What is a WordPress Plugin?

Plugins are pre written coding applications that you can install on your WordPress website to help you accomplish specific tasks and goals. Plugins are an amazing aspect to WordPress and why it is such a powerful and popular content management system. WordPress has a built in area/directory in which you can search for plugins directly in your WordPress admin panel, however, you can also find many more plugins on the web and install them manually. One of our favorite 3rd party places to search for plugins is Codecanyon.

Things you can do with plugins (not limited to)

• Newsletter Signup Form
• Email Contact Form
• SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
• Drag and drop page editors
• Custom homepage slider
• Ecommerce (Online store)
• Lead capture/management
• Calendar and events
• Audio/Video players
• And so much more…

Lyqwid’s Top 10 WordPress Plugins for 2016

#1 – Visual Composer ($30) (Check it Out)

Visual Composer is a must have for new website designers and developers and that is why it number one on our list. This plugin eliminates the hassle of having to know or work with HTML and CSS to create beautiful web pages. By installing this plugin you will be getting a powerful drag and drop page editor so you can add different elements and content to a specific page on your website in seconds. Adding buttons, full width images, videos, social links, icons, and more has never been easier.

#2 – Contact Form 7 (Free)

Every website needs a place for customers  to get in contact with them. To make it easy for customers and increase conversions, why not have a contact form where they can fill out their information and email you directly without leaving your website. Contact Form 7 is free and very powerful if you know some standard HTML and CSS skills. These skills are not required to use the plugin for a simple contact form but styling and customization may be limited to the defaults if you don’t.

#3 – Yoast SEO (Free)

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is by far the most important aspect of any website. Without traffic, your content is useless. This is were Yoast SEO comes into play. Yoast helps you optimize your on page SEO by easily allowing you to add different meta tags and more. If you do not know the technical jargon of SEO, basically this plugin helps you customize how your website shows up on Google so your page titles and information are relevant to what people are searching for. It also rates each page on your WordPress individually while giving you suggestions on how to improve the pages content.

For instance, if we were to type in “Utah” as the keyword for a specific page on our website, Yoast would scan the pages content and track how many times it comes up on that specific page. Including checking the titles and subtitles for the keyword “Utah”. It will also give you suggestions based on how much text content you have, image alt tags, and even the ease of reading score. This is definitely a must have plugin for optimizing your websites SEO.

#4 – Slider Revolution (Check it Out)

One of the most common layouts for today’s design trends is to have a prominent slider on the homepage of your website that displays relevant information. Slider Revolution is a fully customizable solution to creating an amazing slideshow or video slideshow with animations and layers. Its unlimited customization options may intimidate new users but use one of the pre made layouts and start from there.

#5 – Essentials Grid (Check it Out)

Though this is number five on our list, Essentials Grid is one of the most powerful plugins on the market. Create quality designed grids that are fully customizable and that link directly to your website posts. With tons of pre made layouts and the option to fully customize, it doesn’t matter if you are new to web design or a veteran designer who likes to create from scratch. This is a great plugin for displaying your recent blog posts or a killer portfolio page.

#6 – WooCommerce (Free)

Are you selling products or services on your website? Create a store instantly with WordPress’s featured ecommerce plugin WooCommerce. You can start accepting payments directly from your website whether you are selling clothing, music, or software services. WooCommerce has competitive transaction fees and there are thousands of add-on plugins specific for enhancing your online shop.

#7 – SumoMe (Free)

Social sharing and email newsletters are two of the most powerful marketing tools you can have and SumoMe brings those tools to you for free! With the SumoMe plugin you can instantly have any social media sharing icon stuck to the side of your website so users can share your content. You can also enable a subscription popup where users can input there email address to signup for your newsletter such as MailChimp, Constant Contact, and many more integrations. This automatically gathers the users information and transfers it to your newsletter mailing list.

#8 – Formidable (Free)

Sometimes you need to gather more information from customers than just their name and email. Formidable allows you to click and drag options to create a custom form so you can gather as much information from users as you want! Do you want to know their height? Weight? You can gather this information with Formidable but be careful asking personal questions or too many questions.

#9 – WordFence (Free)

With amazing advances in technology comes the rise in cybercrime and hacking. WordFence is a powerful WordPress plugin that Lyqwid uses on a regular basis and offers to clients. Though the premium version of this plugin is expensive, you can still enhance your website’s security with the free version. Block specific countries, IP addresses and set settings so if there are too many failed login attempts it locks the user out. You can also set up two step authentication with mobile text messages to verify your identity. WordFence even includes a secure cache plugin to increase the loading speed of your website.

#10 – W3 Total Cache (Free)

Google has put a large emphasis on UI and UX for the SEO algorithm. Part of UI and UX is the speed of the website that users are on. W3 Total Cache is a simple yet complex plugin that enables caching for your website to increase the overall speed. Caching in simple terms is essentially storing data from your website on the user’s browser so if they return to your website your content uploads directly from their computers hard drive rather than relying on distant servers. There are features that the average user can simply turn on without having a major impact on the websites performance but there are also advanced features for developers looking to maximize their website’s speed from minifying script to CDN networks.

The post 10 Best WordPress Plugins for Beginners appeared first on Lyqwid.

Are you interested in creating a professional website but don’t have thousands of dollars to pay a designer or developer? This article will give you some valuable information on how to launch a professional website with a limited budget.

Define the goal of your website

Deciding between the thousands of website building resources like WordPress and Squarespace can be very overwhelming. The first step in understanding how to build your website is to recognize the main goal your website is aimed to accomplish. Whether your goal is to display and sell products/services or provide your clients a resource for customer service, defining your goal is a critical component in deciding how you will build your website and what tools will be the best.

Sample Website Goals:

• Display and sell products/services (physical & digital)
• Point of contact for customer to inquire about prices
• A place for customers to gather more information/customer service
• Sharing valuable content such as news or blog posts

Choosing the right platform to build a website

Once you have defined the goal of your website, use that goal to decide which platform is going to be the best for you. You will also want to take into account the level of time, computer skill and design skill you possess while making this decision so you do not get in over your head with a program that is too advanced or not advanced enough. Here are some thoughts on our top three building platforms:

WordPress

The world’s most popular content management system and Lyqwid favorite, WordPress, is run by 25 percent of all websites on the World Wide Web today. Released over 12 years ago, WordPress has become the go-to website builder due to its open source platform that allows developers around the world to create amazing products such as themes and plugins, which you can then implement into your website. There is no limitation with WordPress as you have complete control over all of the coding and back-end. With its long history, WordPress has many different resources on the web to help you create pretty much anything you want. Though it is not the easiest website tool out there, it is definitely the most powerful and it is FREE.

Quick Tips:

• Domain Name – Though WordPress is free, you still need to purchase a valid domain name (ex. www.yoursite.com). A domain name is simply purchasing the rights to a specific URL address that your customers can visit your website. You can purchase a domain name from Lyqwid, for example, for as little as $14.99.
• Hosting – To build a website using WordPress you will also need to select a hosting provider. Website hosting is a service provided to store all of your website’s content and deliver/publish it to the web. You can purchase hosting from Lyqwid, for example, for $9.99/mo.
• Themes – A WordPress theme provides all of the front-end styling for your WordPress website and is a very important aspect. You can purchase wordpress themes that come with powerful plugins to customize your website and watch a full WordPress tutorial from the links below.
• Plugins – These are snippets of code that allow you to easily add features to your website such as click-and-drag page editors (Visual Composer), social media icons, contact forms, etc. You can download thousands of plugins for free directly through wordpress or purchase premium plugins from the link below. A lot of valuable plugins can come with the purchase of a theme.
• E-commerce – A great benefit to having WordPress is the ability to add an e-commerce platform plugin called Woocommerce. This application is very powerful and is free to download and install on your WordPress website. Rather than paying an additional $20/mo for some e-commerce website builders, plus transaction fees, you will only be charged a minimal transaction fee per order using Woocommerce.

Additional Resources:

• Browse themes and plugins available from Lyqwid at themeforest.net/?ref=lyqwid
• Watch a Lyqwid tutorial with additional tips at youtube.com/watch?v=J0_Ujk-FSeA

Squarespace

Squarespace is rapidly growing due to its user friendly interface and ease-of-use for beginners starting at $9.99/mo. This platform does have the option to add a store to your website by upgrading to their $26/mo plan. Though it is very limited to what back-end access you have for your website, the drag-and-drop building tool is pretty slick and makes building a clean website quick and easy.

Pros:

Squarespace may seem a little bit expensive. However, you get a free custom domain name and hosting for your website with all of their plans! The drag-and-drop builder makes it easy for beginners and quick edits.

Cons:

Very limited with no access to any of the back-end that can make it difficult to add custom features, security, etc. No control over the domain name if you wanted to transfer your website or add subdomains.

Shopify

Shopify is becoming the go-to platform for e-commerce businesses that sell physical products online. It is a powerful platform that can help you get an online store up and running in minutes. Shopify provides some cool modern themes for stores to use on their website, and it is fairly easy to edit simple aspects of the theme such as color and text, but customizing and adding specific content is a nightmare if you don’t know HTML/CSS. With Shopify being an e-commerce specific platform, they also provide high quality tools for sales metrics, a mobile point-of-sale system (similar to Square), inventory tracking and more.

Pros:

Powerful ecommerce capabilities and many professional themes to select from.

Cons:

Expensive. Harder to add new content to pages without knowledge of HTML/CSS.

Platform Comparison Summary

Start building your website

Don’t be afraid to just dive into it! Once you have strategically selected your web building platform, start by:

• Setting up your web building platform (domain name, hosting, themes, etc.)
• Customizing your theme (colors, font, header/footer)
• Planning and setting up your website navigation (header menu)
• Adding content to each of your pages including a mixture of both text and images
• Publicly launch your website and share it with the world via social media and other media outlets

There are millions of resources out there to help you accomplish building your own website. Video platforms like Youtube have thousands of how-to videos at your disposal that can help you accomplish simple and complex tasks. If you get stuck on something too daunting, reach out to your local community and freelancers around you using resources like Thumbtack or Fivver to complete specific tasks at a much cheaper rate rather than paying a web development company to complete your project from start to finish.

Most importantly, be patient! No one creates a great website overnight. You need to maintain your website consistently by adding new content on a regular basis. This will also help you become more familiar with more specific web elements (e.g., SEO, UI, UX) and make your website more attractive to visitors.

The post Launching a Website on a Budget appeared first on Lyqwid.

First Lets Talk About – Why WordPress?

WordPress has recently claimed that over 25% of all websites on the World Wide Web are running WordPress so you have a valid reason to be considering using WordPress over the other CMS platforms like Joomla, Drupal, Squarespace, Wix, Weebly, etc. WordPress is an open source platform which means that ANYONE can contribute to the development of themes, plugins, and other aspects of the CMS. This enables WordPress to be a very versatile tool because you have access to edit and manipulate ANYTHING on your website. Other CMS platforms (ex. Squarespace) may seem easier to setup and use, however, these platforms have strict limitations on what you can edit, add, and manipulate which could hurt the opportunity for your company or blog to expand. With WordPress, you have the option to self host your website which means that you will have complete access to the raw files of your website and backend access. Let us not forget to mention, WordPress is FREE!

Tip 1 – Do Not Be Scared By Complexity

Yes, WordPress has unlimited amounts of customization options but there are many free or inexpensive tools out there which can make your website very simple to edit. Considering that WordPress is the World’s most popular CMS, there are also unlimited resources and tutorials online to help you accomplish what you need to get done. YouTube is probably the most popular source and gives you access to step by step tutorials on virtually anything you may need help with.

Tip 2 – Select the Best Hosting for Your Website

Having a good hosting provider is critical for the success of your website. For those of you who do not know what hosting is, in a nutshell, hosting is a company who manages servers. These servers store website content and information and push it to the World Wide Web. The typical stats you will see when selecting a hosting package/company are:

• Disk Space (similar to the hard drive space in your iPod or Phone that allows you to store content)
• Bandwidth (amount of traffic your website can handle)
• Server Type – Shared, Virtual Private Server, Cloud, or Dedicated (typically refers to performance and speed)

Though these stats can be very confusing, most NEW websites that are 10-30 pages can usually be hosted for around $10-20. Read reviews on hosting companies and make an educated decision on what is right for you and your website.

Tip 3 – Don’t Be Cheap, Purchase a Theme

I cannot stress this enough! Imagine that the theme of your website is the foundation for your website, and without a solid foundation, your website is going to be very stressful to build upon. Plan to spend approximately $40-60 for a theme but remember that themes typically include very valuable plugins which will end up saving you hours of design and development work. One thing that we look for when purchasing a theme is whether or not it includes a plugin for drag and drop editing. One of the most popular plugins for this is called “Visual Composer” which is included with many themes.

The most popular place to purchase amazing WordPress themes is themeforest.net. Once you go to Themeforest, click on WordPress and then sort the themes by most popular or highest rated and you can make your decision from there. Some of our favorite themes include:

• Jupiter
• X Theme
• Avada
• Bridge

So you don’t have to start from scratch, it may be wise to import the themes demo content so you can use there design layouts as well from the theme. We go over the installation of a theme and installing demo content in our full WordPress tutorial video here http://youtu.be/J0_Ujk-FSeA.

Tip 4 – Utilize Powerful WordPress Plugins

What are WordPress plugins? Plugins are tools that developers around the world have created for you to install on the WordPress platform. There are thousands of plugins available to download directly on your WordPress dashboard and there are many more out on the web that you can find and install. Plugins are specific applications that allow you to achieve a specific task like visually editing the content on a page, increasing your website’s search engine optimization (SEO), adding a Mailchimp newsletter signup form, and much more!

Some of our favorite WordPress plugins include:

• Visual Composer – Click & Drag Page Editor (Purchase on Themeforest)
• Yoast SEO (Easy Search Engine Optimization)
• Slider Revolution – Full Page/Width Custom Slideshow (Purchase on Themeforest)
• PopUp by Supsystic – Popup Newsletter Signup or Message (Available on WordPress)
• Wordfence – Easy Security & Website Protection (Available on WordPress)
• Essentials Grid – Custom Animated Grid Content (Purchase on Themeforest)
• Gravity Forms – Contact Form Plugin (Available on WordPress)
• WooCommerce – Ecommerce Store for WordPress (Available on WordPress)

With so many choices, it is critical that you make sure that the plugins you download and install are trusted plugins. This means pay attention to reviews and the amount of times the plugin has been downloaded. It is wise to download plugins that have a high rating with a significant amount of downloads to verify the plugin is secure and will not harm your website.

Tip 5 – Use the Resources Available to You

Since WordPress is the most popular CMS platform in the world, there are an unlimited number of resources available for you to use to complete a website. An obvious one and one of our favorites would be Youtube. You can find long tutorials that give you step by step instructions on how to make a simple WordPress website or search for instructions on how to use a specific plugin or feature. If you like to read rather than watch, another great resource would be WPBeginner.

If you end up purchasing a theme or plugin like we have suggested, don’t hesitate to contact the developer of the theme/plugin for assistance. With the many websites Lyqwid has created, we often find ourselves reaching out to these developers inquiring about how to use them or optimize them for our websites. Our experience may differ from yours but we have found that the majority of developers are quick to respond to your questions and are happy to help (because you did purchase a product from them)!

Conclusion

Our goal at Lyqwid is to empower creative individuals and give them the tools to create their own amazing WordPress websites. To make things even easier, we offer WordPress hosting for as little as $9.99/mo and are dedicated to making the process as simple as possible for you. Once you have signed up for our service, you will find that we have a WordPress Quickinstall button that instantly installs WordPress on your server space eliminating the hassle most people encounter just installing WordPress. You can also watch our full feature tutorial video that teaches you step by step on how to get started with our hosting, installing themes, and much more. Check it out here http://youtu.be/J0_Ujk-FSeA.

Though WordPress is an amazing tool, it may not be for everyone. Not everyone has creative abilities or the technology savvy to make things function properly and look good. This is where we can come in to play! Contact us for a FREE quote on designing and developing a website for you or your company!

Please like & share this post if you found this helpful!

The post 5 Tips & Tricks for Beginners Making a WordPress Website appeared first on Lyqwid.

What do we mean by CMS (Content Management System)?

A content management system is a platform/software which allows users to more effectively produce and manage content that is directly published on the web. This platform communicates directly with your website’s host to transfer and manage all content from photos, videos, accounts, templates, and more.

WordPress is also an open source program which allows users from around the world to design and develop specific plugins or features that a website needs. There are many talented programmers out there who have developed amazing plugins that can help a website accomplish many things such as:

• Website design templates and ideas to help get ideas rolling
• Website visual editors that enable a beginner to click and drag limited content and design
• Contact forms that collect specific data and allow your clients to message you without leaving the website
• Event registration and calendars
• And much more…

Our personal favorite is the overall simplicity of WordPress and the easy access it gives to our clients. Though you can accomplish almost anything with WordPress, most people do not want to pay a developer/designer to help them add a new product to their store or publish a new blog posting. With WordPress, doing the simple things has never been easier and gives our clients access to a simple and user friendly platform so they have the ability to update and add new content to their website.

As WordPress continues to grow, so does its competition. Competitors such as Squarespace, Weebly, Wix, and even domain providers like GoDaddy are now offering even simpler platforms for designing and developing websites. Don’t forget that WordPress owns 25% of the Internet for a reason. That reason is because WordPress has zero limitations and can be fully customized to accomplish your company’s individual needs. Platforms such as Squarespace create value for consumers due to its similicity and easy learning curve for beginners to create their own websites. Though Squarespace and other similar WordPress competitors offer simplicity, they also have many limitations with designing and developing custom aspects.

Don’t let any of these website creation platforms fool you. Creating a website from scratch is no easy task and requires a lot of expertise and design knowledge. Generating the proper content for your website alone can take days and even months. Contact Arva Solutions today to discuss your project and receive a quote for designing and developing your company’s new website!

The post WordPress Website Design appeared first on Lyqwid.

In the business world, it is largely perceived that in order to achieve success, you have to invent/create something no one has seen before. As this may have been true in the past years, with strategic marketing, those days are over. While there is a strong competitive advantage to having a patent/idea that has never been seen before, we have seen brands like Dr. Dre Beats have zero intellectual property and sell for billions of dollars simply for the brand name.

Here are a few tips on how to effectively communicate to your audience and establish a memorable brand.

Time

A mistake we have seen many entrepreneurs make is losing the motivation due to the lack of immediate response. It is important to keep in mind that NO brand becomes popular overnight. Even the prime example of branding/marketing perfection “Beats by Dre” has been around since 2006. That may not seem like a long time, however, that is close to 10 years of consistent marketing implemented by the brand. You may say their success was due to the famous name found on each package (Dr Dre) and we would not argue this. However, the strategic endorsement deals they landed with some of the world’s best athletes did not come free and were a pivotal reason for their rapid success.

Consistency

In order for a brand to successfully gain recognition in the public eye the brand needs to be consistent with the image it portrays. Social Media and marketing content have become powerful tools to businesses if utilized properly. What we mean by properly, is synchronizing the content you are displaying to the public with similar images and text styles so individuals can tell your brand posted a photo, video, or text without even seeing your brands logo. Consistently posting similar and recognizable content is key to a successful brand strategy and will allow you to acquire active users at a faster rate. Below is an example of Aura Optics social media and the content they consistently post which all has a very similar style.

Content is Key

In order to communicate a powerful brand message, high quality and intriguing content is key. Do NOT underestimate the difficulty/time of producing new high quality content consistently!

Final Thoughts

Remember that your end result is to grow your business and increase brand awareness to the public. Though it takes a long term effort, your brand image is an INVESTMENT! An intangible asset that will follow you from the day you launch to the day you decide to retire and sell your company.

The post Importance of Brand Image appeared first on Lyqwid.

Image credit: Defining UX by Elizabeth Bacon

Getting Started With UX Design

1. Perform a self-assessment

In order to decide how best to tackle your entry into UX design you need to establish a baseline. By understanding where your skills are now you can begin to chart where you want to go. There are several different approaches to performing a self-assessment, we really like Elizabeth Bacon’s model for looking at the big picture of user experience.

Understand, define, and communicate a vast range of fields. You do not need to be an expert in each area above for conversion optimization, but having awareness will allow you to progress to operating at a big picture, strategic level.

2. Educate Yourself

Read, watch, and listen to everything you can get your hands on. There are a ton of great resources either in book form or in online courses. Below is a list of books and online courses to get you started:
UX Books:

• The Elements of User Experience – by Jesse James Garrett
• Killer UX Design – by Jodie Moule
• A Project Guide to UX Design – by Russ Unger and Carolyn Chandler
• The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman
• Undercover User Experience Design by Cennydd Bowles & James Box

UX Courses:

• UX Basics – by Treehouse
• Design User Experience in 7 Simple Steps– by Udemy
• Build An Interactive Website by Treehouse
• Applied Interaction Design – by Lynda.com

3. Get the right tools

While UX Design is more about working with people, having a few tools in your toolbox won’t hurt. As described earlier there area two tasked that are major aspects of UX Design: wireframes and user testing. Both of these require software to do it properly.

• Balsamiq Mockups is one of the more popular wireframe tools.
• Axure RP is also worth looking into as a tool for creating wireframes.
• For recording usability testing, Silverback is worth a look.  However, it only works on Mac.

There are many other tools out there, and for a fairly comprehensive list check out 100+ Awesome Tools for UX Designers.

4. Get some experience

Once you’ve read up on UX, taken a few courses, and played around with some tools, it’s time to put your newly found UX skills to work.  This may mean helping out a friend’s small business, a local non-profit, or tackling a personal project. Most importantly, it’s about getting some experience within your own product, testing different elements and applying it to your conversion optimization efforts.

5. Take Advice

Asking the right questions and using people’s knowledge is key to understanding UX design better. Surrounding yourself with more experienced people in your circle is a great way to get more ideas and learn from others mistakes and success.

There is no perfect path to embarking on designing a new Web flow or site, but following this guide should provide the proper framework to get you started.

What other advice would you give to people who are starting to work on UX design?

Source: http://thenextweb.com/dd/2015/08/12/a-beginners-guide-to-understanding-ux-design/

The post Beginner’s Guide to Understanding UX/UI Design appeared first on Lyqwid.

Doing the work upfront of researching, organizing and saving the most applicable and popular hashtags will save you a ton of time down the road, increase your engagement and help garner new followers.

Protip #2: If you’ve been posting to Instagram for a while and feel like you’ve missed out on all these opportunities to build your audience by using keyword hashtags, fret not. You can still go back and post a comment with your new hashtag keyword lists and watch the likes and followers roll in.

Use The Right Filters

Keyword hashtags aren’t the only thing you should pay attention to. The Instagram community respond to certain photo filters more favorably than others. Using these preferred filters can have an impact on your engagement.

Here are the 10 current most popular filters on Instagram according to Populagram:

1. Normal (No Filter)
2. Valencia
3. Earlybird
4. X-Pro II
5. Amaro
6. Rise
7. Hudson
8. Lo-fi
9. Hefe
10. Sierra

TrackMaven recently did a study on Instagram accounts to see how filters affected engagement and found that Mayfair, no filter and Inkwell drove the most interaction.

More important than the overall Instagram communities favorite filters are your particular audience’s favorite filters. Consider this custom graph which correlates filter usage to engagement from your own Instagram account:

You may want to consider using a scheduling program to schedule your post. For that, you can use a (paid) program like ScheduGram.

Steal Your Competitors Followers

One of the best ways to find and attract new following is by seeking out your closest competitors’ Instagram accounts and engaging with their audience. These people have already shown some level of interest in the products you carry simply by following your competitors’ account.

So how do you effectively steal your competitors’ followers?

You can steal your closest competitors’ followers by engaging with them. There are several ways to engage with Instagram users, and predictably, the more work you put in, the more followers and return engagement you’ll get out of it.

The three types of engagement on Instagram are:

• Follow a user
• Like a photo
• Comment on a photo

I ran an informal test with my business account to see how my competitors’ followers responded to my marketing advances. I targeted the followers of a close, local competitor. Since I know many of his followers would be local, I added my city to my profile to create a greater sense of familiarity between my brand and the people I am targeting.

I began by simply following 100 of my competitor’s followers. Later, I followed another 100 of my competitor’s followers but I also took the time to like one of their photos. Finally, I followed another 100 of my competitor’s followers and commented on one of each of the 100 user’s photos as well as liked that same photo.

Here were the results:

• Follow: 14% followback
• Follow + Like: 22% followback
• Follow + Like + Comment: 34% followback

Although the are many variables and the test was far from scientific, the results were clear. The more you put in and engage with people, the more you’ll get out of it.

Sponsored Posts And Product Reviews

All this optimized posting to your account is great but if you really want to make an impact, you need to post to other, larger accounts in your niche, exposing your brand to a wider audience.

So how do you do that?

First, unlike the tactics above to grow your account this one isn’t free. However, if done correctly, it’s good value.

To get started, you’ll need to make a list of large accounts in your niche. For example, if you sell beauty products, you’ll want to find large accounts from beauty bloggers.

You may already be following these accounts, if not you’ll need to find them. One of the best ways is to use Webstagram and search for some of the closest hashtag keywords you uncovered in the beginning of this post. When you do a search for your keywords, not only will it show you the related keywords, but it also shows you the top Instagram accounts that feature those keywords.

There are a few things to look for in the profiles results:

• Large following – Usually 20k-200k
• An email address in the profile

If there is an email address in the profile, it usually means they’re open to sponsored posts. You’ll want to email them and ask them their sponsored post pricing. In general, I have found the average rate to be around $20-$50 per post, depending on the size of their following. However, if you’re selling an unique and original product, you may also want to consider sending them your product to review and post. The more natural and less advertisement like the image, the greater the engagement and response usually.

Here is a great product placement from Maxim model Ashley Sky that received over 16 thousands likes:

Men’s fashion and accessory startup, Bachelr admittedly used this approach. They paid larger men’s fashion accounts approximately $50 per image to post tasteful images that highlighted some of their products:

The results from the Instagram sponsored post promotion was a flood of traffic to their Instagram account and website, supposedly causing their server to crash.

In a final example, Classified Apparel used the tactic of getting featured on a larger account to jump start their Instagram following. Starting with only 22 followers, they were able to net nearly 3,500 new followers in less than 24 hours. A few months later and they are now sitting at 10,000 followers.

Instagram Tool Roundup

There are hundreds of tools out there that can help you and your Instagram strategy. In this post I mentioned five key ones help you build your audience and engaged them.

• Populagram – Find popular hashtags, filters and people.
• Schedugram – Schedule your Instagram post for the most engaging times.
• IconoSquare – Info, analytics and insights into your account and followers.
• Webstagram – Find the best hashtags for your posts and people for your sponsored posts.

Conclusion

In this post we talked about the most effective ways to use Instagram to build a targeted following, but it’s not always a numbers game. As with any social network, the most successful strategy overall is to be authentic and social.

If used correctly, Instagram can be a highly-targeted, visual advertising channel for your products and brand that can lead to a healthy stream of revenue for your ecommerce business.

Source: https://www.shopify.com/blog/14288561-how-to-build-a-massive-following-on-instagram

The post Best Marketing Tactics for Instagram appeared first on Lyqwid.

Photo credit: YouTube screenshot

3. You want a job that never gets old or repetitive

Because such a large part of today’s marketing is online, your job as a marketer is never the same. Technology is constantly changing. Whether it’s a new social network that is getting attention, a recent change to Google’s search algorithm, or developing content for smart watches, change is part of the job. Your job as a marketer is to always adapt. Rest assured, your job as a marketer will never become repetitive.

4. You go out of your way to figure out how to get more likes on your selfie

When you take a selfie, do you put any thought into it? Do you pay special attention to what caption you put on the photo? Do you figure out the best way to get more likes on your photo? If so, then you are already gaining experience in marketing.

“So much of our personal lives have kind of moved towards technology,” Hassler said. “A lot of people are naturally marketing their own social content without realizing they are marketing.”

He gives the following example question you may have previously asked yourself: “How do I get more hearts on my Instagram for that selfie that I posted last night? … I think everyone has a little bit of a marketing side to them, they just may not realize it.”

Photo credit: Shutterstock

5. You secretly wish you could be Don Draper (AMC’s “Mad Men”)

Turns out you could have a job that is just as exciting as the fictional character. In “Mad Men,” Draper is the creative director for an advertising firm but the work he does is very similar to today’s marketing. If you love the drama and excitement of Draper’s life on the screen, you may want to try it for yourself.

You are on the right path if you find you’d like to step up to the challenge to experience the fast-paced world of marketing. This is one of the only pre-requisites for one to succeed in Market Campus.

Hassler explained that the students at Market Campus include a wide range of goals and personalities. They see those who are specifically interested in a marketing career, business owners wanting to learn skills for promoting their businesses and those who want to travel while they work, among other goals.

6. You read the advertisements while waiting for the Frontrunner

What do you do while waiting for the bus or train? Did you know that there are advertisements on the vehicles? Do you read the ads on the walls and ceilings while riding into work?

According to Hassler, those who have an interest in print and billboard advertising can usually transfer easily to digital marketing and enjoy the opportunities it has to offer as well.

Photo credit: Shutterstock

7. You love money

According to a recent Moz survey, the average marketing salary is around $73,000. After 5-10 years of experience it is very realistic to be making a six-figure income. Whether it’s a billion-dollar tech company or a smart taco shop, every company needs to be online and needs marketers to get them there. This is why we are seeing such a huge growth in job opportunities for marketers.

Marketing continues to see a rise in starting salaries with a 3.9 percent increase this past year according to Workopolis.

8. You would love a career where you can work while you travel

“This is one of those careers where everything is based online,” Hassler said. “You can get your job done either at home in your vacation home in Hawaii, as long as you have an internet connection. Not every company is like that obviously, but the field is moving very quickly that way.”

If travel is something that you really enjoy, there are many marketing jobs that provide traveling opportunities.

9. The second you hear about a new social network you download the app

Be honest with yourself. How many social networks do you belong to? Are you on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, Pinterest, or any of the many other social networking sites?

If you enjoy networking sites, you may also enjoy a marketing career.

10. Your mind is flooding with ideas all day

If you are constantly coming up with new ideas or if you enjoy figuring out solutions to problems, then you are already preparing for a career in marketing.

According to Hassler, these are the types of people who do very well in marketing because they will be responsible for coming up with concepts for their projects.

Photo credit: Shutterstock

11. You consider yourself a creative person, but also love digging into data

In an article from marketingcareerszone.com it states, “Creativity is clearly an advantage in many different marketing careers.” Whether it is creating an advertisement, pitching a product, working with clients, or any of the other facets of a marketing career, creativity is very important.

“You do have to be a creative person to be a marketer, obviously, because you are responsible for coming up with a creative campaign that’s going to make people smile or somehow emotionally connect with the product or the message,” Hassler said.

The fun doesn’t stop at coming up with a great idea but continues as you figure out the “hows” and “whens” of implementing that idea. Marketing ends up being a beautiful combination of left-brain and right-brain.

If you find that most if not all of these traits can be applied to you, you may want to stop just thinking about the ideas you have and start on a path to make that dream a reality. Market Campus is a great first step for someone who is interested in a career in marketing.

The post 11 Signs you may be prepared for a career in marketing appeared first on Lyqwid.

Website & Social Media Foundation

2. Already have a foundation for the company established. This means to have all of your resources lined up and ready to go before you launch your campaign. Individuals like to see legitimacy so they can establish trust and back your product. To do this, make sure that you have a basic yet professional website up and running for your audience to communicate with your company. Once you have a professional website being hosted, start to establish your social media audience by building active followers who will engage and share your campaign. Verify that all channels of distribution and manufacturing are ready to go so you do not have any delays fulfilling your expectations.

Strategic Marketing & Advertising

3. A strategic marketing plan for the FIRST DAY and the rest of the time is critical to inform the world about your campaign. Aquire a lot of graphic designs for advertising purposes and create a budget to spend on Facebook advertising. Educate your current audience beforehand that you are launching your campaign and get as many people as possible to share your video on the FIRST DAY. I stress the first day because once the world sees your campaign is successful in the first day, it will place trust in their hearts to back you since everyone else is doing it!

Reach your goal quick!

4. Set your goal for as low as you can! Once your campaign has reached 100% funded, the world goes crazy and the money starts to poor in. Your goal should not to be able to raise $10,000 in 30 days, it should be to raise $20,000 in the first 24 hours. If you can double your minimum goal on the first day, your campaign is bound to raise more than you could have even imagined!

We understand that individuals who launch crowdsourcing campaigns usually do not have any money to invest into a video, marketing, website, ext. If you have a good idea and no money, shoot us a email/call and we can talk about providing these services with ZERO upfront costs and pay us after you raise the big bucks!

– Arva Solutions

The post Kickstarter – Tips & Suggestions for a Successful Campaign appeared first on Lyqwid.