of your marketing strategy? Here are some top tips: 

• Share customer testimonials and social proof

• Create product demo videos

• Use LinkedIn to advertise network events or webinars 

• Post industry insight videos to establish authority and credibility 

LinkedIn video marketing has the potential to grow brand awareness and engage with new and existing clients. 

TikTok

TikTok's the new kid on the block when it comes to social media. It's a world away from LinkedIn and therefore requires a different approach. 

TikTok users tend to be Gen Z or younger millennials, although the platform is growing in popularity with other audiences. Users want to see original, entertaining, and authentic videos. Therefore, you need to create content as far from traditional advertising styles as possible. 

Using influencers is often beneficial as they stay ahead of trends, knowing when and what to post. Hashtag challenges also engage users and increase brand awareness. 

If your ideal customers hang out on TikTok, experiment with several forms of ads and see which performs best. 

How To Plan Your Social Media Videos 

Although it may look like brands are creating some social media videos ad hoc, chances are they have a carefully planned strategy. The skill is making your videos look raw and honest but actually having a goal and purpose behind each one. 

Goals for social media videos might be: 

• Increasing awareness

• Boosting engagement

• Sending viewers to your website or landing page to increase conversions

• Entertain and educate 

• Inspire and motivate 

What's the point of goals? First, they keep you accountable and on track. Second, knowing your goals also gives you a metric to help measure your video's success. Like anything in business, knowing what you want to achieve is the half step to achieving it. 

Once your goals are in place, the next step is to plan out your content. Again, having a script and knowing what message you want to get across has more impact than impromptu video. 

Think about the following aspects before filming, and you'll end up with videos that stand out from the social media crowd: 

• Using props

• The trends and expectations of the channel

• The quality of the video, including lighting and sound

• Whether you need a license for any music

• Editing to ensure the footage flows smoothly 

• Making it accessible to all (captions, transcripts, language)

Social Media Video Marketing Is Here To Stay – Use Your Data To Grow Your Success

Some videos will inevitably be a hit, and some may not achieve the outcome you'd expect. That's marketing! The key is to track the data and look for patterns. 

Use your goals to set measurements and your insights to judge success. 

Don't give up – think of video marketing as a long-term strategy and experiment until you find the sweet spot. There’s no doubt about it, video marketing is only going to increase in popularity. So jump in with gusto and make the most of its benefits for your business. 

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--- Author Bio: 

Torrey Tayenaka

Torrey Tayenaka is the co-founder and CEO at Sparkhouse, an Orange County based video production agency. He is often asked to contribute expertise in publications like Entrepreneur, Single Grain and Forbes. Sparkhouse is known for transforming video marketing and advertising into real conversations.Rather than hitting the consumer over the head with blatant ads, Sparkhouse creates interesting, entertaining and useful videos that enrich the lives of his clients’ customers. In addition to Sparkhouse, Torrey has also founded the companies Eva Smart Shower, Litehouse & Forge54.

How to Create an Effective Social Media Workflow and Save Time

If you think there's no such thing as the ideal social media workflow, think again. The key to mastering your own custom-made social media process is knowing what tools to use and ensuring that you don't miss anything along the way before publishing or posting your content.

Social media marketing has been a powerful means of reaching a broad range of audiences with targeted, unique content. In fact, there are currently more than 100 social media networks for marketers to choose from – and that number is constantly growing.

With the wide variety of options available, separating and prioritizing your social media workflow can be difficult, and then developing a calendar schedule to match. This becomes especially challenging when you consider that there's no such thing as "one-size-fits-all" when it comes to social media marketing.

There will always be various factors involved in what works best for your company's individual needs, especially on social platforms. You must consider your audience, industry niche, and existing resources before creating a solid strategy based on what you want to achieve on each network.

6 Steps to Build an Effective Social Media Workflow

1. Determine your roles and responsibilities

Social media marketing is about connecting with your audience on the most engaging and personal level. It takes more than just posting. It requires an organized workflow that includes content creators, managers/managers-of-talent (i.e., social influencers), graphic designers—and every other person in between.

The best way to assemble this team? Get everyone involved by creating clear roles for each member based on their bandwidths: What responsibilities do they want to take responsibility within? How much time does he have available per week or month before deadlines need attention?

You can't just throw a bunch of people in front of their computer monitor and expect them to work miracles. If you have a team already set up, take some time to sit down with each member and educate them on the specific responsibilities they should be looking over. For example, if Susie will do a bulk of your Twitter updates while Kelly focuses on Facebook posts, then spell things out for them both.

2. Customize your workflow

Many great tools are available that will help keep your social media marketing schedule organized, including HootSuite, Buffer, and SocialPilot. It's important that whatever application(s) you integrate into your workflow process, make sure everyone knows exactly what needs to be done.

Share your schedule with everyone on your marketing team. Set up custom alerts for each of those terms when you need to post daily, weekly, or monthly to a certain service. So they'll automatically pop up in the notifications panel as soon as it's time for a status update. You can find any number of great software on the internet.  

3. Follow a schedule and stick to it

A content calendar helps you get the most out of your posts by ensuring they go live on time. It also allows for more efficient distribution across different social media platforms. It indicates what is popular at any given moment to give some inspiration when creating new pieces.

A great way to plan ahead is to use social media management tools. You can input all desired dates to generate a monthly schedule (or weekly if preferred). Be sure to set aside space each day, for example, 30 minutes here or five consecutive hour slots there. So, everything doesn't collide during crunch-time.

It's crucial to set up a content calendar and follow the schedule accordingly in order to save your time. Set up alerts for every term in the schedule to ensure you'll never forget to post anything.

4. Automate wherever possible

Social media automation is key to efficient workflow and is highly recommended for business owners who find it difficult to juggle social media and other tasks. Today, there are tons of social media management software that allow you to edit, remove, and schedule posts anytime you want. Using these tools offers you the chance to save time and focus on what matters more.

That's why, instead of juggling between one social channel to another, it's best to automate your social media workflow. But, make sure you set a schedule and stick to it: use automation tools only if you can't manage your accounts manually. For instance, Hootsuite's scheduled posting feature lets users determine when their message will be posted across multiple channels.

5. Create content in bulk

Having to create bulk content can also save time and energy. This is a time-efficient way to ensure that your social media accounts are always up to date, and you can adjust them as you see fit.

Batching your content creation will help you stay productive and consistent with the branding. In fact, batching becomes especially important for posts that require a lot of attention to detail because it gives them all enough time in one sitting so they don't fall behind or get forgotten about entirely. 

6. Track results with analytics

In order to improve the performance of your social media marketing, using KPIs is essential as it helps measure how well or badly your content is performing. In this regard, Google Analytics for websites and Facebook Insights are two great tools that help find out what works and what doesn't in your social media strategy. They monitor visitors' activity from social channels, including clicks, site traffic sources, demographics profile of fans, and page views per visit, among others.

Using social media analytics can improve your workflow and save time because you can access all this information from one source. In order to find out more about your social media activity, you need to know how these tools work and what kind of data they provide so you can improve all your future campaigns.

Conclusion

Working on social media can take a lot of time, especially when you have to maintain the quality of your content. Fortunately, some shortcuts can help optimize your social media workflow so you can utilize your time more efficiently and enjoy working on the social media accounts for your business. This article should help you improve your social media workflow and strategy by implementing all these tips above. 

Author

Andre Oentoro is the founder of Breadnbeyond, an award-winning explainer video company. He helps businesses increase conversion rates, close more sales, and get positive ROI from explainer videos (in that order). 

Twitter: @breadnbeyond

Email: andre@breadnbeyond.com 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreoentoro/

Here Are Reasons Why TikTok Is A Good Fit For Marketing

TikTok is now the well-known application that is termed as the fastest growing platform of all time from its existence. Also, it is the one that has been shortlisted as the most downloaded application globally in the past two years. TikTok is a video marketing tool, which has short videos that reach people in a short duration. TikTok’s active users are about 800 million, which says that it is the 9th application to have a dense population. 

Marketers are drawn by TikTok as it reflects the social media trend for collaboration and creativity among Gen-Z. Owing to its fast-paced nature, users are attached to this platform spending an average of 52 minutes in a day. And however, about 90% of TikTok users access this application daily. A study proves that 68% of the users watch out for some other's videos and 55% upload their videos. 

Let’s see why TikTok is a big deal for marketing!

Why TikTok For Marketing Matters A Lot?

If you have come across the latest news that TikTok now is not only the application for the cultural sphere but also the political world. Luckily, the launch of TikTok for business has been helpful to so many people in the community. With a slot of new features, people enjoy the content, where they can implement new tactics if they want in their content. 

There are more and more brands jumping in TikTok just for a wide range of exposure as there is a little bit of competition. When you get into the platform for the first time, FYP on TikTok will filter your interests based on your past interactions. Get on this ultimate application and use it as a marketing tool for your brands. 

5 Reasons On Why TikTok A Big Cheese For Marketing Field

Reason #1: Influencers On TikTok

Influencer marketing is a common thing that could be found on all applications and TikTok has no exception for it as well. And if you don’t know what it is all about, reach out to TikTok and find the influencers who help brands by helping them financially. Brands choose the right influencers for their campaign so they could target a wide range of audiences.

Influencer marketing seems to be particularly effective because people do trust real people like them, it's more like a recommendation from a friend and not from an advertisement. TikTok is also a field that is widely adopted by businesses and now is equal to that of Instagram marketing as it has a personalized flair on it. 

Reason #2: Advertising On TikTok

TikTok advertisements are relatively new additions to the platform and they are also highly effective. However, there is an open talk that TikTok ad space is a direct competitor to Snapchat and Instagram. TikTok is as common as other social media has its own paid ads but there are some quirky facts behind it that every marketer should be aware of. 

There are about five advertising modules and they are as follows:

In-Feed Ads: They are also called TikTok's standard ad format, which allows you to embed the video ad that embeds the video ad that is played in the For You feed. It has an optimal duration of about 15 seconds. 

Top-View Ads: Top view ads are the ones that appear on the TikTok For You page as soon as you open the app. Their duration is about 60 seconds long and offers a good viewing experience. 

Brand-Takeover: These ads are the ones full-screen, with high impact and they are slightly similar to the previous top-view ones. They appear either as a 3-second image or as a 3-5 seconds video. 

Branded Hashtag Challenge: These ads are the best fit for user-generated content and in this way, they engage audiences by encouraging the content. And the ad format can be broken down into three placements in the app. 

Branded Effects: This kind of ad format helps brands to show their playful side by utilizing their branded stickers. However, these effects can be used in standalone campaigns or cultivated in hashtag challenges. 

Reason #3: Presence Of Diverse Content

TikTok is not a new network to build an online expression. TikTok is now bringing bite-sized media to the forefront, creators must learn all the nooks and corners in TikTok. 

Popular posts on TikTok fall into two categories: music and comedy, when you create content in these genres it tends to receive more likes on TikTok expressing how effective your content is. There are a lot of topics that do survive on TikTok, choose the one which consistently forces you to learn something new about it every time. 

Consistent branding on TikTok is the most important thing because people are regularly watching the posts on social networks. On the other hand, if you are a creator you must be consistent with your posts to gain long-lasting audiences for your products. 

Reason #4 Chances Of Going Viral

When TikTok content is unique in its way there are more chances that your content is yet to go viral. Now, finally, TikTok has confirmed that people on TikTok have grown massively and it is phenomenal. Also, some studies have proved that the followers count on TikTok does not lay a foundation to get featured on For You Page. 

What does this mean? It means that you can have overnight success just after posting one video. If you are the one who has spent only a short time on TikTok, do wide research on how vast the platform is and find out the niche that suits you in all ways. You can utilize the opportunities on the way whether it might be the usage of hashtags or challenges. 

Reason #5: TikTok Is Not An Saturated Platform

TikTok is still a very new opportunity to use and was initially released in 2016 and gave its hit in 2018. Its parent company decided to merge it with another app called Musical.ly. TikTok marketing has become more common where people make huge loads of money using the creator fund option. On the other hand, influencers are becoming more and more helping brand owners. 

Major brands have made their way towards TikTok as this app’s result is highly satisfiable like other fields like Snapchat and Instagram do. TikTok is still the best fit for marketing as some of the results have proved their marketing success. As a newcomer, you have less competition but some are still fighting over the same target audiences. 

Key-Takeaways

TikTok now has shrouded all the political controversies and it's the best medium that some don't know how to use. TikTok for business now has become a very casual thing as there are lots of examples, which proved their success already. 

Overall there is no substitute to replace TikTok as it is good in its way of content creation. I hope the article was useful and it would be a part of your success somehow!

Author Bio

Anne Joseph is a passionate social media writer and working at Bouxtie. She has strong strategy skills in developing and managing social media campaigns. She loves to make new connections and enjoy the opportunity to work with social media influencers. Start following her on Twitter.com.

How to move to hybrid working without disrupting your social media traffic

Hybrid working is being adopted globally as a strategy to combat COVID infections in the workplace or ease workers back into the office environment after months or sometimes more than a year of working remotely.

The benefits of this strategy are numerous, removing the daily commute for the employee several days a week, and will also help the business owner to keep their overheads down, or even enabling them to find smaller premises for the same or larger headcount. However, the fact remains that without that dynamic face-to-face environment that the office generates, the creative elements that are essential to effective social media posting could possibly suffer.

Social media traffic is the life-blood of your business

If, like many businesses, social media not only generates the most traffic to your site but also the most relevant traffic, this can be a huge problem. By using social media effectively, you can find potential customers who are already aligned with your company ethos and have a built-in desire for your products. Without this supply, your business won’t stay around very long, so when it comes to addressing the hybrid working issue, you shouldn’t need telling twice that there can be no half measures.

Creating a virtual office environment

The easiest way to do this (on paper at least) is to duplicate the office environment virtually, but as many companies have already found out to their cost, this is much easier said than done. The balance between ‘in touch’ and invasive when it comes to your staff working remotely can be a delicate one, and effective communication can often suffer as a result. Picking the right suite of software can be part of an effective solution but could open up another range of issues.

Taking the mystery out of cloud-based working

The most obvious and most effective solution, if you have projects that need to be worked on by multiple people who could be either in the office or at home, is to have a cloud-based solution. The first hurdle here is that many people within your business will have very little idea how it all works or what the cloud actually is.

It is this area that has seen the most casualties, and by finding professional help when it comes to using Microsoft 365 services, you can neatly sidestep this pitfall that has claimed so many others. This is because if you don’t know what you are doing when you have that much data moving between a number of sources, there can be some serious problems.

Keeping on top of your social media commitments

You can’t maintain effective communication with your audience if you can’t do it within your own company, and with information flowing freely and securely the same way it would in the office, social media posting should be as easy as it was before. This means that there will be very little chance of your Instagram account posting about a product that is not quite ready due to poor communication or anything else that could damage your online presence.

Writing Great Agile Marketing User Stories: 6 Steps

Writing agile marketing user stories is a brilliant agile practice that helps your team maintain a user-centric approach to everything they do. Each task, project, and team effort is built around a customer goal that is clearly defined with the user story. Below, you’ll learn how to write great agile marketing user stories in 6 steps.

1. Do it Systematically

Writing your agile marketing user stories needs to become a part of your team’s routine. Why? Because that’s the only way you can create powerful user stories that make your marketing efforts more powerful and effective.

So, make this a part of your team’s routine to ensure consistency in writing.

1. Be Super-Clear

Agile user stories need to be simple and to the point. These stories are supposed to sum up the main idea behind a team's task and explain what makes this task important for the end-users.

So, when you’re writing, make sure to:

• write short, simple sentences

• only include information that carries a meaning

• remove everything redundant

This will put everyone’s focus on the same, clearly defined idea, and ensure the team works in unison.

1. Listen to Customers

Your agile user stories don't need to be the sole product of your team's creativity or experience. Instead, you should base them on the actual needs and problems your customers are facing.

So, where can you find actual customer stories? You have a ton of options:

• social media comments and messages

• reviews and feedback

• customer service messages and conversations

Listen to what your customers have to say and use that as a source of writing your agile user stories.

source: Pexels 

1. Follow a Structure

Each agile user story that you write should be structured the same way. Following a consistent formula will help you deliver better results and compare your previous stories to one another.’

The structure that works best is:

• Who? + What? + Why?

Here’s an example of a user story written according to this pattern:

• As a team coordinator, I need a remote management tool so I could manage my teams professionally and easily.

You've got the answer to all three questions, blended in one simple and clear sentence. It's how all agile user stories should work. Naturally, you can adjust the formula to fit your specific business needs, but it needs to provide valuable information you can then act upon.

1. Make it Real

If you write user stories that are in the domain of unachievable and unreal, nobody’s going to benefit from them. Your user stories have to be centred around a goal that is:

• hard but possible to achieve

• challenging for your team

• important for your customers

If you write a user story that reflects a realistic goal, the whole team will be more motivated to work on reaching it. So, be careful not to take it too far.

1. Break Them Down

Once you create your user story and your team understands the goal set before them, you should break it down and use it to plan action. How will you make it happen?

Once you reach this phase, your agile user story becomes a starting point for a more elaborate written plan that includes:

• phases of the upcoming project

• steps your team will make

• estimated time 

• set deliverables 

In other words, you need to define what makes this user story complete and the team’s job successfully finished. Otherwise, you’ll never be certain whether your team has finished the job or not.

If writing more elaborate plans is a challenge for you, GetGoodGrade can offer their professional writing services. You need to make sure everything you write for your agile marketing team is polished and accurate.

Final Thoughts

Writing great agile marketing user stories is a necessity for teams who want to invest in their user experience and satisfaction. The 6 steps listed above are everything you need for writing high-performing user stories that will get your teams to their goals, efficiently and quickly.

5 Great Techniques To Expand Your Instagram Stories Engagement

At present, marketing on social media is everything about engaging your existing audience. It's not actually for the reach of your Instagram stories or posts, but it's a lot more like total people count reacting to your Instagram posts after getting them.

We are here to share a few essential and valuable tips to do the exact things discussed above. Thus, you could grab excellent tips which you could use to boost up your stories' engagement on Instagram.

Nowadays, Instagram users are going more crazy about story features on the platform. So, implement the tips mentioned below to enhance your story engagement on Instagram. Let's jump in.

5 Great Techniques To Expand Your Instagram Stories Engagement

Pick these five great techniques before uploading your story content to attain maximum reach, increasing engagement, and grab massive story views for your Instagram stories. 

Craft A Story

Naturally, narrating a story through Instagram stories is a perfect way to double your story engagements on the platform. Thus, utilize this factor from the beginning till the end. 

Remember that uploading a photo is an easy thing, but to grab your audience for engaging, it is necessary to bring up the context and good CTAs to convert your viewers to engage leads. 

Include Best Captions

A hard thing but an effective way to skyrocket your story engagement on Instagram is to bring up the best captions to your Instagram image or video stories.

A fact is that most users are unmuting when searching through their feed on the platform. And also, recent research says that nearly 75% of Instagram users watch Instagram stories without sound(sound muting option). So, it would help you a lot when you write some excellent captions in the story content on Instagram to increase your audience responses and reach.

Utilize Instagram Story Stickers

Create your Instagram stories more colorful with emojis & stickers and bring them attractive & funny to your target audience. There are many stickers on the platform to include, but there are two stickers that make brands double their Instagram stories engagements. Let's see:

Poll Stickers

Recently, Instagram users love to react to Instagram poll stickers rather than other stickers. It's mainly because the asked question would be interesting to your audiences. It massively benefits you more in taking your business to the next step and can get the content type to upload in the future for better engagement from your active audience.

The most significant factor from the poll stickers is that you have simple access to view the people lists who provided answers to your Instagram poll. And also, you could DM them privately within 24 hours to start and build the conversation.

Question Stickers

It's an informative and exciting sticker that most users on the platform attract to your story content. You could quickly grab your Instagram audience to give a question to you in the stories using a question sticker. Thus, it attains the massive opportunity to double your story engagement on Instagram. 

If any user on the platform asks you a question from the question sticker you posted, you will receive a notification, and it's the perfect time to answer the question and post it in your stories. If you upload an answer containing story content, a user who asked you a question would get a notification that their stunning question acquires a reply.

Here, you can choose a specific subject when you ask your audience to ask a question? Like the things they are interested in most or about positive dreams and goals.

Additional Stickers

Other stories stickers on Instagram like hashtags, location, mention, or emojis stickers are also great for gaining more engagements for your Instagram stories. These things would add attractiveness to your Instagram stories and pick the attention of your audiences. Thus, select Instagram story stickers correctly for your Instagram stories and develop your performance. 

Use Prompts Or Calls

Sometimes, it is more crucial to encouraging your audience about what they need to do next. Could you utilize relevant prompts in your Instagram stories to boost engagement and users' time spent on your Instagram stories while still confused about prompts?

So, here are some prompts to bring user engagement for your Instagram stories:

Tap For More

Start with a tile that encourages a compelling question and include the "Tap for more" prompt effectively on your story content on Instagram. It creates excellent hype in viewers and brings them to tap on it. To upload the next tile showcasing relevant and proper info like informational video content or images about what you need to convey to your target audiences.

Hold To Read

Add immense content to tell a big story using more informative texts or pictures, such as finding a specific small item from many things in a picture. Here, you could use the prompt "Hold to read" and bring them to see the entire content or image. 

Get Ready To

It excites anticipation and excitement in your target audience and supports you to bring the tone of what arrives in the future. When you use the prompt "Get ready to," it simply means you are taking your audience to screenshot your next tile or making them turn up the total volume or bringing them to rotate the screen to watch in the full-screen view.

Screenshot Story Content

Every tip is more crucial, but screenshot stories are more attractive to raise your audience's reach and engagements for the story content on the platform. Here are a few screenshot stories examples:

Wallpapers

It's the welcoming thing to your Instagram stories because you are providing something useful for your audience. Your wallpapers may include cute quotes or stunning wallpapers. So, providing wallpapers in stories increases your brand awareness values.

Stories Battle

Gamifying experiences could be a perfect method to double the engagements. Utilize this strategy to your story content on the platform to generate more lead forms and provide giveaways for winning challenges and help you gain more target audience. 

Conclusion

Instagram stories could be the perfect way to stay in the feeds of your followers. Thus follow these five techniques to double your story engagement on Instagram and lighten your innovative and creative mind. And also, you can spend more time thinking about more options that help in enhancing your profile. 

Author Bio

Mary Kyle is a content developer and marketing manager who works at Snaphappen. She has written more trending articles on social media and has a handful of experience in delivering engaging content.

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Supercharge Your Holiday Promotions with these 5 Social Media Tips

Is your sales bottom-line feeling the crunch this year? Don't fear! We are about to head into the holiday season - a time that offers some of the best opportunities to promote your business through social media.

Although social media is not a replacement for old-fashioned salesmanship, people are constantly connected to their screens - especially during the holidays. If you are lucky, you might just stumble on a new viral trend that will help you supercharge your sales beyond your wildest expectations.

When the gift-getting itch arises, be the company that scratches with these simple social media holiday promotion tips:

1. Deliver a "Holiday Happiness Boost"

One of the best ways to get social media traction is to give people free goodies. This can be an actual physical product or something as simple as a coupon code or access to a service that you provide for free.

Free incentives get people on board quickly with your brand, especially when they can get something valuable to them and save them time or money.

2. Run a Contest

Even if you do offer products for free, a contest allows your audience to engage with your brand at an even more personal level. People love the excitement of getting lucky, and you always bring in new fans when you hold an engaging contest.

The trick is to find a contest that will make your audience want to participate. One of the most effective methods is to ask them questions about which product they like best and reward those who participate by giving away prizes:

"What's Your Favorite Holiday Treat?" - upload photos of your favorite holiday treats with your favorite product and use a digital tool to manage the contest entries and winners.

3. Curate a Social Media Wishlist

As the holidays get closer, you start to see wishlists pop up everywhere on social media. Get creative and use them as your chance to give back and help people find a gift that they might enjoy.

Take advantage of this potential by setting up your business website or Facebook page with a feature-rich wish list that includes your products. The best part? This requires no effort on your customers, and they can do all their holiday shopping wherever they are!

4. Get Festive with Holiday Hashtags

Hashtags are more than just a way to follow a trend or chat about something on social media - you can turn them into a full-on marketing and brand promotion tool.

Take advantage of popular hashtags by calling out your best products or even entire categories using relevant hashtags in the metadata of your posts and tweets.

A simple way to do this is by simply adding the relevant #holiday hashtag when you post about holiday deals, wishlists, contests, and more.

5. Launch and Promote a Holiday Collection

It's no secret that new product lines are great for business and can be a key driver of holiday sales. However, getting people to actually notice them can be tricky.

If you are looking for an unconventional way to generate buzz about your new products, turn to social media and offer a special promotion or giveaway in exchange for a fan following you on Instagram or retweeting your Facebook message:

"Follow Us on Instagram & Receive $25 Off Your Next Purchase!"

All you need to do is get people to follow your account on Instagram, and you'll give them $25 off their next purchase.

Need Help? Let Real Time Outsource Deliver Your Social Media Success

No matter your business's size or niche industry, the holiday season is a great opportunity to promote and market your business through social media. Make sure you stay active and post relevant content, such as pictures of the products you sell or how people can use them!

Want to see more great examples of successful holiday social media techniques? Head over to Real Time Outsource online!  Our team of professional content creators can help you put together the perfect holiday social media content.

We take pride in helping your company succeed by putting out relevant, engaging content. Visit us online today if you're ready to take your holiday marketing strategies to the next level.