Content Marketing: 55 Proven Ways to Help Your Business

Are you discontent with the number of customers your website or Facebook page refer to you? With just a few tricks, you can boost the visits and enhance your sales. 

Here’s how your business can benefit from the following content marketing techniques:

Firstly, it’s about the content you’re delivering. 90% of the customers are visual, so it’s essential to have more than just wordy articles on your page, no matter how valuable the information.

Infographics are 30 times more likely to be read through by a visitor than any other type of content. Furthermore, they are shared and liked three times more than plain text. They generate 45% more traffic, and 95% more views than posts that lack relevant images.

Videos are the second-best choice of content. Not only did Syndacast forecasted that by the end of 2017, video content will represent 74% of all online traffic, but the users who follow a video are 1,81% more likely to buy the product than those who don’t. It is also a great SEO tool, increasing your search engines’ ranking by 50%.

Blogs are another business booster – there are 2 million articles posted every day, and are seen as 5^th the most trusted source of online information. 81% of those who take advantage of using a blog have reported a 67% growth in leads. However, to increase your chances of getting customers via your blog, you need to post constantly (at least once a week).

Apart from blogs, emails are another great channel to send your offers and promotions. In fact, 72% of consumers prefer receiving emails with promotional content rather than searching for it.

Moreover, email is the first choice for 93% of the marketers, and it is used by 81% of the companies. It is 40 times more effective at bringing new customers than Facebook or Twitter, and there are sent over 200 million emails every minute!

Nonetheless, social media remains a reliable channel to deliver your services and products. When it comes to B-2-B marketers, 94% are on LinkedIn, which is considered most trustworthy site for professional domains. If we’re referring to B-2-C, 94% of the marketers are on Facebook.

And that is a strong point of view. Just think about it – no matter what we do, we’re still checking our Facebook newsfeed at least once a day. In the last 2 years, the content consumption has increased by 57%. This means that there are over 500 million people who watch at least one video every day on Facebook. What other way to promote yourself if not where everybody is already?

As a matter of fact, 1/3 of the world uses social media regularly. This means over 2 billion people that can instantly access and order whatever it is you're selling!

For this reason, if you’re thinking about using a website, go for the .com extension. It is easy to recognize, it costs least of all extensions, and it is among 84% of the top-ranking pages in search engines’ results. Sounds like a great deal to us!

30 Tools That No Designer Can Live Without

Designers are extremely busy people. Fact. Not only do they have to make time to find inspiration for their next project, manage feedback, attend meetings, and communicate with their clients, they also have to find the time to actually sit down and do the work.

Let’s not forget the time and effort they have to put into mocking up an idea, creating a visual for sharing or keeping abreast of modern design trends. The role of a designer is so much more than just ‘colouring in’.
To ease the workload of time-poor designers, we’ve compiled a comprehensive list of the best software, apps, tools, skills, websites and resources that no designer can live without. Each of these tools has been carefully selected for its ability to help you streamline your work, find inspiration easily, show off your amazing design skills, and make collaboration easier.

We’ve broken the guide down into the 10 key areas so you can instantly find what you’re looking for — you are busy people after all. Check it out and feel free to let us know if we’ve missed any off the list.

Hardware

If you’re serious about design, there are some essential pieces of kit you will need. We have listed the top 3 pieces of hardware for designers below.

iMac or MacBook

Strictly speaking, now that most design software is available on both PC and Mac, it doesn’t particularly matter which platform you choose. However, the Mac’s pedigree, its powerful and intuitive OS and its built-in support for design peripherals make it the overwhelming favourite for design professionals. Did we mention they also look great in any creative workspace?
Your choice of desktop (iMac) or laptop (MacBook Pro & MacBook Air) will obviously depend on whether you will be travelling a lot, or indeed whether you like to work from home or in coffee shops. If you prefer to be flexible, we would always recommend the MacBook.

DSLR Camera

You may not always want to use your own photography in your design work, but it’s definitely worthwhile having a good DSLR camera on hand so you can easily document ideas and capture images to use for textures, backgrounds and more.
One of the most widely used DSLR cameras is the Canon EOS 1200D, predominantly for its relatively low cost and its ability to deliver 18MP images.

Moleskine

With all this technology available, you still can’t beat good old fashioned pen and paper to brainstorm ideas and concepts. So why not do it in style and treat yourself to a decent sketchbook from Moleskine or Field Notes? Keep it in your bag so you can quickly jot down ideas wherever you are.

Research Tools

Now that we’ve taken a look at some fantastic pieces of hardware, you’ll need to get your creative juices flowing.  In this next section, we’ve compiled a list of some of the best resources available that will help you to get inspired.

Dribbble

Dribbble is billed as “show and tell for designers”. In a nutshell, it is the premier resource for discovering and connecting with designers around the globe. Designers can upload images and GIFs (or “shots” as they are referred to on Dribbble) and other users can ask questions, provide feedback, and debate a designer’s visual choices.

Computer Arts Subscription

Ever since its inaugural issue back in 1995, Computer Arts has been the go-to magazine for anyone into graphic design. Each and every issue is jam-packed with advice, opinion, recent projects and an abundance of inspiration, making it an invaluable resource for any creative professional. If that wasn’t enough, you can also get your fill of Computer Arts Magazine in print, a fully-interactive iPad edition or both.

Niice

Niice is a fantastic tool for gathering ideas and expressing your ideas faster. Its highly intuitive drag and drop interface allows you to create mood boards in a matter of minutes. You also have access to a private personal space where you can collect images and inspiration without worrying about them showing up in public searches.

Layout Tools

Unfortunately, no one has yet to develop a tool that will design a layout for you. However, there are some tools that can help make the process easier.

Modularscale

One of the most common challenges for any web design project is determining accurate ratios for font sizes. This is where Modularscale comes into its own. This app helps you to decide on accurate ratios for your font sizes, as well as providing CSS font size codes for when you have to copy and paste into a stylesheet.

Responsify

Online grid generators are extremely handy for custom responsive HTML/CSS templates and Responsify is arguably the best of the bunch. Key features include the ability to generate your own grid, or even use these grids as a reference so you can create your own from scratch. You can also use Responsify as a great visualisation tool to better understand the use of white space between columns and page content.

Golden Ratio Calculator

Although not necessarily a new innovation in the world of design (it is almost 2,400 years old after all), the golden ratio is found almost everywhere in nature and it applies to design composition as well. It states that “two elements are in perfect harmony when measured to the ratio of 1:1.618”.
Obviously, you don’t need to achieve this ratio for every single relationship in your design work, but understanding it’s value as a timeless design fundamental is certainly worthwhile. This handy calculator should help you to calculate and scale the golden ratio for any workspace.

Branding Tools

A logo is a visual representation of what your company stands for and therefore acts as the “face” of your business. This makes them a fantastic way of promoting your brand both on- and off-line, and a fantastic way of standing out from your competition. Unfortunately, getting them right can be tricky.
If you’re struggling with your branding, we’ve compiled a list of high quality logo creation tools to help you create your brand.

Spaces

Spaces is a fantastically simple to use tool for creating striking logos in a matter of minutes. All you need to do is input your company name and use a few keywords to describe what it does, and Spaces will automatically generate hundreds of relevant logos. You also have the option to make minor alterations such as colours and typography to create a design that truly reflects your brand.

GraphicSprings

Another powerful logo creation tool is GraphicSprings. In fact, it’s probably the most powerful on our list, which is mainly down to the sheer number of customisations and alterations you can make. One of the most useful features is the option to categorise possible logos based on your business type, such as food and drink, sports and abstract. If that wasn’t enough, you can also hire one of GraphicSprings’ in-house designers to create an entirely custom logo for you.

A Pen and Paper

Although we have included a few handy tools for logo creation in this section, most designers would argue that the most important tool a designer could use to create a logo would be pencil and paper. This is because your idea has to come from an initial thought process, which is then roughed out using a pencil and paper. Unfortunately, going straight to the computer can remove this critical thought process. Once you have your rough idea, you can then use software to fully flesh out your logo designs.

Typography Tools

Typography is one of the most challenging yet rewarding parts of any design process. Not only do you have to choose a suitable typeface, you also need to decide on appropriate line spacing, height, point size and so much more. Getting your typography right will make your design work more powerful, more readable, and generally much more effective. If you’re still not convinced by the power of typography, a recent study revealed that people are significantly more likely to agree with statements that are written in Baskerville than in Comic Sans or Helvetica.

Typewolf

Typewolf was launched in 2013 as a response to a general “lack of good resources for choosing fonts for design projects”. Everything about Typewolf has been meticulously approached from a designer’s perspective, most notably the ability to see how real type performs on actual websites as opposed to endless lines of “lorem ipsum”.

Typekit

Typekit is a subscription-based font service that curates thousands of fonts from a range of high-quality foundry partners into one library. This makes it perfect for simple browsing, use in presentations or on the web. It’s an endless source of typographic inspiration.

Typecast

Typecast is a tool for designers that provides accurate and standards-based typography on the web. You have over 23,000 web fonts at your disposal, allowing you to combine and compare looks side-by-side. You can also expand your type pairs into fully scaled, web-ready, kerned and colourised stacks of real content thanks to effortlessly simple visual controls.

Colour Scheme Tools

In the highly unlikely event that you have carved yourself a niche in creating nothing other than monochrome designs, at some point in your design life you will need to work with colour. Thankfully, we’ve gathered together some fantastic tools to help you perfect your colour choices.

Mudcube Colour Sphere

Although not the most glamorous of names, the Mudcube Colour Sphere is an extremely useful colour resource tool for designers. It’s allows you to build up a colour scheme from one chosen shade, while also providing you with the hex numbers for each colour.

Pictaculous

Pictaculous is a fantastic tool from the makers of MailChimp. It allows you to upload any image and Pictaculous will automatically generate a colour scheme from the colours within the picture.

COLOURlovers

COLOURlovers acts less like a colour selection tool, and more like a Pinterest board for colour. It’s a community designed solely for the sharing and appreciation of colours, palettes and patterns. It is a superb source of colour and palette inspiration.

Photography Tools

VSCO Cam

VSCO Cam is both a powerful photo-editing app and a way of connecting with amazing photographers from around the world. It comes with a range of great performance features, including a plethora of pre-set filters and multiple high resolution imports. It will also show you before and after comparisons of your photos so you can show how you built up your edits.

PicLab HD

PicLab HD from MuseWorks is a nifty little app that enables you to quickly and easily layer text over your photos using attractive typefaces. All you need to do is choose an existing photo from your library or take a new photo, then work your magic. Although at face value the app seems pretty straightforward, there are actually a wide range of powerful features under the hood. You have a range of fonts at your disposal, as well as complete control over positioning, size, opacity and colour. If that wasn’t enough, you can also layer illustrations and other design elements on top of your image.

PicMonkey

PicMonkey is a really useful tool for sprucing up your blog post images without the need for Photoshop. PicMonkey lets you intuitively add borders, text, additional graphics, and re-colour your images without the need to download other software.

Illustration Tools

The iPad can be a fantastic design tool to have at your disposal, especially if you also have a good stylus. You can sketch out ideas while on the move, or create a piece from start to finish. Even better, there are a range of powerful apps that can help designers make the most out of their tablet. Here, we’ve highlighted the ones that are definitely worth downloading.

Paper by FiftyThree

Paper is a stunningly designed sketchbook app that is perfect for sketching up designs and doodling on the move. It utilises something called an “expressive ink engine”, which basically means that even when you’re using your finger to draw in the app, it reacts to your movements so the lines generated are reflective of a more natural sketching experience. You can also send pages from the Paper app directly via email, or even publish them straight to Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr.

Astropad Graphics Tablet

One of the main benefits of the Astropad Graphics Tablet is that it works as both an iPad app and a corresponding Mac app, effectively turning your iPad into a graphics tablet. This nifty feature allows you to use your iPad to draw directly into Photoshop or any of the other design applications on your Mac.

Adobe Illustrator Draw

Adobe Illustrator Draw gives you the ability to draw vector illustrations on your phone or tablet — but that’s just the tip of the iceberg! There is also a wide range of other tools to make your job even easier. You will also be able to draw perfect lines and curves, incorporate images from multiple sources and enjoy a 50-level undo & redo feature.

Presentation Tools

You might not think it but your presentation skills are as important as your design skills. In fact, a sloppy presentation of your design project could mean rejection. Thankfully, there is a wide range of presentation tools that will help to avoid “death by PowerPoint” and allow you to show your work at its best.

Prezi

Prezi is an extremely innovative online presentation tool, which lets you incorporate videos, images and text, and animate them using a wide range of effects. It also allows you to run your presentations as executable files, as well as supporting all the main desktop and mobile platforms. Even better, the final presentations can be shared directly from the app across all major social networks.

Placeit

Although not a fully-fledged presentation-creation tool, PlaceIt is extremely useful for showing lifestyle images of your designs in action. Simply upload your designs and they will be placed directly into Creative Commons-enabled stock photo templates, bringing your work to life.

Visme Presenter

This free tool is an all-in-one application for creating dazzling presentations using a range of intuitive drag-and-drop options. If you’re running low on creativity, there are also a number of beautiful presentation templates that you can tinker with and adapt to your heart’s content. One of its key features is its speed and flexibility, as well as the ability to access your presentations anywhere on any device.

Working Environment

It goes without saying that the spaces you occupy help to shape who you are and how you behave. This can also have a knock-on effect on your creativity and productivity. As a designer, you will invariably spend years working in the same room, or indeed at the same desk. Therefore, it makes sense to create a workspace that is conducive to your requirements.

A Comfortable Chair

Pulling an all-nighter to meet a tight deadline is a rite of passage for a designer. On top of that, the demand for designers to work long hours in general means that you will be spending a lot of time sat in your chair. This means that it is important that you have the right one. For the crème de la crème of seating options, go for the Herman Miller Aeron chair, which offers ergonomic comfort and adapts naturally to your body and seating position. It’s also pretty darn stylish. A word of warning: some models cost over £900.

A Good Desk

Even if you have a good chair, sitting down all day can be pretty bad. However, no one wants to be standing up all day either, despite the current chatter about standing desks. Why not have the best of both worlds and invest in an adjustable desk? The Varidesk Pro sits on top of your existing desk, which you can then lift up to a standing position in a few steps. When you want to return back to a seating position, simply reverse the process and you can sit in your seat again. The slightly high price point is nothing when you compare it to the health benefits. Your back and your feet will thank you!

A Good Pair of Headphones

A pair of over-ear headphones can be seen as the modern-day version of the thinking cap. They allow you to achieve zen-like focus, making them ideal for your commute or buckling down at your desk. For the ultimate in focus, the Master & Dynamic MH40 over-ear headphones are designed to cancel out each and every noisy work distraction. They are also way too cool to leave in your bag – give them pride of place on your desk or wherever else you find your inspiration.

New Tools to Look Out For In 2016

A recent survey into the popularity of design tools showed that Photoshop is slowly losing its popularity among designers. This suggests that designers will always be open to new tools, providing they make the design process easier. In the section below, we’ve highlighted three trending design tools you should try in 2016.

Ceros

Ceros is a new tool for content creation that is perfect for designers and marketers alike. Using this tool, you will be able to create a range of engaging interactive content, including the likes of magazines, microsites, infographics, eBooks, banners and much more.

UXPin

Although not necessarily a new tool – UXPin is currently used by thousands of designers around the globe. UXPin recently announced that they are working on a complete overhaul of their collaborative wireframe and prototype tool, which looks very promising indeed. Thankfully, you can sign up to the waiting list now to get notified about the release.

Fuse

Fuse is an intuitive UX tool suite for both app developers and designers. One of Fuse’s key features is the ability to create and update the look and feel of native apps in real-time on multiple devices at the same time. The downside is that it’s only currently available for Windows and OS X users.
So there you have it. Hopefully this guide has pointed you in the direction of a few more design tools that can help you streamline your work, find inspiration more easily, show off your amazing design skills and make collaboration easier. Get in touch if you think we’ve missed anything off this list!


Did you find this guide helpful? Why not pass it on to your friends by sharing on social media or downloading our handy PDF!

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Google Analytics - a beginner's guide

Google Analytics is a pretty handy tool for online businesses. (And regular businesses who happen to have websites.) Put simply, it tracks all the lovely people who visit your website, and translates the information into a bucketload of graphs, charts (not least of which is the fabulous pie chart. Mmm, pie) and other exciting information, in order to help you get the best out of your website.

What does it do?

Essentially, Google Analytics provides with all the information you could ever want about how people interact with your website. It tells you things such as:

How they got to your website – was it by referral from another site, a Google search for a keyword your site ranks well for, or did they blammo your URL straight into the address bar?

What they did when they got to your site – did they stay long? Or did they click off almost immediately after arriving (which is indicated by a high “bounce rate”). Which pages did they visit? Are they new visitors or have they been here before?

A little more information on the people who visit – such as what country they're from, and even what city. Which browser did they use? Were they on a mobile device? It can even tell you which service provider they use and what operating system they're on. And the screen resolution they used to view your website – can't forget that!

In short, Google Analytics gives you lots and lots of information that you can use to your advantage.

What can you do with it?

You can use it to help figure which are your most successful pages (and with a bit of brain work, perhaps you can figure out why). You can use it to analyse the heaviest sources of traffic to your site – so you can then go all out maximising those sources' potential, or you can focus on sadder, lonelier sources that need a little more attention (do you need to put more effort into your keyword research? Or do you need to start plastering guest posts all over the web to get those referral links?).
Once you've gotten to grips with Google Analytics, you can really start taking advantage of its capabilities.
You run a business, so you're almost certainly interested in conversions (and if you're not, how are you still in business?). Google Analytics allows you to track and analyse conversions, letting you see what's working and what's not.

For example, you can set goals that allow you to measure how well your site is doing in certain areas, such as how many people visit your “thanks for registering!” page (so you know how many people are signing up to your email list successfully -- and, more importantly, if there's a problem that's stopping them), or how many people are actually downloading that free ebook you've got slapped up on your site.

Google Analytics is a vital tool for all businesses with a website. And best of all, it's free, so it'd be well worth your time to take an afternoon to get to grips with it and install it on your site. You'll be tracking conversions and figuring out to increase your sales in no time!

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How to Get Your Social Media Pumping in 4 Ways

Now that you’re done with your latest, greatest project for your blog or social media, you feel that you’re ready to share it with the world. You’re also ready for all the comments and followers you’re going to get. But before that happens, what are you going to do? Will you just wait for things to fall into place? Will success come? Will anyone be reading your posts at all?

Now maybe the doubts are starting to set in. But doubting is certainly not what you should do while waiting to launch your blog. So what should you be doing? Let’s look at four tips to consider before the great launch. 

  

Sincerity Can Go A Long Way

Sincerity is the first tip to consider before all the other tips that will follow, a kind of “pre-tip” before the tips. The thing about social media is that it’s not about the “do this” or “don’t dothat” advice. Some people can tweet and post about the same links about current events or business news and get like say, ten times a day and see great results. Some, however, just share about what they eat for breakfast and get a thousand enthusiastic followers. So there’s really no clear-cut line about what should and shouldn’t be done.

The difference between the two are stark, but they are common with two things: sincerity and a little moderation. When people see that you are genuine, and you yourself are having fun with your activities, people tend to appreciate that, too and even forgive the occasional over-indulgence. The most important thing to remember is that you should believe in what you’re doing and the reasons why you’re doing it, whatever they may be. If you like sharing about business hacks, recipes, or just sharing your happiness to everyone through funny cat videos, mean it. That’s it. You just have to mean it. 

 

Participate, Participate, and Participate Some More

Are you already famous? Is a professional handling all of your social media accounts? If yes, then maybe you can skip this part. If not, then read on. The first word in social media is “social,” yes, that’s obvious enough, but don’t take that for granted. When you create an account in every platform, you can’t just expect magic to happen and gain all the likes, follows, and favorable comments. The exception is that you’re already famous with a steady stream of fans lining up to comment on the latest photo of your dog.

Focus your efforts on making the time to interact with yourfollowers or would-be followers. Time is the primary investment here. They have to know they’re talking to another human being, and that you can reply to their queries in the quickest time possible. It’s way better to give some quality time on one social network that just keep throwing links at all of them. If you’re good and solid in one social network, you actively participate in; that can already give you desirable results. 

   

Make a Pre-Announcement

So you’ve got your post scheduled, and you’re itching to publish it, why not share your excitement with your followers? Even if the link isn’t available yet, you can let them know that you’ve got something new, and it will be coming soon enough.

Tweet about it, post a note about it or provide a quick overview. Intrigue your readers. Again for this to work, consider the first tip. You have to mean it. Don’t be spammy. Just send the word out that you’ve got something new to offer soon. Be sincere, be yourself, people would love that. 

  

Produce a Teaser

In the same way that movies produce short versions of theirmovies to entice the audience, you can do the same for your content. Be a tease to your followers. You can take a couple of the best bits of your content and pre-release them. The trick is to give your audience something of value, no matter how small it may be. But don’t overdo it. Make sure not to give out all of your good bits in your previews. Leave them wanting for more and satisfy them with your full content. 

  

Takeaway 

If doing all these tips at once seems daunting, don’t fret, you can always fall back on tip number one, and you’ll do just fine. Little by little, you can incorporate the other tips into your social media routine. Be sincere, love what you do, share something of value, and people will appreciate that and would want to keep on reading. Keep them interested and wanting for more. Social media success is a reflection of you. If you look like you don’t care at all, do you think anyone else will? If you’re excited about what you do every day, why not share it?

Author Bio

Nicolas Finet is the Co-founder of http://www.sort-list.co.uk - an online marketing agency that helps you to find the best partners to brand your company. He earned his master's degree at Solvay Business School and graduated as Cum Laude in Business Engineering (management) with a Major in Marketing.