The Wax Blog

30 Sep

Posted at 15:20h in The New Entrepreneur by
Starting a small business can seem impossible. There is so much to do on the front end before you even open the doors. We are now in the age of the cloud where all of our information can be stored and accessed anywhere we are. Not only does this make running a business easier, but it makes it much more efficient. The cloud can be your secret weapon to any aspect of the start-up process of you business. Here's how.

Domains

Most businesses these days have an online presence. One of the first things you should do, besides coming up with a name, should be to register your business for an online domain name. This doesn't have to be your first step when building a website, but doing it sooner rather than later will help in backing up your website on the cloud.

Email

As soon as you have the domain name for you website, it would be beneficial to use that domain name as your business email address (for example: you@yourbusiness.com). While it may not be entirely necessary, it will help your professional presence immensely. Regardless of whether you do so or not, it's imperative that you also back up your emails using a cloud-based backup system that is known for its encryption.

File Legal Paperwork

22 Sep

Posted at 09:11h in Content Marketing, Customer Behavior by
mobile friendly contentMobile friendly content will soon be a requirement for websites. Mark January 10, 2017 down in your calendar because that’s when Google starts cracking down on websites whose content is not “easily accessible” to mobile users. With mobile overtaking fixed Internet access, and Google’s deadline fast approaching, marketers would be wise to ensure their content is mobile friendly. Here are seven issues and some tools you can use to ensure your content works well in this environment.

Verify Your Site Has Mobile Friendly Content

(http://mobiletest.me/) MobileTest.me is a fast and simple way to check how your content appears on six popular mobile devices. Simply select a device and enter the URL. If you’re already using a mobile responsive theme, all should be well on this front. Yet, there are still some points that still need to be addressed.

Avoid Interstitial Popups

The Google crackdown aims to improve the experience of mobile users when accessing content on the web. Sites that do not comply may experience a negative impact on their placement in the search engine results page (SERP). Google has specifically singled out interstitial popups as an important factor. These popups, often requesting a viewer to subscribe to an email list, block the original content from view. No surprise that the general public finds them extremely annoying. Unless there’s a legal need (e.g. age verification), it’s best to avoid using them.

Use Coschedule for Great Headlines

Ask any copywriter and they’ll tell you there’s an art to creating great titles. In the era of content shock, the title has assumed even greater importance as readers use it as a quick means to filter content. Coschedule has a neat headline analyzer that scores “your overall headline quality and rate its ability to result in social shares, increased traffic, and SEO value.”Using this tool also ensures your headlines have the right length for both character and word count. That’s important because long titles can get truncated on mobile screens.

Write A Kick Ass Intro

13 Sep

Posted at 09:17h in Content Marketing, IMC, Social Media by
branded-content-example-1Just last month we learned about the new Facebook branded content policies. Given the growing popularity of branded content, it’s appropriate to look at the impact this change brings to marketers. For their part, Facebook defines any type of content that features a third-party brand, product or sponsor (known as the marketer) as branded content. Here are 5 main points you need to know about the new Facebook branded content policy.
  • Branded content can be shared as long as it follows the Facebook branded content policy, ads policy, and is properly tagged with their branded content tool. Typically it’s companies and celebrities with Verified Pages that need to pay attention to these policies. However, anyone with a Verified Page promoting a third-party product will need to disclose this fact using Facebook’s branded content tool.
  • The Facebook branded content tag can be applied to a variety of different post types such as link, videos, text, photos, Instant Articles, 360 videos and live videos. Tagging the marketer’s page in any post that features branded content notifies that party, providing them with access to performance data for that post, such reach and engagement. Essentially, branded content posts offer the same insight as any other type of post.
  • Marketers can also share the post to their Page, and more important for Facebook, spend additional funds in its promotion. Consumers will see Facebook branded content posts in their news feed accompanied by the “with” tag.
  • Currently, only Verified Pages (the ones with the blue check mark) can share branded content. Effective September 1st, 2016 posts that do not comply with Facebook’s policies will be removed and the ads disapproved.