While we often regard Google's search algorithm as mysterious and unknowable, the answers to how to improve your site rankings are outlined in Google's Quality Raters Guidelines. This document contains nearly two hundred pages of clear-cut rules and examples of what a webmaster should do to improve the quality of every web page that they own.

In this document, we want to simplify these guidelines and help readers understand: what are Google's quality content guidelines and what you can do to start upgrading your site quality and score for improved rankings on search engine results pages.

What Are Google Quality Raters Guidelines?

Google's Search Quality Rating Program requires raters selected by their team to review and score every website that appears in Google search results.

The Quality Raters Guidelines provide the fundamental rules and expectations of what on-page content should provide, how to provide a quality user experience and the types of harmful or misleading content that need to be avoided. The purpose for doing this is to ensure that a website represents the people in your language and rating locale and provides helpful original information.

The entire rulebook exists for both Google's internal use as well as for public review in an effort to create a better internet for all users. It covers everything a website owner needs to know including webpage content guidelines, recommended URL and site layout rules, factors for grading reputation and authority, and how to properly implement ad content.

Who Selects Google's Quality Raters?

Google generally hires its quality raters sometimes directly, but often through third-party agencies. Because AI technology is not sophisticated enough to safely and accurately review all websites, the company still requires human interaction to finalize its quality ratings.

Those hired receive training on the quality guidelines. They will receive a wide variety of queries, perform a Google search, and begin the process of grading ranked websites for quality and relevancy to the original searched term or phrase. However, they do not do this entirely on their own, as they receive support from Google's online tools to help maintain accuracy and consistency throughout the scoring process.

Quality rating is a never-ending, ongoing process that sees raters from all over the world assessing websites relevant to their language and location.

What Should an SEO Know About Google's Quality Raters Guidelines?

Now that we understand why the guidelines exist and who enforces them, we need to look at what information an SEO should extract from the document. Below, we'll dive into some of the key takeaways that you should be mindful of when performing SEO work for your own website or for a client:-

1. Focus on the Principles of E-A-T

EAT is an acronym that stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. Google considers these principles to be some of the most important factors when assigning a website a quality ranking score. These impact every aspect of the content you produce both directly and indirectly.

You can implement EAT signals throughout your website in a variety of ways. For starters, your company's About page should provide users with a clear understanding of what your company provides, who provides the products or services, and what makes those individuals qualified to be experts in that particular industry. By providing a history of experience, government-issued licenses or certifications, and/or degrees issued by an educational institution, quality raters can assume that the content on your site is much more likely to be accurate and factual.

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There are also many industries that face additional scrutiny from Google in this area. These are known as YMYL (Your Money, Your Life) sites that deal with areas of life such as health, medicine, finances, business, and the news. While all misinformation is harmful, misleading unsuspecting users in these areas can prove particularly harmful, which is what Google wants to avoid. They have a built-in obligation to play their part in managing the distribution of false, clickbaity, or misleading data.

Every page of your website including blog articles will be judged with EAT in mind by a rater. Their goal is to determine the purpose of the page (if there is one), the expertise and authority level of the content creator, and how trustworthy the content and the creator are. The level of expertise required for grading relies heavily on the topic being discussed. For example, a page discussing rumors about the latest release from a musical artist bears less weight than a page offering explicit medical advice to sick individuals. For a clearer picture, Google provides these examples:

An important item to take away from these examples is “high-quality content,” otherwise referred to as “High-Quality MC.” The definition for this varies depending on the nature and purpose of the page/site.

For news, high-quality MC consists of original reports that are in-depth, investigative and require significant time and skill to produce. It includes a list of primary and secondary sources and meets all professional journalistic standards.

For art, the material is original and produced by one or more talented creators. The art produced requires a significant level of skill and time investment.

For general, informational sites, the content should be accurate, clear, and professionally presented. It should represent the expert consensus and not deviate to unsubstantiated or false claims. The criteria for what constitutes expert consensus varies depending on the subject matter. In all cases, the material must be accurate and easy-to-understand, while meeting all expected standards for that field.

Regardless of the content you write, but particularly if you are YMYL, focus on supplying a healthy amount of EAT indicators throughout the site. This can include mentioning not only the author's name but providing a brief summary of their qualifications and experience with the subject matter. Provide citations and sources for researched information and link to any referential websites whenever applicable. Post licenses or certifications somewhere on the site such as the footer, which is always visible. Finally, avoid posting any claims that are not widely accepted as factual. If this is unavoidable, take care to make it abundantly clear that this information is still under scientific and professional scrutiny.

2. Know What Constitutes as Low-Quality Content

While we've reviewed what satisfies EAT and high quality, it can be useful to know what Google raters see as low-quality content. Here is a brief summary of what the document states.

Low-quality content is any material that fails to demonstrate the appropriate level of expertise, authority, or trustworthiness. In addition to this, the content features exaggerated, unsubstantiated, or outright false claims that can easily be disproved with industry research. Finally, a low-quality page features a very low amount of content on page regardless of how factual or well-written it may be.

What can add to your low-quality score is having a reputation for providing unreliable or false information. This means that a competent article can be brought down by having a history of low-quality content associated with the website. Another attribute of low-quality content is any content that is clouded or distracted by direct advertisements. In other words, your blog content is not necessarily the place to push your latest sales promotion when trying to provide helpful, informational material.

Low-quality content is also any material that is plagiarized. Plagiarized content is not original, provides no unique value to users that can't be found elsewhere, and steals clicks away from the true creator. This does not apply to licensed copy on your site. For example, if multiple eCommerce stores distribute and sell the same brand-name product, a mandated product description does not necessarily register as duplicated content. All other content must contain thoughts that are original to the writer.

Finally, do not write or promote content on the site that is harmful to one's self or to others. This could include depictions of graphic violence or gore, pornography, drug use, hateful or pointed content, or anything that trivializes traumatic events. Website owners have a responsibility to provide fair, worthwhile experiences for every user regardless of their age, race, experience, capabilities, religion, or mental status.

3. Ensure That Content Matches the User Intent Behind the Keyword

Google's search algorithm gets better every day at understanding the context and intent behind a search query. This is important as we often utilize unclear search terms. The search intent can also have more than one meaning depending on the person and the area of the world they are located in. You can find this in Part 2 of the Guidelines or section 12.0.

For an SEO, it's easy to go after keywords with easy competition and high search volume. However, it's essential that the content you create for those keywords matches the search intent. Google stresses the importance of user search intent and motivations can change over time. An example the document provides is how the term “apple” can apply to a company, a location, a food, and a person. The intent behind the search and what other supplementary terms they may use in their search can help dictate what type of content will suit their needs.

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In most cases when creating content, the intent will be self-evident based upon where you are. However, since your content needs to communicate with a search algorithm, it's important to ensure that you're always focused on the search intent behind the keyword. This helps your webpage to appear only in the most relevant search results, which can earn you a higher quality score overall.

4. Manage Your Online Reputation with Customers

If Google quality raters were left to create a score for your brand based upon the content on your own website, the chances are that most websites would receive a great score. After all, why wouldn't you want to boast yourself as authoritative or trustworthy online when you're trying to build a following and close sales? Thankfully, your website is not the only source of information about your brand.

Reputation management is a vital part of your marketing and SEO strategy in the digital world. The more you interact with users around the world, the more opportunities others will have to write reviews, provide testimonials, or even create content about their experience with your brand.

Quality raters look to your history with others to gain a more clear assessment of your EAT indicators. They are not only looking to see how many stars you earn out of five on average, but also at what users comment on in their testimonials. A two-out of a five-star rating doesn't look great, but mentions of poor customer service, scams, or otherwise dishonest behavior are what corroborate the information for the final assessment. This can also work in the favor of the brand if they are ever subject to dishonest reviews or “review bombing,” when other information points to the contrary in regard to your reputation.

You can boost your score by being an active participant when it comes to your business reputation online. Take efforts to list your company on directory websites such as Google My Business, Yelp!, or Yellow Pages. You submit your company's information such as an address, phone number, and email, and the directory acts as an additional source to connect with your brand. Your willingness to provide platforms for customers to leave their honest feedback will help you both at the customer level and among those rating your site.

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Brands can also boost their reputation score by sharing a social proof on their website, product pages, and social media pages. Particularly with the latter, raters can see how your team interacts with followers in real-time. All of this will not only help your SEO directly but will provide a more coherent picture of how well your brand adheres to EAT. If you have a high rating, show willingness to resolve customer issues, and have a strong history of personal interactions, you can count on your site score being graded higher.

5. Review What Peers Think of Your Site or Brand

In addition to what your customers think, peers in your industry can also have a positive or negative impact on your brand reputation. This is primarily communicated through backlinking, a popular SEO strategy that networks reputable brands through high-quality content and sharing.

Whenever a website meets Google's guidelines, they receive a high-quality website score. Therefore, they are seen as trusted and reputable in regard to the material they post and share with audiences. When a trusted site chooses to share content from another site or link back to the source, they are referencing their earned trust and authority to the new website. Because users trust the original website, it can be safe to assume that the new website is worthy of trust, also.

This is the primary reasoning behind backlinking strategies for SEO. By acquiring a list of healthy backlinks, you can augment your own site score and search rankings. However, this also works the other way whenever sites with poor scores and reputation backlink to your site. This is unfortunately a common occurrence as it was once a black-hat SEO strategy to spam links on pages with low-quality content in order to accrue backlinks. In these instances, it's your responsibility to identify these domains, request that these links be removed, or submit a disavow request to Google.

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On the same note, if high-scoring websites are adding your domain to their disavow list, this is an indication that the content on your site is not up to standard. High-ranking websites do not want to see their score harmed by low-quality sites, so a disavow pointed at your domain is a sign that you and your brand do not satisfy EAT indicators.

6. Ensure Your Website is Functional and Responsive

This begins to deviate slightly from the on-page text, but still plays a significant role in how your website is scored. The ability to readily access and consume the content on your website is just as important as the content itself. If your webpage contains broken links to sources, broken video players, or an image that's no longer available, this will harm your quality score.

This applies to mobile browsing experiences as well as desktop ones. Google has outright stated that mobile-friendliness will boost the ranking of a website over those who are not mobile-friendly. Thankfully, they also provide a free tool that can check any domain for mobile responsiveness, existing errors, and how to correct them. For feedback on how to improve general site errors or site speed, you can also use free tools like Google PageSpeed Insights and Google Search Console.

Taking the time to address the errors listed by these will improve your site's performance in all areas. Not only is Google's goal to fill the information with high-quality information, but it is to ensure that all users can access that data at any time regardless of the device used or connectivity.

7. Avoid Using Invasive or Obstructive Ads

Pages that utilize obstructive or invasive ads are also detrimental to the user experience. The Guidelines state that a page is untrustworthy if the webmaster makes it difficult or otherwise obscures the main content with advertisements, no matter how relevant they may be. The occasional pop-up is not exactly an offense, but it is recommended to keep ad content separate from informational content.

Low-rated pages are also described as featuring ads that are difficult or impossible to close or push users away from the main content. Your score will also be impacted if you use interstitial pages to promote advertisements in-between load times. These sites are deemed untrustworthy as the focus becomes on ads as opposed to the described content. This is deceptive, coercive, and harmful to the user experience.

The guidelines simply recommend using your best judgment when choosing to implement ads or monetization features on a webpage. Ensure that you are doing everything in your power to promote a better experience on your website and avoid taking advantage of or misleading readers.

8. Create Content That Meets Your Audience's Needs

Finally, part three of the guidelines list scoring criteria for how well your page meets the needs of the user. Your goal is to receive a score of “Fully Meets,” meaning that your search result provides unambiguous content that satisfies all aspects of the search intent. Not only should your content be accurate, but should directed to any relevant resources that can help the user take action in regard to their search query.

How your content is graded depends on the nature of the result block. While most results appear as a link and a meta description, Google also can provide results as snippets, maps, or other special content formats. For example, if you search for movies playing near you, a special content block appears showing movie posters, titles, and genres. This would be scored differently than a general result block for most websites.

By general search result, we refer to using a term with the objective of reaching that website. The example query the guidelines provide is “amazon,” which simply yields www.amazon.com as the top result. The result block shows the website name, a meta description, and indicates to the user that it offers a mobile-friendly version. This gets a “Fully Meets” score as the user needs no other results to reach their objective.

However, if someone searches for “mexican food,” your search result will need more to reach the highest score. Results that are listed with Google My Business benefit the most as the block contains a Google Maps location, pictures of the business, an address, a phone number, email, the website home page, menu items, customer reviews, and everything else you need to make a decision. A business that provides all of this will score higher than a business that is missing some of these crucial pieces of information.

Please refer to  13.2.1 of the guidelines for a lengthy list of examples. Your goal is highly-dependent not only on the nature of your business but on the types of keywords being used in the search. Earning as many “Fully Meets” or “Highly Meets” scores for your pages as possible will boost your overall site score and ranking.

Conclusion - Google's Quality Raters Guidelines for SEOs!

Though the Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines are designed primarily for raters and employees of Google, you should consistently reference the material as an SEO to improve your site score. However, here is a list of the key takeaways to bear in mind when creating and improving your website pages:

• Ensure content is lengthy and of high quality (Follow the E-A-T principles)
• Content is clear, easy to access, and avoids obstructive pop-ups or ads
• The content carefully matches the intent behind the keyword
• Demonstrate your expertise throughout your site along with social proof
• Build and monitor your reputation offsite through directories and backlinking
• Be mindful of your mobile readers
• Try to meet all of the user’s needs within your search results block

As long as you make an honest effort to adhere to these principles for quality content, you should always receive favorable scores from Google's quality raters. Additionally, remember that content creation and SEO is an ongoing endeavor and you should take care to revisit previous pages and make regular updates to ensure that you're always following the provided guidelines.

The most prominent social media challenges include declining engagement rates and organic reach vs. increasing ad cost. With plummeting organic reach on leading social platforms, brands struggle to achieve their goals within their budgets.

According to a Trust Insights study, the average engagement rate for unpaid branded content on Instagram stands at just 0.3% now, meaning, for every 1000 followers, only 3.1 of them will engage with your content.

Forget about the engagement rate of the content on Instagram; the influencer industry on Instagram is also taking a nosedive. In a study conducted by trust insights in 2019, influencers' median engagement rate for more than half a million unpaid posts saw a 41% drop in just one year.

In this scenario, growing social presence and getting authentic followers can become a severe concern for businesses and marketers.

Instagram automation tools can efficiently speed up the process of adding followers and growing your social presence. However, here is a word of caution before you begin using the automation tools. Use only the legit tools to grow your account, and don't spam your followers.

This article discusses the best practices of Instagram automation, so you can drive engagement and accomplish your social media goals.

What is Instagram Automation?

Instagram automation enables you to manage your account, interact with users, and complete tasks using third-party software without the need for any human interference.

Instagram automation tools are of the following two types broadly:

1. Service that takes over your direct interaction with users, such as likes and comments.
2. Service that automates Instagram backend features such as reporting, publishing, and analytics.

Let’s talk about Instagram bots. You can easily sense bot activity in your account if you notice disappearing followers, mysterious story views, or spam comments. So, putting your Instagram interactions on autopilot can be risky and lead to spammy activities.

Instagram declared its “war on bots” years ago. The platform even went to the extent of shutting down many such bots or Instagram automation tools that violated its protocols and best practices. In 2017, they shut down a popular automation tool Instagress

On August 13, 2020, Instagram introduced new authenticity measures on the platform. Instagram announced that they only wanted to see authentic content on the platform from real people and not bots trying to mislead you. They began asking people to confirm their identities, especially when they observed a potential inauthentic behavior.

Even though bots don't enjoy a good reputation, it doesn't mean that all tools are spammy.

The second type of automation tool includes the tools that work at the backend and undertake post scheduling and publishing tasks. And here is some good news about these toolsāyou can freely use them without worrying about spam or a penalty from the platform.

With the help of these tools, you can automate your posts according to the slots when your audience is most active on the platform. During these slots, the users have the time to uncover hashtags, helping you expand your reach.

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How to Automate Your Instagram Marketing for Better Engagement?

Here are the seven tips to automate your Instagram marketing to grow your account faster:-

1. Leverage the Benefits of Story Mention Automations

If you're on Instagram, you'll get lots of story mentions. If you reply to them in masses, you can generate lots of engagement. Automatic and personalized responses help you build instant connections and get more story mentions. As a result, your account grows faster, and you can easily nurture relationships.

Through automated story mentions, you can enter people in a contest. It also allows you to create promotional offers and attract even more mentions. Through these story-mentions, you can virtually respond to everyone who mentions you in their story.

These crafted messages can be stored in the automation tool and sent as soon as someone mentions you. People appreciate this kind gesture and personal touch, which helps you build customer loyalty and establish yourself as an Instagram star personality.

You can use MobileMonkey and set up story mentions in it. All you need to do is first go to your Instagram account and link it to a Facebook Business Page and then to MobileMonkey and follow the instructions.

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2. Streamline Posts Scheduling

Now, you can easily schedule posts in advance on Instagram using its post scheduler feature known as Instagram Creator Studio. The tool helps you control your online presence, manage messages, and monitor growth. The batch scheduling feature will save you time.

Creator studio has many features, and one of its prominent features is its professional dashboard which allows you to monitor your success on the platform. It will also help you find educational content shared by Instagram. The growth insights will also help you understand which content is performing and attracting people to your account.

The platform's best feature is its advanced post scheduler, which allows you to follow your content calendar by scheduling posts for Instagram Feed and Instagram TV. It offers a calendar view and is quite addictive.

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3. Grow Your Account through DM Response Automation

As your Instagram account grows, the number of direct messages also increases. It feels nice that many people want to speak to you. You can use this favorable opportunity to create a loyal fan base. Still, it's also annoying because you don't have the time to answer every message individually.

It's a common tendency to ignore these messages, but this is not a standard practice if you are a serious entrepreneur or individual. According to a study by Media Brief, 75% of the customers want to talk to the brands through private messages.

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Automated direct messaging feature allows you to do many things, including:

• Schedule automated welcome messages to users who DM you
• Send bot-generated automatic replies to Instagram DMs. These are based on keyword triggers.
• Send FAQ answers in DMs using bots.

Even though these generic messages may look like spam in some cases, these can be an excellent way to add calls to action to numerous Instagram comments.

The best way to take advantage of using automated DMs is to ask the users to leave a comment with a specific keyword if they want to download a free eBook, report, or white paper.

This strategy will naturally lead to better engagement, lead generation, and increase the audience on autopilot.

Here’s how you do it:

1. Link your Instagram account to a Facebook Business Page, then connect it with MobileMonkey.
2. Sign in to your MobileMonkey account. Go to “Chatbot” and then click “Chat starters” on the top bar.
3. Go to “Instagram Welcomer” and follow the instructions.
4. Write the message you want users to receive when they DM you on Instagram. You are free to choose elements and widgets like attachments, forms, and images, etc.

See the preview and send it.

4. Create Drip Campaigns Messages in Instagram

Email drip campaigns are pretty effective, and you can leverage them on Instagram, too.

Instagram’s drip campaign feature helps you take advantage of the standard automated DM response to increase engagement on the platform.

So, with a drip campaign, you don’t just send a DM; you can share links to your landing pages, blogs, and other content assets, increasing brand awareness and engagement. This activity should go on for several days to achieve tangible results.

You can split the activity in the following manner:

• After you receive their first message, share some educational links about your brand.
• Your next marketing message a few days after your first interaction may contain some social proof. You can share a case study or user review for the purpose.
• Once you’re able to grab their attention, ask them to subscribe to your newsletter or offer them a tool or a free trial.

You can also power your Instagram drip campaigns by launching a lead nurturing campaign or sending an upsell campaign.

You can also try sending onboarding and educational messages to engage users. Another way to utilize drip emails is to ask questions for retargeting.

How to setup Instagram drip campaign:

• Choose “Campaigns” from the top bar and click “Drip Campaigns.”
• Create a new “Drip Campaign.”
• Choose the social platform.
• Choose the audience.
• Choose a schedule for your campaign messages and time interval to send those messages.
• Create messages along with follow-up messages for a 24 hours cycle. If a user responds, another 24-hour cycle starts.

5. Automate Comment Replies

You can leverage comments to go viral on Instagram. Moreover, you can encourage and increase comments on your posts by responding to the existing user comments. More comments lead to more views. Automation allows you to do it in a personalized manner.

You can set it up in the following manner:-

1. First, link your Instagram account to a Facebook Business Page, then connect it with MobileMonkey.
2. Sign in to your Mobile Money account>>Go to “Chatbot“>> “Chat starters.”
3. Go to “Instagram comment guard“>> Create a new one.
4. Choose from the two options the Comment Guard will work with, i.e., “All Posts” and “Specific Instagram Post.”

Now, you can decide how to respond.

These options include “respond to all comments” and “respond only to comments that contain the following keywords.”

5. You can put a cap on the frequency cap if a user posts multiple comments.

Craft a message for the users who comment on your Instagram post. You are free to choose elements and widgets like attachments, forms, and images, etc.

6. See the preview and send it.

6. Utilize Instagram Guides for Lead Nurturing

Instagram Guides were introduced for health and wellness businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic and are a new Instagram feature. Later, it was rolled out to all users.

Through these guides, you can share helpful, scrollable curated content and tips in an easy-to-digest format. It makes otherwise lengthy and complex content easy to share and consume.

Three types of guides are prevalent on Instagramāposts, places, and products. You can share guides in stories as well to amplify their reach. You can't precisely term it as automation, but Instagram guides help marketers amplify their reach in a big way.

First, guides are a boon for businesses on a shoestring budget as it's a free tool. Instagram does the heavy lifting of designing your brand pages and guiding you through content promotion.

Secondly, the curation style of guides makes them engaging and easy to share. Instagram guides are highly informative; therefore, you can use them to educate new customers about your brand and how your products add value to their life.

You can use this feature hassle-free because you can set it and forget it. It will help you create enormous content to engage users without putting in the extra effort.

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Instagram Guides also make content delivery flexible by giving you a choice of the types of formats. For example, you can convert your text-based articles into slideshows and add images and videos tutorials. You can also create video tutorials that can walk users through the process.

7. Integrate With Short Video Apps Such as Tiktok

Cross promoting on social media amplifies your reach and gives you access to various low-hanging fruits in marketing, such as brand awareness, lead generation, and lead nurturing.

You can easily share your Instagram content on TikTok through the following steps:

Select “Edit profile” in TikTok>> “Instagram“>>Enter your user name>> Click connect

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You're ready to share your content now. For example, you can repost your Instagram Reels on TikTok. Don't forget to remove watermarks, though. Follow the platform guidelines. Make sure the content you share is ideal for both audiences.

What Features of Instagram Can I Automate?

As discussed above, you can automate many elements using Instagram automation tools. So, you can:

1. Like and comment on posts
2. Respond to story mentions
3. Schedule posts
4. Send automatic responses to DMs

Conclusion

Instagram automation makes your life easier by preventing you from doing repetitive menial tasks and helps you achieve your marketing goals. You can instead use that free time for other crucial business functions like outreach and developing content.

Instagram automation allows you to manage the backend and front-end social media tasks without manual or virtual assistance. If it becomes a routine, it will boost your productivity and help you build strong community links and loyalty.

There is no shortage of digital marketing tools and strategies available to boost web traffic and increase your ROI. But, what if there was a method that allowed your business to obtain highly-qualified traffic, drive conversions, and rapidly scale with almost no risk and little upfront cost?

Enter affiliate marketing. This method of utilizing external partners to promote your brand can help businesses of any size discover new sales opportunities without sinking too much of your time and resources into the effort. Searches for affiliate marketing programs continue to rise on Google, suggesting that the opportunity to leverage this marketing tactic is readily available. SuperMetrics reports that the top affiliate networks are boasting a total affiliate count in the 6-figure area, with the Amazon Associates program featuring over 900,000 partners.

If you're interested in boosting your bottom line for less than the cost of traditional marketing methods, continue reading to learn the nine ways affiliate marketing can help your business thrive.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is the act of utilizing external partners to advertise your products or services in exchange for a commission on each sale. These partners are generally individuals who have previously used your products themselves or currently subscribe to your services. Their understanding of your products or services allows them to naturally demonstrate the merits of your brand to their audience to help you gain additional sales.

The fine details of how these partnerships work depend on either a base standard set by the original company or by negotiating agreed-upon rates with the affiliate partner. Regardless of these terms, companies offer the affiliate a built-in incentive through a commission that actively encourages them to promote your company and get results.

How to Do Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing will not require you a significant amount of time or resources to begin deploying. When creating an affiliate marketing plan, you'll want to focus on a few primary details that will dictate how this program will operate for both you and your partners. Establishing clear guidelines for how you expect your program to benefit both parties will help in alleviating potential issues down the line.

1. Determine Where You Want to Establish Your Affiliations

First, you will want to determine the individuals you wish to utilize as affiliates. Some brands prefer to be highly selective about whom they choose to be affiliated with and will only partner with notable, established names in the industry. These individuals generally have a high level of rapport with audiences in that field, but also possess strong marketing skills in a particular area. The person or company will then clearly define that they are affiliated with the original brand and actively promote products or services on their behalf.

Another common way of implementing affiliate marketing is by utilizing the audience that already benefits from your services. Because they are active users, they provide a much more natural way of marketing your brand with authenticity as they are not actually employed by or directly involved with your company. Examples of this include popular websites such as the eBay Partner Network, Fiverr Affiliates, and even DashClicks itself.

This should not be confused with influencer marketing, which is generally a one-time partnership and payment for a specific promotion. There is no program tied to those arrangements and the form of payment is typically determined between the influencer and the company per interaction.

2. Determine How You Will Calculate and Reimburse Commissions

The second key factor is to determine exactly how much of a commission each partner will receive for each new conversion. These terms must be clearly defined to ensure that your partners are treated fairly and to protect yourself from any harm to your reputation should a disagreement between you and your affiliate arise.

Some companies opt to utilize a flat rate for all commissions earned. Common affiliate commissions start at around 5% of the total sale value but can scale to as much as 30%. Other affiliate programs are commensurate with performance and promise higher returns for those that can outperform their fellow affiliates. Companies may also throw in additional benefits for affiliates such as partner benefits or exclusive discounts toward their services.

As an example, DashClicks utilizes an affiliate program called 'DashConnect' that is entirely based on performance. Affiliate performance is tracked monthly and scales with the number of account referrals and signups we receive as a result of that partnership. In our program, we provide 20% on every new referral. For every 20 new referrals, that commission percentage rises by 10%. In this way, we encourage affiliates to perform their very best by rewarding them with higher commission rates than they would receive for a mediocre monthly performance.

3. Create a Way for Affiliates to Track Performance

Finally, it will be highly beneficial for your team to create a way for affiliates to keep track of their monthly performance. We recommend adding an affiliate center somewhere on your site that features up-to-date reporting on monthly and yearly commission totals, expected payments, and the commission made to date.

Some companies, DashClicks included, also implement an affiliate scoreboard that promotes a bit of friendly competition between the active affiliates. Simply seeing the revenue earned by other affiliates can act as motivation and inspire your partners to realize what's possible. The motivation for additional income can go a long way in promoting effective marketing.

You also do not necessarily need to openly disclose your terms for public viewing. Determine which approach works best for you and keep track of how many affiliate requests or signups you receive and adjust accordingly.

Next, let's take a look at the advantages of affiliate marketing that go well beyond the additional ROI.

Nine Advantages of Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is quite beneficial, and that's why affiliate marketing spending in the U.S alone is estimated to touch $8.2 billion by 2022. One primary reason it's becoming so popular is that it's a low-risk way to promote and sell your products.

Here we've created a list of nine significant advantages of affiliate marketing:-

1. You Can Leverage a Partner's Connections for More Sales

Individuals that sign up for or apply for your affiliate marketing program likely have their own established connections in the industry. These individuals might already have a built-in following on social media or through a popular blog that you can leverage for advertisements of your brand. This allows you to tap into new audiences quickly without extending your company's resources.

2. Affiliate Marketing Boosts Your Social Proof

Social proof is powerful and necessary if you want your brand to succeed and scale online. Even if the presentation of your website and various marketing channels are superb, consumers are savvy and rightfully skeptical of the quality and authenticity of your products or services. A strong way to combat this is to manage your online reputation by allowing customers to share reviews and testimonials about their experience with your company.

Affiliates function in a similar way to an everyday customer review or interaction. Because they are not actually employed by or directly invested in your success, customers are more likely to see their promotion of your brand as a vote of confidence. The affiliate's reputation hinges on whom they choose to affiliate with, which logically indicates that the brand they are promoting provides a worthwhile service to the community.

You gain this boost in social proof without needing to perform any additional work yourself. The affiliate understands what your company offers, speaks honestly to its merits, and advises the audience to spend their hard-earned dollars with your brand over the competitor.

3. It Can Reduce Your Marketing Costs

While affiliate marketing won't eliminate the need for other marketing methods like SEO or paid ad campaigns, it can reduce your marketing costs overall. This will depend entirely upon the performance of the affiliates you currently partner with and market your brand.

Affiliate marketing is one of the few marketing strategies that require little to no investment upfront. You also only pay out whenever the marketing venture leads to actual conversion. Furthermore, your company retains total control over the percentages that will be provided to affiliates upon a successful sale. Compare this to paid search campaigns which can vary in spending depending on the competitiveness of the keywords you are currently targeting.

4. It Offers Highly-Targeted Marketing and a Better ROI

Affiliate marketing virtually guarantees that your new web traffic is highly qualified and will show a greater likelihood to convert. Other marketing methods require time, resources, and budget to effectively startup. If you begin publishing paid ads on social media, for example, you will need to dedicate several weeks to discovery simply to acquire a basis for your target audience. Then, you will likely need to implement tools such as landing pages, which can further qualify your leads by income level, location, and other relevant factors.

Because your affiliates work for commission, there's a far greater likelihood that the traffic they push to your products or services has already been pre-qualified. Those affiliates are making the effort to discern the relevant details about their leads and filter out the low-quality ones for you. This saves you and your team time as you no longer need to make connections with those that were never going to result in a new sale for your company.

Also, because you are only paying your affiliates upon a successful sale, affiliate marketing generates a much higher ROI. You will receive more leads that are worthwhile, close more sales, and pay much less overall than you might otherwise through traditional marketing methods.

5. There's Little to No Risk

Because you only need to spend from your marketing budget when you close a deal, there's virtually zero risk in trying out affiliate marketing. It takes a certain type of individual to work hard for a commission, so you will find that those who apply for your affiliate program are generally more motivated to work hard for a mutual benefit.

There is a slight possibility of risk if an affiliate misleads a customer or falsely advertises your goods.Ā  However, your affiliates will never be definitively associated with your brand and only act as third parties promoting a product or service that they happen to endorse. Consumers are intelligent and understand that the words and actions taken by a third party are not necessarily a reflection of the original brand.

You can seek to avoid this time of problem by qualifying the individuals that apply to become affiliates. Because there is no employment contract, you can sever ties with an affiliate at a moment's notice as long as you're up-to-date on the agreed-upon commission.

6. You Can Scale Your Business Faster

For the reasons discussed above such as low costs and better targeting, affiliate marketing can be a powerful tool to help a small business scale faster than otherwise possible. Even a brand-new business can leverage affiliate marketing so long as they have a group of dedicated individuals that are ready to spread the word about your offerings. Set your commission at a rate that's feasible for your company and watch as new leads come to your door with no additional effort.

The best scaling strategies see businesses increasing their earnings and social reach while spending as little as possible to do so. Affiliate marketing checks all of these boxes and expects payment only for closed sales, not vanity metrics such as page clicks or ad impressions.

7. Affiliate Marketing Will Boost Your SEO

Affiliates that utilize digital marketing strategies to promote your brand will offer you SEO benefits that can reinforce your existing ranking strategies. When someone talks about your brand on their blog or their social media page, they are almost always providing links to their audience that direct back to your website. These are known as backlinks and are incredibly valuable when they come from Google-trusted sources.

This helps your website SEO in several ways. First, any quality pages that link back to a page on your domain can be seen as passing a vote of confidence that the content on your domain is authentic and trustworthy. The more high-quality backlinks you have, the more confident Google can be that your business offers the content it promises.

Secondly, it can boost your SEO by promoting additional traffic and boosting your reputation. Google is not only interested in the quality of your content, but also how your previous and current customers feel about your brand. When you have multiple domains boasting the quality of your products or services, this will have a positive compound effect on your reputation. More users will be likely to follow links to your website, which means that Google will be more likely to place your domain higher in a list of relevant search results.

8. Your Affiliate Program Runs Itself (Mostly)

Unlike your in-house marketing efforts, affiliate marketing runs itself as your registered affiliates will be doing the majority of the work for you. The idea is that by the time a new lead comes to your site through an affiliate, they've already been convinced to make a purchase. If they're not quite ready to pull the trigger, they've still already been nurtured and possess a strong interest in what your brand has to offer. At this point, you simply need to rely on your sales team to do what they do best.

Aside from this, you simply need to reimburse your affiliates for their monthly commission earned. You can utilize basic tools to help you keep track of conversions by affiliate by providing each one with their unique signup code. Customers use that affiliate's code when signing up or making a purchase, and it adds a tally to their scoreboard. At the end of the month, simply calculate the percentage owed based on the number of closed deals, and you're all set.

9. Learn from Affiliate Marketing Strategies

Last, but not least, working with partners allows you to gain valuable feedback in regards to what strategies best help your brand attract new audiences and drive conversions.

Digital marketing is an industry largely driven by analytical feedback. You use tools like Google Analytics to monitor website activity, A/B test, and gain valuable feedback on how to improve your content. Likewise, paid ad platforms constantly gather intel regarding audience behaviors, so that you can segment your audience for microtargeting to drive conversions. However, you need to invest the resources necessary to learn, discover, and convert.

With affiliate marketing, you're allowing your partners the freedom to market your brand according to their abilities. For example, if you have an affiliate that boasts a particularly strong following on their blog and consistently provides your team new sales every month, you can potentially learn a lot from their content marketing strategies. This is especially valuable as their content is already tailored to support your unique products and services.

This can apply to all marketing channels including social media networking and posting, PPC ads, email marketing, and content marketing. It's an opportunity to invest in valuable, long-term partnerships that can help define how you market your business for years to come.

Explore the Advantages of Affiliate Marketing Today!

While affiliate marketing by no means eliminates the need for traditional marketing strategies, the business advantages it provides cannot be denied. You can boost your website traffic, build your social following, and drive sales thanks to the low cost, minimal risk, and the ability to autopilot itself.

The only drawback is that it may take time for you to establish your brand and connect with high-performing partners. Thankfully, this pain point is mitigated by the fact that you only need to pay your affiliates when the customer pays you. With this in mind, there are very few downsides to starting your affiliate marketing program for your company.

Start strategizing with your team today to formulate the rules and guidelines for your own affiliate marketing program. In doing so, you'll be in the company of some of the most successful businesses and marketing firms around the globe.

As the demand for a multipurpose content solution rises, more marketers than ever are jumping on the headless CMS bandwagon. However, this is one marketing trend that demonstrably lives up to the hype and aims to remedy several problems that plague content creators within the workflow, presentation, and delivery.

If you're not up to speed on the latest CMS for marketers, we're here to help. In this article, we're going to instruct you on how to define a headless CMS, how it compares to the traditional model and the pros and cons of deploying this technology for use by your marketing team.

What is a CMS?

A CMS, also known as a Content Management System, is software that allows you to write, read, and edit website content without the need for coding and web development knowledge. Before we had CMS solutions, all websites needed to be developed and styled by implementing HTML and CSS code within a text editor. This would become particularly cumbersome for marketers that simply want to create and add content to a website without interacting with the code and accidentally breaking features on the website.

If you work in business or marketing, you are almost certainly already using a traditional CMS. The most popular example of this is WordPress, which allows users to create beautiful websites quickly by selecting a pre-built template as a starting point. You can then use the intuitive tools within the software to add text, images, video, and optimize your SEO data for search engines.

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You get to take advantage of the simplified tools, while the software automatically implements the HTML and CSS for you. Your team can quickly add content in the backend and the CMS readies that content for front-end presentation on the website only.

What is a Headless CMS System?

A headless CMS system is software that allows you to create and deliver your content to any platform or device utilizing API, Application Programming Interface. This allows your team to rapidly repurpose your content for iOS, Android, eCommerce solutions, and more in addition to just your website.

The content repository, or the backend, is where your CMS allows you to create and ready content for publishing. The head, or the frontend, is where that content is displayed on the world wide web. With traditional CMS systems, the body is inextricably tied to the head, which happens to be your website. A headless CMS severs the head along with the typical restrictions and allows developers to utilize API for rapid content presentation across numerous platforms.

With a headless CMS, all of your content can be published to your website, eCommerce centers, Android applications, and iOS applications from the same backend. Examples of this include popular shopping websites like Amazon. With their customized, headless eCommerce solution, they can repurpose the same content to buyers whether they are shopping from a desktop computer or the Amazon mobile app without the need for additional systems. The buyer can also seamlessly add an item to their cart when browsing on a pc and seamlessly resume the checkout process from the mobile app at a later time. If your brand aims to provide this level of multipurpose functionality to its customers, then a headless CMS provides the tools you need.

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What is a Decoupled CMS System?

A decoupled CMS sometimes referred to as Hybrid CMS, is a content repository that decouples the body from the head, or the front-end delivery system. While this sounds similar to the headless CMS, the decoupled CMS still has its unique front-end for presentation built into its overall systems. This is compared to the open, API-first technology that a headless system utilizes.

Decoupled CMS systems are appearing as the need for multichannel marketing solutions becomes undeniable. You'll still have access to the typical head, meaning pre-built templates and tools, but these are not necessary for creating and distributing your content online. The headless system does not feature front-end presentation or preview options.

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5 Headless CMS Advantages Over a Traditional CMS

There are several advantages of using headless CMS', but the main advantage is its flexibility in website design. Front-end developers can easily extract required data from the CMS and use it the way they want. So, instead of going ahead with the restrictions associated with traditional CMS, businesses prefer to use a headless CMS to design more extensive and unique websites. Here are some of the advantages of using a headless CMS:-

1. Reuse Content Across Channels for Rapid Scaling

While it can be confusing and difficult to absorb the technical jargon surrounding a CMS, the advantages of using a headless CMS are a little less so.

The primary benefit of utilizing a headless CMS is that it removes the restrictions that content creators and developers face when utilizing a traditional CMS. Because your content is not limited to website presentation, you can use the backend repository to create material for multiple channels all at once.

Previously, you would need to start fresh and create brand-new content for each new marketing channel. This was because your original website content would be bound to the website code. Headless CMS systems are different because they place API first. In other words, you only need to create content once and can rapidly present it across every other platform or device a customer might be using to explore your brand.

Your ability to reduce the amount of time and effort required to create omnichannel content also allows your brand to scale with greater ease. Instead of relying on a static system, your entire marketing team suddenly becomes more agile and can meet every customer wherever they are on their customer journey. You can ensure that your content is seamless and uniform regardless of the device or platform being used to interact with your brand.

2. Your Web Developers Have More Freedom for Creativity

Many people like small business owners understand the need for a strong website but do not have the knowledge or ability to develop something on their own. This CMS simplifies the process and allows you to build something great without those skills. However, that same ease-of-use comes with proprietary development restrictions that will prevent you from exploring new ways to improve your content.

The headless CMS system removes the shackles restraining your web development team. They can develop with any type of platform or integration in mind. After they are finished with their project, they simply connect their code to the new channel via a webhook, which uses an HTTP request to call for the information from the repository.

Being able to program for any type of channel gives you the ultimate freedom to explore your options when it comes to business marketing. The downside is that a headless CMS system expects that you and your team fully understand how to create and implement your own code as the traditional assistive tools will not be available. This makes it more ideal for those who know to make all of the moving parts work in harmony.

3. A Headless CMS Will Future Proof Your Business

That same freedom of development discussed above is what will ensure that your brand is future-proof. New platforms and technologies are being developed all the time, which allow marketers to better create engaging content and connect with new audiences. Because the headless CMS system works through an API, you'll be able to hook into any new platform with ease.

What's more, is that content created in a headless CMS requires minimal to no changes to implement within new channels. Your creations will remain evergreen and save you time and money in the long term.

4. Improved Workflows Among Teams

Because a headless CMS system removes the confines and restrictions you might typically face, it allows for greater collaboration between the various departments of your marketing team. It no longer takes additional effort to recreate, modify, or repurpose content, but instead allows teams to explore new opportunities to strategize and deploy high-quality content to greater effect.

Furthermore, these teams will be able to work within the same system. This makes it much easier for your experts to view, interact with, and collaborate on new projects. Your creative materials are no longer confined to separate repositories with unique restrictions but can be rapidly shared and modified by whoever is interacting with them.

5. Your Content is Better Secured and Protected

Because the repository and the publishing platform are separated, your content is better secured and protected than ever. When these two items are connected, it means that when something negatively impacts one side, it is guaranteed to have an impact on the other. For example, if your CMS application is experiencing technical difficulties, it will have no impact on how your content is presented through connected web applications.

Likewise, utilizing a headless CMS means that your company is the only point of access for the original content source. This means that you have full authority and control to implement any security procedures and protocols necessary to protect your data. This is compared to relying on an external CMS system that sets its own requirements as to what protocols may or may not be set in place to put your content online.

Which CMS Should My Company Use?

While the benefits of utilizing a headless CMS are abundant, it may not be what your company needs right now. You also may not have the proper resources to truly take advantage of what a headless CMS offers over the monolithic, standard model.

You may want to stick with the standard CMS system if:

• You’re a small brand that utilizes a small website with basic features offered by a template
• You don’t have the resources necessary to leverage the benefits of a headless CMS
• You’d rather utilize a selection of pre-built templates
• You want to have access to community support within the platform

However, you’ll want to switch to the headless CMS system if:

• You need to repurpose content across multiple channels in addition to your website
• You need to deliver content to multiple platforms including your website, iOS, and Android from the same backend
• You have plans to start scaling your brand and your content creation efforts
• You want to give your developers more freedom in how they choose to present content
• You want more control over the security of your content

Remember, there is also an in-between with the decoupled CMS if you find yourself unsure of which solution best aligns with your marketing plans. If you plan for your website to be the core focus of your efforts but want to explore some additional API offerings, you can look into systems now offered by WordPress or Drupal.

Conclusion - Headless CMS for Marketers is the Way of the Future

With the growing demand for solutions that can ease the process of multichannel marketing, the headless CMS is the clear winner for creating and distributing your content. The impact is so apparent that sites like WordPress that previously offered a monolithic CMS now offered a decoupled solution that allows users to integrate with new APIs.

Instead of restricting yourself to the rules of your website, developers will be able to write and create code that can rapidly be repurposed to other existing platforms. It also future-proofs your content creation efforts by providing the open solution you need to integrate with future tools that are yet to exist or yet to be fully realized. This allows your brand to be agile and rapidly scale to accommodate new technologies as they become available and necessary for a successful marketing strategy.

It's also an effective way to ensure that the various arms of your marketing efforts promote brand consistency across the board. Because you can push your content to multiple sources from one repository, your teams will be able to better coordinate, communicate, and develop strategies. It's that much easier to ensure your marketing efforts single harmoniously without sacrificing quality on any channel.

If you're ready to grow your brand and want to prepare your business for an all-encompassing digital future, it might be time to start exploring headless CMS options for your content creation and content delivery needs.

The rise of artificial intelligence and AI tools now allow virtually every person to create media and content without training or skills. With these smart, automated technologies, you can put together content that contends with the most talented artists and content creators on the internet.

Virtually every industry is continuously looking for new ways to integrate and utilize artificial intelligence to work more efficiently and provide more engaging experiences. First-pass copy editing can now be done automatically. The right software can auto-correct images and videos for sharper, clearer images.

As a marketer or business owner, this enables you to take complete control over your branding, content creation, and ad creation. Below, we're going to list out nine cutting-edge AI tools for media creation that can elevate your game and optimize your team's production.

AI Tools for Writing

1. Quillbot

Do you find yourself coming up with great thoughts for your written material, but can't come up with the best way to say it? Quillbot is an AI-driven writing tool that reads your on-page text and automatically paraphrases it for more concise reading. This is invaluable for those who wish to feature on pieces, but do not write on a regular basis. It can also help any writer by analyzing the body of text and changing lines to avoid repetition.

The key component of Quillbot is its AI-powered thesaurus. The tool features a Synonymsā  gauge that you can adjust to varying degrees. By leaving this gauge off, the tool will look for ways to rearrange the words as-is to read in a way that's closer to natural speaking. As you move the gauge forward, the AI will look for opportunities to replace words for found synonyms. Turning this feature all the way up will prompt it to replace a variety of words and phrases throughout the text.

In addition to the synonym tool, Quillbot also provides you with a built-in grammar checker. This is one of the longest-standing forms of AI as it automatically detects errors in grammar and punctuation so that you can patch your writing up on the fly.

Finally, Quillbot offers different writing modes that will affect what types of writing suggestions the AI will offer. For example, you can set the tool to Formal mode for assistance in ensuring your content appears sophisticated and professional. It currently offers the following modes:

• Standard
• Fluency
• Creative
• Formal
• Shorten
• Expand

Only the Standard and Fluency modes are available to free users. Free members can paraphrase up to 700 characters at a time and can utilize extensions for both Google Chrome and Google Docs. There is a premium membership that will cost you $14.95 monthly or $79.95 annually ($6.67/month value). This gives you full access to the platform including its new Citation Generator tool that's still in beta.

2. Articoolo

Articoolo is one of many new AI-driven writing assistants that can generate fresh, original content for you to use in seconds. While it won't deliver you a full, completed article, its ability to extract valuable material and sentiments instantly can drastically reduce the amount of time it takes for a writer to create engaging content.

It works by asking you to enter your topic. Similar to search engine logic, the AI will understand your query and begin to pull facts, quotes, and sentiments that are relevant to the topic you entered. The information it pulls is also complete with high-volume, relevant keywords that will help to make your content more SEO-friendly. It then continues to search for more content related to its findings before producing usable text. Finally, it will automatically check the content rendered for accuracy and readability.

This tool effectively eliminates the issues of both writer's block and the time it takes to research topics. The content it provides you is checked for plagiarism violations and only leaves you with material that you can safely use. This will save you hours of labor and numerous dollars you'd otherwise spend to see the job done properly. The latest addition to the software even helps you find images to supplement your text.

Articoolo is currently only available to paid members. You can currently pay-per-use or subscribe monthly for the following benefits:

Monthly

• $29 per month – 30 articles
• $49 per month – 100 articles
• $99 per month – 250 articles

Pay-Per-Use

• $19 – 10 Articles
• $75 – 50 Articles
• $99 – 100 Articles

3. Grammarly

Grammarly is a staple tool for many content writers and for great reason. It offers a healthy portion of its features to users for free to assist in creating better content across the internet.

Grammarly is a writing assistant that automatically checks your written content for errors in real-time. It regularly scans for punctuation issues and grammar errors. However, it also checks for more in-depth issues such as wordiness, clarity, repetition, and tone. It automatically compares your content to other high-quality content on the internet and issues a real-time score for the text on the page. A score of 100 indicates that your content is free of errors and of high quality.

While reading your content, the AI will inform you of how it interprets your tone. It can actually determine if you're writing a professional article based on the material provided and let you know if your tone sounds shaky or unconfident. Other tones it can identify are playful, humorous, or casual. If you want to shift your tone to be more consistent in one direction, Grammarly will automatically provide suggestions that change the way your content reads.

One of the most useful aspects of Grammarly is that you can integrate it into a wide variety of software that you already use. The AI tool can be integrated into Google Chrome, Google Docs, Slack, Facebook Messenger, Gmail, and various social media platforms. By turning your free plugin on, Grammarly will stay on top of any text you enter at any time.

While the basic suggestions are available to anyone who downloads, advanced suggestions and analytics are only available to paid members. You can get Grammarly Premium for one user at $12 per month. Grammarly Business will cost you $12.50 per month per member and will allow you to share writing suggestions across a team of up to 149 people.

AI Tools for Podcasting

4. Auphonic

Auphonic makes the process of recording, producing, and transcribing any audio recording swift and simple. The platform starts out free and allows you to record and process up to two hours of audio. It offers additional paid plans that range from $11 to $99 per month based on the hours of recording you need to save and edit.

Recording audio is a tricky process, especially for those who are unaware of what can impact the quality of the file. Auphonic largely eliminates these issues by using AI-driven technology that can intelligently identify the timestamps where peaking occurs and automatically level the audio balance between speakers and any additional sound effects. It can also identify any unwanted noise such as hissing or humming and filter it out entirely.

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While an automated tool won't be a cure-all when it comes to a low-quality recording, it does an excellent job of alleviating issues that require time, expertise, and precision to remedy. It can accept a wide variety of audio files including MP3, MP4, FLAC, and more.

Even more impressively, the software features an automated speech recognition tool that can successfully identify up to eighty unique spoken languages and transcribe the entire podcast in a matter of minutes. This saves you the hassle of paying an individual to listen to your entire recording and transcribe it manually. You can produce a beautiful transcript that provides more accessible content engagement for all of your users regardless of how they prefer to experience it.

AI Tools for Image and Video

5. Synthesia

Synthesia is one of the most popular AI video creation and editing tools that exist. There was a time where recording and creating video content seemed to be a daunting and wildly expensive task. Today, many of us carry mobile devices that feature high-quality recording equipment capable of forming the foundation for quality video content.

Synthesia even further simplifies the process by allowing you to create full-length videos from a script alone. The AI will read through your script and present it in a video format using a synthetic or real voice of your choosing. You can select from a variety of avatars based on real human beings to represent your team. You can also create and upload custom avatars based on your appearance.

The avatar then reads and presents your scripts in a lifelike appearance that's indistinguishable from a real actor. The audio portion supports up to 57 worldwide languages in both female and male voice settings. With the Enterprise plan, you can even record your voice for use in any of your videos. Choose a custom background, select an audio recording as background music, add some complementary images, and your brand-new video is ready to go in no time at all.

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Synthesia offers only two plans. A personal plan is $30 per month and gives you up to 10 video credits per month along with customization features, pre-built templates, and the ability to import PowerPoints. There is a Corporate-level plan that uses custom pricing and offers all of the personal features plus priority support, additional customizations, and premium services.

6. Raw Shorts

Raw Shorts is another AI-driven platform that allows you to create animated videos from your text. Its smart processing tools will read through your entire script, identify key focal points and topics, and draw up a storyboard based on its findings. It then will begin a search for free, stock media assets and place them throughout the storyboard in the relevant places. Finally, it uses a pre-recorded voice setting to narrate your presentation.

With the bulk of the work completed, you can then work with the first draft of your video to customize elements with the intuitive drag-and-drop editor. No video or audio editing knowledge is necessary. With your plan, you'll have access to an enormous free content library that allows you to add a variety of colorful images or videos to your animated presentation.

If using the AI video maker isn't what you need, you can also begin with a variety of pre-built video templates to get you started. Simply plug your script into the template, look for some relevant assets in the library, and you'll have a video to tell your story in a fraction of the time it would take to create and produce a video from scratch.

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Raw Shorts offers a free trial that gives you 5 non-premium exports limited to 480p resolution. To gain 1080p HD for your videos, you'll need to upgrade to the Essential plan at $39 per month. This will grant you 25 exports, third-party transfer rights, and 10 licensed clips per month. Finally, the Business plan at $59 per month gives you 50 videos and 20 licensed clips per month.

7. Adobe Premiere Pro

It should be no surprise that an Adobe product makes a list of high-quality video and photo editing software. Adobe Premiere Pro is one of the most widely used and accepted AI tools for creating and exporting high-quality videos and stories. Premiere is such a high-quality product due to its versatility for both beginners and veteran video editors alike.

Premiere is unlike the script-reading software mentioned above and instead focuses on providing powerful tools for raw video editing. It utilizes AI technology to automatically assist with common edits such as color correction, reframing, and object removal. It can also automatically scan the scene and detect opportunities to add cuts when appropriate. The premiere will handle the tasks for you with your approval.

The tool simplifies all aspects of video editing including audio effects, photo transformation, scene morphing, and adding powerful scene effects with the touch of a button. There is a reason that Adobe Premiere Pro is considered the industry standard for creating short films, YouTube videos, social media stories, and much more. While some features may require a bit of experience to get the hang of, Adobe offers comprehensive and easy-to-follow tutorials so that you can get the most out of the media creation tool.

You can benefit from a free trial, but all implementations of Adobe Premiere Pro require a paid membership. Its pricing is highly customized and offers plans for individuals, businesses, and educators. A basic Premiere Pro plan for an individual will run you $20.99 per month. However, you can get the entire Creative Cloud including Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere Pro, and Acrobat for $52.99 per month.

8. Designs.AI

Designs.AI is a multi-use platform that enables the creation of logos, mockups, videos, social media graphics, and voiceovers. It boasts the ability to create high-quality banners or logos for your company or brand in just two minutes with no expertise.

It utilizes an intuitive, drag-and-drop editor where you can drag shapes, colors, fonts, and assets to create image and video files. You can also utilize the AI tool by providing it with information relevant to your brand. It then takes just a few seconds to create a completely unique logo that fits the tone of your company. If you're unsatisfied with the first draft, you can continue using the editor to play around with colors and icons until you get things to where you like them. You can use this process to create an entire folder of assets to use as you'd like around the web.

It also features tools similar to the ones mentioned above such as an automated video maker from text scripts and an automated speechmaker. You can translate your script to over 20 languages, adjust the pitch to match your tone, and add the voice to any of your PowerPoint or video presentations.

Designs.AI gives access to basic tools with a free trial, but you'll need to pay $29 per month for permanent access to the basic tools a marketer needs. There is also a professional plan at $69 per month that gives an entire team full access to highly-advanced editing tools that you can use to create high-quality content for your entire brand at the highest level.

9. KinetiX

KinetiX is an impressive tool that promises to convert your content into 3D animated videos. Though the platform is still technically in beta, you're free to try it for yourself at any time. You can review their guides to learn how to film your content in a way that produces optimal results.

The AI creates and edits your material using tools like Blender and aya to create high-quality, lifelike animations. You upload your file to the platform, optimize your output by instructing the AI on what you want for your animation, and allow the tool to perform the work. The process can take up to 30 minutes, but the result will leave you with a fully-animated 3D character that can help tell your story and share your content in a new, dynamic fashion.

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The Starter package allows you to try things out by offering one minute of 3D extraction for personal use only. If you want to use it for commercial use, as most of you reading likely will be, you'll need to upgrade to the Creative Plan at 15ā‚¬ (roughly $17.50) per month.

These AI Tools for Media Creation Will Change the Way You Do Business

It was a slow beginning for artificial intelligence, but AI tools now pervade nearly every aspect of everything we want to accomplish. Its impact on the creative world is profound as it now enables those who are less educated or less artistically inclined to create beautiful, dynamic forms of media with minimal input or time investment.

Personal users and businesses alike can now leverage the power of technology to make use of our ideas as input and output high-quality images, videos, or audio files in seconds. While the output might not be our final product in some cases, having a well-painted canvas to work from can save us countless hours of labor and save us even more in monthly spending.

Video, audio, and image editing experts can also benefit from the AI tools by allowing them to handle routine, laborious tasks while giving you more opportunities to flex your creative muscles. This leaves you with better quality media to sell your brand while spending only a fraction of your usual time to do so.

Every successful marketing campaign is driven by real-time data and analysis. However, it quickly can become a nightmare to track your data across a variety of accounts, platforms, and tools employed by your business or marketing agency.

Microsoft's Power BI application promises to alleviate this exact issue and simplify the process of marketing data collection and reporting. By downloading their free application, you can start integrating all of your information sources in one place for either you, a small team, or your entire organization.

What is Power BI?

Power BI is a collection and visualization software that allows you to integrate and gather data from a variety of local and online sources to create robust and dynamic reports. The software provides users with the ability to import analytics from roughly 150 unique data sources to create clear visualizations and powerful insights to guide your business activity.

While many of these sources are integral to a successful marketing campaign, it can be difficult for the untrained individual to necessarily make sense of the figures available. When you use Power BI, you can create a central goal for your report, draw in data from the relevant sources, and outline them in a way that allows for a clear understanding for both your team and your clients.

Power BI exists across three different services including the desktop application (free for all Windows users), the cloud service (for paid members only), and the mobile application for reviewing reports on the go. The desktop application is all you truly need for creating new reports, but the cloud service allows you to quickly share your projects with everyone else in your network.

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For paid plans, the cloud service will run you $9.99/month and grant you 10GB of storage and up to eight data source refreshes per day. Their Premium plan costs $20.00/month per user, grants 100TB of shared storage, 48 refreshes per day, and offers additional modeling and visualization tools including advanced AI and dataflows. Finally, Microsoft offers an enterprise-level plan at $4,995/month for the entire organization. You get access tool on the platform, maximum benefits, and the ability to share seamlessly across your entire team. You can learn more about pricing and benefits here.

Finally, Power BI can draw in data for your reports from a variety of sources including:

• Microsoft Excel
• PDF, CSV, Text
• IBM Product Suite
• Azure
• Amazon Redshift
• Salesforce Products
• Google Analytics
• Adobe Analytics
• LinkedIn
• Twilio
• Quickbooks
• Zendesk
• Zoho
• And much more (nearly 150 sources in total)

How Can I Use Power BI?

Getting started with Power BI is effortless. Simply head over to this link and click the “Download Free” button. On newer Windows machines, this will provide a notice asking you if you would like to open the Microsoft Store on your desktop. Do so, then click to download the application.

If you wish to start out with a paid membership or upgrade your existing plan, you’ll need to navigate to the pricing link given above in the previous section. Click “Buy Now” and follow the steps on the screen to purchase your monthly subscription. You will require a Power BI account, which can quickly be created so long as you have an existing email associated with a Microsoft account. A Microsoft account is free and can be used to log in to a variety of applications and services both locally and online.

After you download the desktop application, you’re ready to get moving. Additional features may or may not be available depending upon your active monthly plan. There is currently no free trial available to test out the additional features only offered with paid subscriptions.

How to Create Marketing Reports with Power BI?

Microsoft's Power BI is relatively straightforward, so let's dive in and know the critical steps to creating marketing reports using Power BI.

Let's begin with how to import data in Power BI:

1. How to Import Data in Power BI

With Power BI installed and open on your computer, you should have your first untitled blank report open by default. The screen should appear something like this:

To get started, you will need to import data from at least one source. You can select from one of the pictured sources or click on “Get data from another source.” For future reference, you can also import additional data by clicking on “Get data” in the top menu pictured below:

After clicking this button, you’ll receive a list of common data sources, but can access more by clicking “more.” This will provide you with the full list of possible services you can connect with Power BI for your reports. You only need to connect one source but have the ability to connect as many as you would like.

2. Create and Manage Relationships Between Data

After you integrate the data for your report into Power BI, you need to establish relationships between data points. These relationships form the basis of how you want to model your data for presentation. You can do this in one of two ways. The first is to select the “Modeling” tab from the top menu. From there, you can select “Manage Relationships” to start pairing related metrics. You can also quickly create new columns and tables to perform automated calculations based on the data you select.

The second is to select the Model button from the left-side menu. This looks like three modules with lines running through to indicate their connection.

In this menu, you can verify that the characteristic attributed to the metric is correct and easily connect or disconnect two or more properties. To create a relationship, drag and any fields you want to connect between two adjacent tables. To delete relationships, right-click and select “Delete.”

Power BI offers many tools and options for modeling your data, which you can learn more about by taking Microsoft's free, quick training course here. The entire module takes roughly an hour and provides examples and practice problems to verify your knowledge of the platform. Ensuring that you understand how to model your data appropriately is the foundation for creating dynamic and impressive reports for your team and clients. There are few more Power BI courses available online to exile your career in Power BI as a marketer.

3. Choose a Visualization for Your Data

A visualization option is an image or graph that takes your data, the relationships, and presents it in an easily digestible manner for your audience. Examples of visualization options include tables, pie charts, bar graphs, line charts, or waterfall charts. You can find the list of visualizations within one of the collapsible menus on the right side of the screen.

You can get access to additional visualizations with paid plans. Users can also import custom visualization files from trusted developers. If you want to learn more about how you can start creating your own visuals for Power BI, check out this tutorial from Microsoft here.

4. Further Testing and Customization

After importing your data, establishing relationships, implementing visualizations, and adding notes, you can make additional customizations to finalize your report. Head over to the “View” tab to select from a variety of colorful themes that can enhance and personalize your presentation. You can even test how your reports view on mobile devices to ensure that your team or clients receive the best experience no matter where they interact with your report.

This menu also allows you to create custom filters and bookmarks that users can interact with as they move through your report. This can highly key data points that you want to stand out and help users more readily find the metrics that are most pertinent to their needs.

The “Insert” tab also features customization options that may prove useful in certain scenarios. From here, you can add text boxes, create custom buttons to trigger events or change pages, or add images to augment your visualizations. There is also a “Smart Narrative” option that utilizes AI technology to automatically write summaries for you based on the data in a selected visual.

5. Exporting Your Data

When your report is ready to share, you can just as easily export your data as you imported it. Simply move over to “File” and select “Export” from the list of options. You can save your custom report as either a Power BI file to be used exclusively in this application or as a general PDF that can be viewed with a variety of software.

If you’re on a cloud-based plan and wish to share your work with your team, you can select “Publish” to push your report to Power BI services. Any users that operate in the same workspace will be able to discover and view any new reports that come from your desktop.

Use Cases for Power BI in Marketing

Now that we've covered the basics of how to create a customized report in Power BI, let's consider how this tool can augment and improve our marketing services.

As we know, the work of a marketer in 2021 is powered by and driven by automation and analytics. If you research any guides or tutorials on how to improve your SEO, PPC campaigns, enhance your website, and so on, you'll be pointed to a wide variety of analytics tools and software that automatically track user activity and gather data in real-time. As you may have noticed, nearly all of these resources are featured as possible connectors within Power BI. As a result, you'll have an easy time creating reports for the following:

Track Your ROI for Keywords and Organic Search

Google Analytics houses much of the data that is relevant to your SEO and organic search campaigns. You can track important data such as your ranked keywords, daily web traffic, search volume, page clicks, and much more. By integrating your Google Analytics data into Power BI, you can quickly compile select data points into tables and graphs to create beautiful, dynamic reports.

Not only will this simplify the process of choosing which data to analyze for your team, but your personalized reports will make your agency look like you're on top of the game when presenting to your clients. You no longer need to worry about scrambling to gather or access the relevant data, as you can save models as templates and reuse them for monthly reporting.

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Compare Results for Paid Advertising Campaigns

Likewise, you can integrate a variety of online services into Power BI that you may be using to create PPC campaigns and launch new landing pages. Your Power BI reports can focus on a variety of focal points. This could include the numbers behind your A/B testing to help you push for a specific creative or page variation or your average ROI between an existing campaign and past campaigns.

Because there is no limit to the number of connectors you can have in place for a given report, you could even create a report that compares the ROI for organic marketing efforts versus paid ones. These types of reports can provide valuable insights such as which strategies deserve more focus and get results. However, it can also highlight problem areas that require more attention. Without the ability to gather these metrics in one easy-to-read visualization, even the best marketing team can fall guilty of letting these issues spiral before they become unmanageable.

Be Better Prepared for Client Presentations

No matter how well your team prepares for a weekly or monthly presentation with your clients, their minds inevitably operate on a different wavelength than your team. As a result, you find yourself dealing with awkward moments when a question arises that you don't have the answer to. You know you have the analytics available, but it takes time to sort and process the data to come up with an expert response.

By integrating all of your data into Power BI and modeling the relationships upfront, you can more readily sort through your client's analytics in a dynamic manner. You won't need to have your team dedicate as much time understanding the data as your new reporting software has already completed that work for you. As a result, you can provide more valuable insights than normal in real-time. This helps your team appear one step ahead and allows you to tackle problems with your clients in real-time and formulate a game plan for the days and weeks ahead.

Sell Clients on Additional Services

Marketing analytics does not only benefit active services but can be used as case studies to reinforce your sales efforts. When you're able to connect analytics regarding a client's organic or paid marketing efforts, you can compare it to other reports you have for clients that are receiving improved results with the additional services you're attempting to sell.

Power BI makes it easy for you to delete relationships and remove metrics that might reveal private or sensitive data that would harm the privacy of your customers. Utilize the tools available to compare the relevant metrics, and allow the numbers to make the argument of how certain tools, strategies, or services might get the desired results at an additional expense. This is a powerful way of converting both existing customers and prospective clients.

Power BI for Marketers - Improve Your Reporting Efforts!

All of your agency's marketing efforts are driven by analytics and reporting tools. It's not enough to simply gather a list of figures, but you need to ensure that your reports outline the data in a manner that guides your team's strategy. Power BI offers a complete package solution by allowing you to integrate nearly 150 unique data sources that your marketing team is already using to get the job done.

Even with the free plan, your connected data sources will refresh up to a minimum of eight times per day, granting you more than enough leeway to ensure that your reporting is always correct and up-to-date. If you're a much larger business that demands even more data and reporting options for a wide array of clients, you can share Power BI between several users on your team for a slightly upgraded fee per person.

With zero cost to entry and how simple it is to connect your data, there's no reason not to experiment with Power BI and determine if it's a good fit. However, because this is a Microsoft product, it will only really be of benefit to teams using PCs. Don't worry if you're a Mac family, as there are a variety of alternatives available online if Power BI doesn't suit all of your marketing needs.