Are you looking for a game-changing strategy to captivate your email subscribers and boost your marketing efforts? Look no further than video email marketing! 

Incorporating a video in your emails has the power to mesmerize and engage your subscribers in ways that traditional text-based emails simply can't match. 

As humans, we are naturally drawn to visuals, and videos provide a visually compelling and immersive experience that can leave a lasting impression. The data supports this, viewers say they retain more information (95% of a message) after watching a video. 

So are you ready to embark on this exciting journey of video email marketing? 

Then it’s time to unlock the power of videos to connect, engage, and convert your email subscribers like never before. So grab your popcorn, sit back, and get ready to discover the magic of video email marketing!

But first, let’s define what video email marketing is…

What is video email marketing?

Video email marketing is simply incorporating videos into your emails. Video marketing is a powerful way to connect with people on a deeper level. And, as we’ve already mentioned, people love watching videos to learn about a brand or topic.

Typically, videos are displayed in emails like the one below from Niice:

While videos won’t play within the inbox due to Internet Service Provider restrictions, displaying a thumbnail like the one above tells a viewer instantly that it is a video. 

In order to watch, viewers will need to click the thumbnail image and watch the video from the hosting platform. 

12 Creative ways to use videos in email marketing

From product demonstrations and customer testimonials to behind-the-scenes glimpses and educational tutorials, the possibilities are endless when it comes to leveraging videos in your email marketing campaigns.

Here are my picks for the most creative ways to use videos in emails.

1 - Show 'em how it’s done

Would you rather read a step-by-step process for getting started or have someone guide you through that process.

For me, that’s an easy question. Watching a video allows me to see first hand what to do.

Shopify includes a tutorial video helping new users set up their first store.

2 - Get customers excited about a product

Use videos to showcase your products or services in action. 

Show how it works, highlight its features, and demonstrate the benefits to engage your audience.

Jot Coffee shares a colorful and exciting video highlighting their product and the different ways you can make coffee.

Here’s the video they add to their email.

3 - To celebrate special occasions or holiday greetings

Create personalized videos to send festive greetings or celebrate special occasions with your subscribers. This adds a personal touch and strengthens the relationship with your audience.

After men’s shaving company Harry’s celebrated three years, they sent an email to their customers where their employee’s read actual customer reviews (I’m assuming they were actual, some were pretty out there).

Check out the video for yourself:

4 - To educate

Deliver valuable knowledge and insights to your subscribers through informative video tutorials, demonstrations, or expert interviews, making complex concepts more accessible and engaging for a highly impactful learning experience.

This marketing firm included a video educating their clients on how to use keywords in their content strategy. The purpose for this email was to help their clients with search engine optimization and to further establish themselves as thought leaders.

5 - Highlight how awesome you are

Include video testimonials from satisfied customers to add credibility and social proof. Highlight the challenges your customers face, how your product/service helped them overcome those challenges, and the results they achieved.

You can use your Google reviews to pull those testimonials.

Hearing real people speak about their positive experiences can be highly persuasive.

6 - Getting started

Welcome new customers with open arms and help them get started seamlessly by incorporating a helpful onboarding video into your welcome email series. Guide them through the initial steps, demonstrate key features, and provide tips to ensure they have a smooth and successful experience with your product or service.

Airtable includes a quick 2 minute video showing new users exactly how to get started with their platform.

This video helps new users understand those first key steps needed to start using Airtable. Check it out:

7 - Promote your most recent YouTube videos

Promote your latest YouTube videos by leveraging the power of thefeed element in AWeber. 

With this feature, you can automatically pull in the thumbnails, video names, descriptions and more from your YouTube channel, creating visually appealing and engaging email content that showcases your most recent videos and entices subscribers to click and watch. 

This is an easy way to increase your video view. See how we used it in the bottom of this email.

8 - Event recap

Relive the excitement of your recent event by incorporating a video recap into your email marketing. Take your subscribers on a journey, highlighting key moments, speaker highlights, and attendee testimonials, allowing them to experience the event's energy and value firsthand, even if they couldn't attend in person.

All your customers may not be able to attend an event, so let them know all the exciting, knowledgeable information they missed. OnBrand decided to recap each of their events. This strategy is a great way to create FOMO (the fear of missing out) and is a great way to increase attendance at future events.

9 - Monthly summaries

Wrap up each month with a dynamic video in your email marketing, providing a summary that highlights your latest product releases. 

Engage your subscribers with a visually captivating recap that showcases your progress and sets the stage for an even more exciting releases in the coming months.

Ahrefs provides a monthly product roundup to all their customers. These emails always start with a video, but they all include a written summary of product releases.

10 - PSA

Engage your audience with a compelling public service announcement message that conveys vital information, educates, and inspires action, amplifying the impact of your message and raising awareness for the cause.

When the pandemic hit a few years ago there was a lot of fear and uncertainty especially when it came to air travel. So instead of a plain text email, the CEO of AmericanAirlines sent a video email to update their customers.

11 - Share a success story

Bring your customer success stories to life through videos in your email marketing. Showcase the journey and achievements of satisfied customers, allowing their authentic experiences to resonate with your audience and build trust in your brand, ultimately inspiring others to achieve similar success.

Adbeat does a great job transitioning from a success story into a video show the steps that customer tool to increase their results.

12 - Summarize your email or blog

Make your content more engaging and easily digestible by using video in your email marketing to create short summaries or highlights of your email or blog posts. 

We sent a long format email to our subscribers but we recognized that people consume content in different ways, so we include a video highlighting to key benefits of that email.

Benefits of video emails

Videos hold the power to increase email engagement, but there are so many other benefits for adding videos to your email messages. Here are the top benefits for including a video in your emails.

Higher click-through rates

Videos can help capture attention, conveying messages more effectively, and enticing viewers to engage with your content.

Increase sales

By creating a more immersive and persuasive experience, showcasing products or services in action, can result in viewers making a purchase.

Saves you time

Instead of writing a long email, summarize your message in a video.

Shareable

They increase the chances that your email might be shared. Funny, quirky videos work well for this.

Here’s a great example from men’s shaving company, Harry’s.

Growing your email list

Detailing why someone should sign up, and what they’ll get out of your list

Building a relationship 

A behind-the-scenes video helps you connect with your audience

Evoking a feeling 

The feeling you leave your audience should connect to your goal. If you want your audience to take action and do something (like add a video into an email), perhaps the feeling you’re going for would be “motivated,” because you’re using your video to hook someone’s interest and motivate them to do something.

Going viral 

If you want to have your videos shared a lot, you might want to evoke a feeling of “delight” instead. You might even find that you want to evoke a combination of feelings instead of only one.

How to add a video to your marketing email?

With a reputable email marketing tool like AWeber, including videos in email is incredibly easy. 

If your tool has a drag and drop editor, all you need to do is drag the video element into your message editor, include the hosted video’s link, and voila! All that’s left to do is press send. 

Get started with video email marketing

Now that you're equipped with the knowledge of video email marketing, it's time to take action and revolutionize your email campaigns. Don't let this impactful strategy go to waste – start implementing video emails to drive remarkable results.

Begin by identifying opportunities in your existing email campaigns where video can add value and enhance your messaging. 

Are you ready to harness the potential of video emails? Start creating, sending, and converting today!

The post 12 Creative ways video email marketing can increase your engagement appeared first on AWeber.

via AWeber https://blog.aweber.com/learn/video-email-marketing.htm

The idea of using social media for small businesses isn't new. 

According to the State of Small Business Digital Marketing Report, 72% of small businesses invest in social media marketing, and they find social media platforms most valuable when it comes to business promotion and building relationships with customers.

But when you run your own business and you have a lot on your plate, it's nearly impossible to show up on every social media platform. With 2 billion active users, 90% of whom follow at least one business account on the platform, it's no wonder that small business owners opt for Instagram.

When done right, Instagram helps small businesses boost brand awareness, increase trust, create a strong connection with potential customers, and even generate more revenue.

Yes, having Instagram presence is a great idea for small businesses these days, but it's not enough to succeed; you should also understand how to create content for Instagram that drives engagement.

If creating content for Instagram is high on your list, keep on reading this article.

But first, let’s understand the role of high-quality Instagram content for higher engagement and why it’s so important for small businesses.

The role of high-quality Instagram content for higher engagement

For small businesses, it can be hard to compete against larger companies and fellow small businesses to cut through the noise on Instagram. Around 200 million businesses use Instagram to market their products and services, hoping for the attention of active users. 

Plus, the Instagram algorithm prioritizes content from profiles whose content draws views, comments and likes – these are widely considered to be the platform’s biggest engagement signals. It therefore takes time and effort to prove that your content (and Instagram profile) deserves to surface in the newsfeed of your followers.

When you optimize your Instagram activity for engagement and create content that resonates with your audience, it sends signals to the algorithm that your content can keep users engaged for more extended periods. All in all, it leads to small business growth.

That's why it's important to know how to create content for Instagram that grabs the attention of your audience.

So, how can you create content for Instagram that drives engagement? Check out seven proven strategies below.

1 - Piggyback on social media trends

Social media trends are constantly changing, but if you can keep up with the current ones, it helps to create engaging content for Instagram. Here's how being familiar with trends can help you to create engaging Instagram content:

• Know popular topics on the platform
• Brainstorm new content ideas
• Meet the expectations of your audience
• Grab the attention of Instagram users

What’s more, when you piggyback on social media trends, you can hack the algorithm. For example, it's no secret that Instagram is rebranding itself into a video platform, so the newsfeed heavily favors its new vertical video format, Instagram Reels.

Case in point:

With the growing popularity of vertical videos, Later decided to embrace Instagram Reels as a part of their Instagram strategy, and the company saw a 500%+ increase in its engagement rate.

As a small business owner with limited time and budget, you can also learn from Cluse, a company that reposts fan-made Reels to its profile to make good use of the trend.

To learn more about the current trends, you can check out the latest Instagram Trend Report. Here are some Instagram trends you might do well to focus on: 

• DIY fashion
• Activism
• AI beauty and fashion
• Instagram monetization

Additionally, always test which content type works best for your audience. The following infographic can help you make the right decision, based on your profile size.

2 - Lay a bet on eye-grabbing visuals

People are visual learners. As specified in one report, 90% of the information our brains receive is visual, people retain 65% of what they have seen, and social media posts with images get 650% higher engagement. 

Instagram is all about visuals. As a social media platform with a strong focus on visuals, eye-grabbing content matters. 

If you follow social media design trends, that's great. But if you want to make your life easier and create eye-catching Instagram content with ease, it's important to make good use of graphic design tools that allow non-designers to make appealing visuals with ready-to-use templates on the go.

Looking for a good option to give it a try? Consider using Photoleap (iOS & Android), an AI-powered photo editing app from Lightricks that has all tools and features to tell brand's stories with visuals. From features like double exposure and layers to the library of assets and quick filters, there are hundreds of ways to unleash your creativity and stand out from the crowd.

Let's take a look at one Instagram creator who uses Photoleap to make eye-grabbing Instagram visuals and promote products on his profile:

Now let's take a look at the entire profile. It looks eye-catching, creative, and interesting! When you take care of the Instagram grid, you can create a cohesive feed that keeps users engaged. 

3 - Make sure your content delivers value

In the last decade, Instagram has become a popular platform for businesses and common people to express themselves. On average, users upload 95 million posts daily, and content bombards us from all sides.

There's too much content on the platform, so users pay close attention to useful content.

First, you need to understand your audience and their expectations. For example, you can produce the right type of content your followers want to see from you.

Second, your content should focus on solving your buyers' problems, not selling your product. 

Here's a great example of this strategy from beauty brand Elemis. Instead of promoting its skin treatments, the company launched a 28-day facial massage challenge, where its expert shared massage moves on a daily basis, to help the target audience learn more about facial self-care in a wider context.

Want to know the best part? Your Instagram content can become effective for small business lead generation. When you offer something that delivers value and helps followers solve their pain points, you give people a solid reason to become leads or even loyal followers who stay tuned for more.

Pro tip: If you use email marketing, you can always repurpose email content that works for your audience and post it on your Instagram feed. It helps to save time and effort when creating content for Instagram that drives engagement.

4 - Work with proven content creators and influencers

Instagram influencer marketing has become an effective tactic for businesses of all sizes and niches to enter an already-established community of potential customers and market their products or services through peer recommendations.

For small businesses with limited budgets, working with Instagram influencers can be another way to create content that drives engagement. Once you find an influencer for your brand, you can ask him or her to review your product and then repost these posts to your feed.

When done right, influencer-driven campaigns deliver wonderful results. Check out the following example of collaboration between Reign Judge and SweetGreen.

Not only does Reign have a solid and loyal following to promote Sweet Green, but she also has a separate account for restaurant reviews, which makes this collaboration even more effective for the small business.

When influencers use an Instagram creator account, they can give you permission to show their content on your feed or promote their influencer endorsements as ads. As a result, you can create authentic paid ad campaigns and reach a wider audience of users who show interest in your product.

Pro tip: To protect your brand from reputation risks and make a content creator or an influencer meet the requirements, create and fill out a collaboration agreement that defines the terms of your partnership.

5 - Leverage the power of storytelling

In the context of marketing, storytelling is the art of sharing transformative narratives, beliefs and values that impact human emotions and therefore affect buying decisions. 

It has also become one of the most effective content marketing best practices, largely because when you leverage the power of storytelling, you create content that drives engagement.

In honor of Black History Month, Ralph’s Coffee posted a video that tells stories of love, joy, and hope within Black communities. With the power of storytelling, it takes a stand on social issues and therefore creates an emotional and deeper connection with the audience.

Ready to use storytelling on Instagram? Here are some tips for you to tell stories with Instagram content:

• Create a series of posts around one topic
• Make an Instagram video
• Lay a bet on descriptive captions
• Share your customer success stories
• Tell visual stories with a carousel post

6 - Get inspired by your competitors

Wouldn't it be great if you could predict what new types of Instagram content might work best for your audience?

Keep an eye on your competitors to see what they publish on Instagram and how your target audience interacts with this content to make better business decisions. Simply put, get inspired by your competitors to get your Instagram marketing to the next level.

As a small business owner who seeks inspiration, the best way is to follow larger corporations in your niche that often set trends on social media. For instance, if you work in the coffee industry and you run a local coffee shop, it's a smart idea to draw inspiration from Startbucks:

There are a few things around Instagram content that drives engagement you can learn from Starbucks:

• Combine branded content with fan-made visuals on your feed
• Take followers behind the scenes
• Create seasonal content

7 - Track your content performance

So, you've put much time and effort into creating content for Instagram, but it still doesn't drive user engagement. What should you do? Track your content performance!

When you know your following, their behavior and preferences, you can measure the impact of your marketing efforts and make better decisions like choosing the right time for posting or experimenting with content formats and storytelling strategies.

Luckily, Instagram has an in-built feature for users who care about content performance: Instagram Insights.

To get a better understanding of your content performance, there's no need to have the business vs creator Instagram account debate, as both profile types have access to Instagram Insights, where you can see how your content performs.

Check out how it looks in action:

But if you want to dive deeper into analytics or work with other team members on your Instagram content strategy, it can be a smart idea to rely on Instagram analytics tools.

For example, Socialpilot allows users to keep track of valuable insights and get reports that help to make informed decisions to content creation. It also has a user-friendly interface that makes it easy for non-marketers to analyze various data in one place.

Start creating content for Instagram that drives engagement

Instagram remains one of the hottest social media platforms for users, creators, and brands. 

The competition is getting higher every day, so it's crucial to know how to create content for Instagram that drives engagement. When people interact with your content, this means your audience finds it relevant to their needs, wants, and concerns. This makes it easier for you to establish a connection with your target audience, but it can also send signals to Instagram that your content is worth surfacing to even more people in the feed. 

Use these hacks and tricks to start creating content for Instagram that drives engagement and let us know what works best for your audience.

The post How to create content for Instagram that drives engagement appeared first on AWeber.

via AWeber https://blog.aweber.com/learn/how-to-create-content-for-instagram.htm

Have you ever written content for your blog and thought “this is the best content I’ve ever written?”

You publish it, promote it on social media and send an email to your audience. And people seem to love it initially; but after the first day or two of attention... nothing.

How can this be?

The answer is pretty simple, your post was never optimized for organic search.

You’re not alone. We had a blog post “Here's How Email Color Can Impact Subscriber Behavior” that fell into this category - amazing content, no traffic.

Here were sessions from Google Analytics for the past couple of years for this blog post.

When I dug a little deeper, I noticed that we weren’t targeting any keywords that people actually search for. No one is searching for “how email color impacts subscriber behavior.”

When I performed keyword research in ahrefs, these were the top results for “email” and “color”:

So how did I take a blog post that had zero organic traffic dating back to its launch in 2016...

And turn it into a post that is seeing four straight months of organic traffic growth?

I optimized the content based on keywords people were searching for. Here was my process for optimizing this specific blog post for SEO.

1 - It all starts with keyword research

I use ahrefs for my research but there are several other tools you can use like Semrush or Moz.

The blog was about how color can have an impact on subscriber or consumer behavior so I started with a general search term of “color”.

Then I narrowed my search by including words that could be relevant to this blog. So I included the words “behavior” and “marketing”. My thought was “email” was too specific but general words like “behavior” and “marketing” might show some organic keyword phrases to target.

The top results showed that people are searching for terms revolving around “psychology of color in marketing.”

So I decided to optimize the blog around that term.

2 - Internal research

Now that I had my topic, I wanted to see if we had any other blog posts talking about color. The reason for the internal research is because you don’t want to optimize a post on a topic that has already been written in your blog. Those two blog posts would then be competing against each other for your target keywords. 

I used Google Search Console to look for search queries that contained the word “color” to see if there were any blog posts getting organic traffic for a similar subject matter.

My research found a blog written in 2017 with the title “Color Theory for Sign Up Form Design”. This content was very similar to the content I was optimizing except it was talking about how color can impact a sign up form.

Next I wanted to see if this blog warranted its own post or could I combine it with my new blog. I looked at the clicks from Google Search Console over the past 12 months. The data showed only 45 people clicked a search query to get this blog post.

Next I looked at sessions from all channels in Google Analytics. And the past four months showed organic traffic. Even prior to that we only averaged 50 sessions a month.

The organic traffic was so low, it did not warrant keeping it as its own post. 

So I decided this additional content would make my new blog post even stronger, so I added this content to my new blog.

3 - Reposition the blog content

I loved the content from the original blog “Here’s How Email Color Can Impact Subscriber Behavior” but that was very specific to email marketing. I wanted to keep this content, but knew as is, it wasn’t going to drive any organic traffic.

So I decided to reposition the blog to talk about the psychology of color in marketing. Here’s how I did that:

New title

Created a new title “How to use the psychology of color in marketing to increase your results” to describe what the blog was about.

New optimize content

Added new content, including studies, about how color influences behavior in marketing.

In the content I also made sure I naturally included keywords I wanted to rank for including “psychology of color in marketing” and “marketing color meaning”. 

Added images

Included charts to highlight the different color meanings, my thought here was that I could also rank with the images (which I was right, some of my organic traffic is coming from people clicking on the images in the search results)

Transitioned to prior content

After highlighting how specific colors can influence consumer behavior, I transitioned into how this can be applied to both sign up forms and email marketing. This is where I added the content from the original two blog posts.

New URL with redirect

Finally, since the original blogs URL’s were about how sign up form (/color-theory-for-sign-up-form-design) and email (/how-email-color-impacts-subscriber-behavior) color impacts subscriber behavior, I created a new URL (/how-to-use-the-psychology-of-color-in-marketing.htm) and I redirected the other two URL's to the new one.

Optimize your blog for SEO

Since I used content that was already created, I only needed to write about 40% of this 2,500+ word post.

Now it’s your turn. Find a blog that is simply an amazing piece of content, but for some reason is just not driving organic traffic. Do research and find keywords that you could incorporate that would give this post a chance to get organic traffic.

To give yourself a better chance to rank high for several keywords, I recommend you search for keywords that have a keyword difficulty under 40. These are less competitive and will give you a better chance to rank quicker.

Bonus: How to optimize a blog that’s already getting strong traffic

I just shared with you my process for optimizing my content for SEO on a blog that had zero sessions over the past several years. 

But can you and should you optimize a blog post that’s already getting strong organic traffic. The answer is absolutely.

I optimized this blog post - blog.aweber.com/learn/how-to-get-email-addresses - that had 3,242 organic visitors over the previous 12 months and was ranking in the top 20 for several strategic keywords. That’s over 270 organic visitors per month from this one blog.

After a few simple updates to this blog, my organic traffic has increased almost 3x. Since this blog was optimized, organic traffic from this post has increased to 861 organic visitors a month.

Chart from Google Search Console

And I’m ranking higher for several targeted keywords:

Here are my tips that I used to optimize my content, which improved my SEO. 

1 - Updated old and non-relevant content

This blog post, believe it or not, was written back in 2010. I optimized it in 2020 and again in 2023. A lot has changed in email marketing in the last 13+ years.

I updated content that was outdated or no longer relevant.

Here’s some things you should check for when optimizing your content:

• Depending on your topic, a lot can change in a year, so make sure your content is still fresh and relevant.
• Are you referencing a year or information that is dated? For example, if your blog is referring to MySpace as the hottest social media platform, it might be time to update it.
• Check all your links. If any of the internal or external links are being redirected, change them. If the content you’re linking to is several years old, find a more recent article to link to.

Bonus tips: You should optimize your strongest content every 2 - 3 years to ensure the content is still hitting those organic triggers.

2 - Updated the title

Updating your blog title might not be necessary, but I felt my title needed something strong to compete with blogs that were ranking in the top 10.

My original title was “How to get email addresses for email marketing”. I use HeadlineStudio to score and help validate my title ideas. For the original title, the headline score was 58, which is an average score.

The new title scored an 82. This gave me more confidence that the new headline might resonate better with people searching for “ways to get email addresses for marketing”.

3 - Add new content

The blog had 17 “ways to get email addresses”, I added three new tips.

When you’re updating an already SEO friendly content, you don’t want to dramatically change the language that got you that strong ranking. But you also don’t want to add “fluff” content, it still needs to be strong, relevant, and add value to the reader.

Help the SEO algorithms

Give your content a strong chance to rank. When you publish your content, promote it to your audience. This will give search engines some early data to determine if your content is worthy of a top SERP.

So email your audience and add to your social channels. You want to get people reading and engaging with your content as soon as possible.

You can use Blog Automation to instantly notify your audience the minute you publish a new blog post. No additional work is needed on your part. Just sit back, relax, and watch as your audience starts viewing your latest, amazing blog post. 

Blog Automation is a feature in your AWeber account. 

Don’t have an AWeber account - no problem. You can create one for free.

The post Optimize your blog post for SEO & go from zero traffic to monthly growth appeared first on AWeber.

via AWeber https://blog.aweber.com/learn/optimize-your-blog-post-for-seo.htm

Landing pages play a pivotal role in driving successful campaigns, they let you simplify your message while keeping your customer focused on a desired action.

In today's fast-paced digital landscape, where capturing attention and driving conversions is more challenging than ever, the strategic use of landing pages has become a necessity for businesses and marketers alike. 

But there are different types of landing pages for different situations. We’ve highlighted the top 12 most impactful landing pages including when to use them.

Webinar landing page

In-person or virtual events — like webinars — are a great way to educate your audience and to get them engaged with your brand. These are no small tasks to put together. A lot of your time and energy is spent on the planning and execution of these events. But without a webinar registration landing page, your hard work will go unnoticed.

The features that your event landing page needs to have are:

• Headline with your event name
• Sign up form
• Copy explaining why someone should attend
• Dates and time (make sure to include your time zone)

A webinar landing page is designed to attract and inform people about a webinar. It acts as a virtual invitation, providing details such as the topic, date, time, and speakers. 

When to use

This type of landing page is used when you want to inform people of an upcoming webinar and give them an easy way to sign up.

Webinar landing page example

What I like:

• The “Save Your Seat” header is a great way to imply there may be limited slots available. This could potentially drive increased sign ups.
• The “About Your Speaker” section which helps provide credibility.
• The entire landing page will fit within most desktop view ports without having to scroll.

Ebook landing page

An ebook landing page is specifically created to promote and offer an electronic book (ebook). It serves as a destination where people can learn about the ebook's content, benefits, and either purchase or download it. 

When to use

Many aspiring entrepreneurs are looking to make money by selling ebooks online. By producing the ebook and selling it online, many business owners are bypassing the traditional publishers, print presses, and distribution centers.

Ebooks can also be used as a lead magnet to grow your email list.

Ebook landing page example

What I like:

• Great explanation for what’s included in the ebook.
• Action-oriented call to action - “Yes, Send me the ebook”.
• Selling the value of the ebook with a strong headline.
• About the author section helps add credibility regarding the contents of the ebook.
• Visually appealing landing page background.

Ecommerce landing page

An ecommerce landing page is specifically for selling products online. Think of it as a shop window on the internet, showcasing products, providing descriptions, prices, and a simple way for customers to add items to their shopping cart and complete their purchase.

When to use

Creators who start off selling their products on marketplace shops such as Etsy. But eventually after they build a loyal customer base, they will create an ecommerce landing page to sell their products, eliminating the marketplace’s transaction fees.

Or creators looking to sell digital products. They can send their existing audience to these landing pages to purchase the digital product or they can try to drive new customers through paid advertising.

Ecommerce landing page example

What I like:

• Includes popular products available as an upsell

Lead magnet landing page

Lead magnets are a great way to incentivize a potential customer to provide you their email address. But in order to capture those email addresses, you need to create a lead magnet that provides a desired value for that individual. 

Once you’ve created your incentive, the next step is to build a dedicated landing page to capture that email address. Your communication needs to clearly explain the freemium they will receive and the main benefits of that lead magnet.

After you have their email, you can now begin marketing your product or service.

When to use

This type of landing page is used when you want to increase your email subscribers.

Lead magnet landing page example

What I like:

• Simple, straightforward, easy-to-read landing page.
• Break out the three main elements that you will receive.

Squeeze page

A squeeze page is a type of landing page that’s used to collect (or “squeeze” hence the name) a visitor’s email address.

Squeeze pages differ from other types of landing pages in that they are usually much shorter and only ask for an email address. Other pages, for example a lead magnet page, may ask for other information such as first and last name.

When to use

When you want to grow your email subscribers.

Squeeze page example

While this landing page example could also be considered a lead magnet landing page, this could also be considered a squeeze page do to the single email field request.

What I like:

• Bulleted list of what you get with the lead magnet
• The red CTA draws your attention to the main action
• The background image ties in to the incentive

Podcast landing page

Podcasts have become one of the most popular mediums. In 2013, 10% of the population listened to a podcast monthly, andthat number is now 37%.

There are over 48 million podcast episodes. Standing out from the rest becomes a lot easier once you have  a landing page to promote your podcast.  You can no longer rely on listeners finding your podcast on one of the streaming platforms. To be successful, you can have a summary page for each podcast episode.

When to use

Podcast landing pages are used when you want to promote a single podcast or to collect email addresses so you can communicate future episodes.

Podcast landing page example

What I like:

• Set’s expectations for when someone who signs up will receive emails. This transparency can help convert more visitors.
• Embed a podcast episode. This could also help convert more visitors as it gives people who have not heard an episode a chance to listen before providing their email.

PPC landing page

One of the most important things to keep in mind about paid ads is to make your landing page relevant to the keyword being searched. 

Imagine a potential customer searching for “best italian restaurants near me” and the page they click is about the best italian food recipes. Not a very good user experience. 

And it will certainly be a waste of your money. Given the search term was for ‘best restaurants,’ it’s safe to say they’re not in the mood to cook tonight.

So every keyword topic you want to bid on, you need a relevant landing page for your Google Ads or other search engine.

For PPC (pay per click) ads, making sure your landing page is relevant is not only important from a conversation (or desired action) standpoint, it is also necessary to improve your quality score. A better quality score in Google often leads to lower prices and better ad positioning.

When to use

When you set up a paid ad and need to send your traffic to a targeted landing page that’s specific to the search term.

PPC landing page example

Thank you page

Did you set up a webinar landing page or how about one to capture email addresses? If so, then show your appreciation with a dedicated landing page to thank them for signing up for your event, downloading your lead magnet or purchasing your product.

This page doesn’t need to be complicated. A simple thank you along with next steps, depending on the offer, is all you need.

When to use

A thank you landing page is typically used after a user completes a desired action, such as filling out a form, making a purchase, or subscribing to a newsletter. It serves as a way to express gratitude and provide further instructions or information. 

Thank you page example

What I like:

• The thank you page is used to fulfill the lead magnet
• Offers an upsell for an on-demand webinar

Video landing page

A video landing page is used to add additional value for the page’s main content. It is designed to capture the attention of visitors and highlight information or a message through video format. 

When to use

Video landing pages are often used to promote products, services, or events, providing an engaging and visual way to present information. 

For example, a company may create a video landing page to showcase a new product, demonstrating its features and benefits through a captivating video presentation.

Video landing page example

What I like:

• They show the importance of the video by placing it at the top center of the landing page.
• The headline above the call to action adds the benefit for why someone should sign up.

Link-in-bio landing page

A link-in-bio page, also known as a bio link page, contains a collection of links to various online resources. 

It’s most commonly used in the bio section of social media profiles, where users are limited to including just one clickable link. A link-in-bio page serves as a workaround to that limitation, allowing users to provide multiple links to websites, articles, products, or any other relevant content in a single location. 

When to use

A link-in-bio page can be used when you need a centralized hub where your followers can easily access and explore different content or destinations that you want to showcase.

Link-in-bio landing page example

What I like:

• Link to order her latest book and having this CTA in a different color draws a reader’s attention to this important link.

What I like:

• The dark blue background really makes the CTA’s pop.

Pre-launch landing page

A pre-launch landing page is created before the official launch of a product, service, or campaign. It serves as a teaser or preview of what is to come and to generate interest. 

The page typically includes a compelling headline, brief description or teaser content, visuals, and a call-to-action encouraging visitors to sign up to receive updates or exclusive access when the product or service becomes available. 

When to use:

A pre-launch landing page is used when you want to measure interest level or create excitement about an upcoming launch.  It can also be used to collect leads from prospects interested in the new product.

Pre-launch landing page example

What I like:

• I like how Grains & Grit teases of something coming soon. However this type of landing page will only work with existing customers who are aware of your brand.

What I like:

• The images and description help people get excited about the property.
• They offer a cross-sell opportunity allowing visitors to check out other properties.

Facebook landing page

A Facebook landing page is specifically designed to be the initial destination when someone clicks on a call-to-action button or ad within Facebook. It serves as an extension of your Facebook presence, providing additional information, capturing leads, or promoting specific offers or content. 

helps you connect and engage with your audience beyond your regular Facebook profile or page.

When to use

A Facebook landing page is used to help you connect and engage with your audience beyond your regular Facebook profile or page.

It should be used when you want to turn your followers into email subscribers. This is important because you never truly own your audience on Facebook. So getting your followers to sign up for your email list opens up a ton of possibilities for when, how, and what you can communicate to them through email.

Driving people to a landing page from Facebook is an effective tactic to grow your email list. 

Facebook landing page example

What I like:

• Used an incentive (or lead magnet) to encourage Facebook followers to provide their email.
• Provides examples on how the free template can be used to help support email strategy

Other uses

What’s great about a landing page builder is you can pretty much create a dedicated page for anything you can think of. I’ve seen restaurants who don’t have a website use landing pages for their menu, other corporations use them for social media highlights, for a job posting. The uses are only limited by your imagination.

If you’re not sure where to start, log into your AWeber account and begin using one of our customized templates. These drag-and-drop templates let you easily brand and set up your landing pages. 

In fact, all but two of the above examples were created using AWeber’s landing page builder.

Don’t have an AWeber account? No problem, you can get started for free today.

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If you’re struggling to build an audience online, prepare for a forehead-slap moment. 

You’ve been ignoring Facebook.

Many of us think of Facebook as a place to catch up with distant relatives. But this means we forget Facebook is one of the most potent audience-building tools in the world. 

With nearly 3 billion users, Facebook’s raw traffic potential rivals anything in the social media scene. 

For many marketers, the solution is simple: build a Facebook audience. Then move that audience somewhere else, like a newsletter or a YouTube page.

But what if there were more you could do on the Facebook platform itself? 

Enter Facebook Reels.

Facebook Reels are the platform’s answer to the short-form videos that are springing up everywhere. Think TikTok and YouTube shorts. On Facebook, you’re just as free to post fitness tips and brief podcast highlights as you are anywhere else.

There’s one advantage to creating these Reels: Facebook is serious about competing with those other platforms. And they pay like they’re serious.

That means your Reels can do more than attract an audience for your web presence. They can potentially open a new avenue for revenue streams that fuel your business. 

Here’s how to monetize Facebook Reels the right way—and some strategies you can use to build a bigger audience on Facebook.

What is the earning potential of Facebook Reels?

Let’s start with the basics. If you’re going to earn money from Facebook Reels, you’re going to have to unlock monetization in the first place. That means having a bare minimum Facebook audience to work with.

For instance, Facebook introduced the temporary “Reels Play” bonus program on both Facebook and Instagram. That’s phasing out soon. 

What’s next? Facebook says they’ll focus on a bevy of monetization features to keep the Reels money flowing to creators. We just don’t know what those monetization features are just yet.

What does that mean for you? Either way, you still have to meet Facebook’s standards if you plan on monetizing your short-form videos.

For Reels Play, eligible creators have been those who launched Reels with at least 1,000 views over a 30-day period. That’s an average of 33 and a third views per day—hardly unachievable, even for the beginner.

Reels Play was invite-only. So if you want a head start, you need to learn how to play the short-form video game by Facebook’s rules.

Review their guidelines to make sure you’re publishing Reels that can be monetized in the future:

• Prohibited formats: A Reel has to be a genuine video. That means no static videos (which are really just images), static image polls, slideshows of images, or even looping videos. The video should be straightforward—not a PowerPoint presentation.
• Restricted categories: Don’t take advantage of recent tragedies or debated social issues to grab quick views. Not only is it in poor taste, but it might mean you never get monetized in the first place.
• Suggestive/inappropriate activity: Facebook is a family-friendly place. Any language inappropriate for children can work against you. Sexually suggestive activity is also a no-go on the platform.
• Copyrighted content: Don’t steal a song to make an “original” video. Always start with fresh, original concepts, including new recordings you made yourself.

How much does Facebook Reels pay per view?

There’s no telling how much Facebook Reels will continue to pay when the bonus program runs out. But we can get a vague idea of what Facebook Reels has been paying out over the years.

For example, TikTok creators typically report getting $2-4 per 1,000 views.

How much does Facebook Reels pay per view? Typically Facebook has been higher, especially during the bonus program.

Nate Risch, for example, reported earning $4.11 on average per 1,000 views. And in some cases, people report getting as much as $10 per 1,000 views—though you shouldn’t necessarily expect that.

It’s a wide range that reflects a still-evolving situation at Facebook. But one thing is clear: it’s nothing to sneeze at.

Facebook has also used other programs to encourage more engagement with Facebook reels. For example, there have been cumulative challenges--a creator might earn $20 when having five Reels reach 100 plays on each video.

Think of it as a trial period for Facebook/Meta: it’s been using bonus programs to encourage more engagement. 

And even with monetization still evolving, there’s still plenty to go around. According to TechCrunch, Meta is monetizing Overlay ads on reels, sharing 55% of the revenue with creators. (The remaining 45% is going to Facebook).

That means with Reels, you can expect to pay at least on par with TikTok, if not slightly better. But keep in mind that Facebook Reels are still in their infancy stage. It’s possible Facebook offers new programs that could change what you expect to earn with every view.

The conclusion? There’s money to be made here, especially if you already have an audience. In fact, Facebook’s been slightly better than other platforms when it comes to sharing revenue. 

The Reels Play bonus program even paid creators up to $35,000 per month. But the invite-only feature is going away soon. 

To ensure long-term success, rewind and focus on the fundamentals. That means learning how to get your Facebook Reels published ASAP.

How to get started with Facebook Reels

Facebook Reels: what you need to know

Something big happened in 2021, though not everybody noticed it.

That was the point at which TikTok overtook Google—yes, Google--as the most popular domain on the entire Internet. 

To call that “no small feat” would be an understatement. TikTok was relatively new on the scene back then, and its rise to popularity threw shockwaves into the social media industry.

TikTok’s short-form videos had taken the Internet by storm. But it clearly wasn’t just a passing fad. For everyone else to keep up, they’d have to at least consider investing in similar video platforms. 

Not too long after that, Facebook entered the fray, bringing Reels wider in 2021.

What’s the difference?

“We’ll be honest,” says Android Authority. “[TikTok vs. YouTube Shorts vs. Facebook reels] are mostly the same.” 

Reels are Facebook’s answer to TikTok. It wouldn’t make sense for Facebook to ask creators to produce Reels without some monetary incentive. Even if the bonus program goes away—as it’s scheduled to do—Facebook has to at least keep par with TikTok.

That’s where you come in. 

You can produce Facebook Reels to make videos out of music, audio, effects, or text overlays. Feel free to use the full gamut of options your creativity requires. Just make sure these are original.

When you post a Reel, it will go directly to any fans you have in their news feed. But it might also spread to new audiences in a dedicated “Reels” section of the feed. 

That’s a recent innovation at Facebook. They’re trying to make both Facebook and Instagram more like TikTok and YouTube. And that means broadcasting Reels to more than just your followers.

In that way, Facebook Reels can provide you with the potential to reach a new audience: people who saw your Reel before they ever heard of you.

Facebook Reels monetization requirements

The bonus program was invite-only, which limited how many people could create Reels and expect to start sharing the revenue they created.

You shouldn’t expect that to change too much unless Facebook announces new monetization requirements. 

In other words, expect that you’ll have to make a splash, or build a sizable audience, to “unlock” monetization.

How do you begin? You’ll have to create reels from your page or from a profile set to “professional” mode. This should immediately reveal that Facebook wants you to take a businesslike approach to it.

In the future, it may be that you use Overlay ads to monetize Facebook Reels. This would be independent of the “creator fund” style approach that Facebook has used in the past. 

It might help to learn the two types of overlay ads currently on Facebook Reels:

• Banner ads are currently the default setting for these Overlay ads if you’re already part of an in-stream ad account with Facebook. As per standard web parlance, these ads lay over the top of the ad, tempting the viewer to click.
• Sticker ads give you some more control. Tap Stickers in the right-hand menu panel, tap “Ad,” then “Add Sticker Ad.” You can drag the sticker to the appropriate place in your video—and sometimes, it’s a good idea to have this place in mind even before you produce the Reel.

As with all Facebook Reels, there are some eligibility requirements here for what Facebook calls “in-stream ads.” You’ll have to be at least 18 years old, have a minimum of 5,000 followers, and have 60,000 minutes total viewed over the last 60 days. 

That’s why it’s worth getting these requirements out of the way. Prepare yourself to meet these standards before you can fully monetize your Reels.

Facebook Reels settings

Before you start, it’s a good idea to get familiar with the default Facebook Reels settings. That way, you can produce Reels with consistent branding.

You also don’t want to run into potential issues with visibility. For example, the “Default audience” selection is key here:

• Public: This sets it so anyone—including people who aren’t signed into Facebook—can see the Reel. This is best if you want to max out on views. Keep in mind that this setting means other people on Facebook can use your original audio in their Reels, or create remixes from your Reel.
• Friends: In this setting, only friends on Facebook can see your Reel. Not ideal for maximizing view count. There’s also a setting for “Friends except…” which lets you exclude certain friends from seeing your Reel.

If you’ve published existing reels and want to change them, you can go ahead and change the settings to Public as well.

How to set up your Reel

Start out with a profile on business or “professional” mode. If you can’t even access your Reels just yet, you may be using a personal account without the right settings.

How do you create your first reels? Let’s briefly cover the basic steps, assuming you’re working from a phone:

• Open Facebook, being sure that you’re using the latest version of the app. If not, give it a quick update and reload.
• Navigate to the “Reels” section under your Feed, then tap “Create.” Otherwise, you can tap the camera icon in the top right corner when you’re looking at someone else’s Reel.
• Now it’s time to add a video to your Reel:
  • Tap the “Record” button to add a new video.
  • Tap the photo icon in the lower left corner if you want to add existing video clips to the Reel. 
  • To add audio, text, and other effects, you can tap those icons on the right side of your screen.
• When done recording, tap “Next.”
• Write a description for your Reel. Hit your major keywords here. You can also explore similar Reels to see what competitors are using in their videos—though you shouldn’t expect keyword selection to make or break any given Reel.
• Choose an audience for your Reel—ideally, if you’re monetizing it and it’s fit for public consumption, you’ll mark it Public. (Note: that’s also what they’re listed by default, so if you want a private video, you’ll have to change those settings at this stage).
• Tap “Share Reel,” and it will publish your Reel to your feed.

Is your work done? Not if you want to maximize views. The name of the game with Facebook ads is to get more views. More views, more advertising revenue in your pocket.

Here are a few things you can do to share those Reels and enhance visibility beyond appearing in your feed:

• You can update your privacy settings to “Public” and make that permanent. This should prevent you from accidentally publishing any private videos.
• When you create a Reel, it will go to your Reels profile as well. Your audience can then see every Reel you’ve published. Think about the value of each Reel on that part of your profile before you publish.

How to make the most of Facebook Reels monetization

Ready to learn how to monetize Facebook Reels? Let’s talk about what goes in the Reel. You can hardly expect a Reel to gain widespread popularity if it’s not drawing attention.

Facebook has plenty of options for customizing each Reel if you’re building it within the app, including:

• Audio, like adding a song from the Facebook music library. You can also produce original audio, which Facebook will attribute to you. Keep in mind that if you share it publicly, the Facebook community can use your audio to create their Reels.
• Speed: Slowing down or speeding up your video can have all sorts of effects. Use it to gussy up a recipe video, add humor to a clumsy situation, or to show behind-the-scenes work, like a wedding DJ speeding up the setup process.
• Timer: Don’t have an extra cameraperson handy? Set it to a timer and record hands-free.

Those are the basic ingredients. But let’s talk about the best recipes.

What are the best formulas for using Facebook Reels to get engagement?

Client wins

If you work in a service-based business or in B2B, post your client wins.

Let’s say you’re a fitness trainer who helps whip people into shape. Showing a client who succeeded with your program ticks all sorts of boxes:

• It serves as a testimonial: showing a client with specific results acts as “social proof” that your service is worth what you say it is.
• Offers an element of transformation. A good before-and-after highlights the key benefit of your service. When someone sees a Facebook Reel of a transformation, they’re inspired to make the same change—by reaching out to you.
• Creating a moment of emotional resonance. Maybe a client has an uplifting story about how getting fit changed their life. That sort of emotional resonance will strike your exact target clients.

Your process / behind the scenes takes

Flipping burgers. Not fun, right? The very definition of a mundane job?

Not exactly. Take Stephen Patula’s channel, which has earned nearly half a million followers on YouTube. 

The channel’s subject? Behind-the-counter scenes at a McDonald’s.

People are fascinated with looks behind the curtain, peeling back the layers of either professions or unique lifestyles. Offer the same with your next Reel and you might be surprised at the results.

Photographer James Maher uses a similar approach for his lead magnet, The New York Photographer’s Travel Guide. Part instructional, part glimpse behind the curtain, it’s exactly what people who want to get into photography are interested in.

It wasn’t the only strategy Maher used. He also grew with Facebook ads that spoke directly to people who wanted in on the New York City photography scene. 

If James were making Facebook Reels, he might create videos in a similar vein. “How much equipment I use as an NYC photographer,” for example, to highlight what he carries with him every day. 

Yes, it would be relevant to photographers. But even people with a slight interest in photography would probably appreciate a look behind the scenes. It’s in our nature—we can’t help but be curious.

Give away a sample

Let’s say you’re working on a recipe book. You want people to think about your recipes, to share them, to sign up for a newsletter where you give out the latest recipes.

But how do you get their attention in the first place?

Simple: use Facebook Reels to “give out a sample.” 

In this case, you could create a video that’s a 30-second wrap-up of a recipe. Include a list of ingredients, fast-forward the cooking, and show the finished product.

Skinnytaste uses recipes to entice people to sign up for its newsletter. But even before you do that, you can use the “giving away” strategy to hook attention. 

Giving away part of your goods is valuable to viewers, sure. But it also has a built-in effect: it establishes your credibility.

If one Facebook Reel recipe looks good, how good must the newsletter be? Or the entire cookbook?

Fix-this-mistake videos

Want a way to create instant emotional resonance? Memorize three words: “fix this mistake.”

No one wants to feel like they’ve been doing something wrong for months—or, worse yet, years. Calling out a common mistake in your industry is bound to attract attention.

Think:

• Have you been doing lat pulldowns wrong?
• Stop saying this phrase to every B2B client
• A simple ingredient you’ve been missing for perfectly poached eggs

Notice the emotional charge each topic brings to the subject? It’s instant FOMO, or fear of missing out.

Athlean-X is a popular fitness channel and newsletter that constantly calls out fitness mistakes. It’s a great way to engage someone’s attention, especially with their promise of “24-second fixes” to correct the viewer’s form.

Something personal

This one works on the same principle as the “behind the scenes” Reel idea. But rather than a professional look behind the scenes, it takes a different approach. It gets personal.

Did you decide to take a day off and walk your dog along a beach? Post it, along with a caption explaining your decision.

Did a client send you a snazzy thank-you gift that merits attention? It’s a perfect look at the personal nature of B2B work—and a sly testimonial as well.

If you run a business, these personalized videos don’t necessarily need to be a habit. But they can help establish emotional resonance as your audience views the person behind the videos. 

Believe it or not, some of the best audience-building you do will never feel like audience-building.

Five ways to boost your Facebook Reels monetization

Post the Reels above consistently and you’re sure to build an audience online. But let’s talk about the science of making real money with Facebook Reels:

Be consistent

Remember: Facebook needs to see a consistent posting history in your account to grant you this ability. But once you have it, it’s possible to drive views to your Reels directly and pull in ad revenue.

Drive views to your Reels

When a platform measures your revenue in views, it simplifies things. If you want to monetize your Reels, the fastest way to do it is to drive it from another source.

Lisa Niver’s newsletter is a great example of this: highlighting YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook Reels that its viewers can check out. It’s a simple ask and a simple link—yet if your audience is significant enough, it can drive real traffic.

Build a “lookalike audience”

Do you have an engaged audience already? Then you know what kind of messaging resonates with them. The challenge is finding that same audience on a new platform.

Facebook offers a fun feature here: the lookalike audience.

“A lookalike audience uses an existing Custom Audience you select for its source audience,” writes Facebook. “To create a lookalike audience, our system leverages information such as demographics, interests, and behaviors from your source audience to find new people who share similar qualities.”

In other words, you can find the same type of user base on Facebook with existing demographic data. 

Think of it as a way to shorten the learning curve on Facebook. There’s no reason you should have to start over and figure out the best messaging for a new audience. 

Build a Facebook-only subscriber list

What if your entire newsletter audience doesn’t love Facebook? Then AWeber makes it possible to create a segment that isolates those who might.

With the AWeber Facebook integration, you can build a “Facebook-only” subscriber list that allows you to send emails only to those who use the platform (excluding those who don’t, as it’s irrelevant), making for a more personalized email experience overall. 

Paula Rizzo, for example, utilized subscriber lists to organize her audience into the following segments:

• A blog list for people who came to her from her blog
• Her email course list for people who signed up for the course
• A list of people who have simply bought her book

Add a list of people who found you through Facebook Reels and you have a unique customer segment. They’re the people more likely to appreciate it when you’ve updated your page with a new Facebook Reel.

Use AWeber to send newsletters to that list—and that list alone—and you’re likely to gain views without alienating the people on your list who don’t visit your Facebook presence.

Give away some value

Remember the idea of giving away a recipe? Here’s an example of how it works on Reels, part of a low-carb/keto playlist.

This playlist serves as a mini-course on Facebook. It’s like a free class. And if people enjoy that “class” enough, they’re going to be more willing to sign up for your newsletter when they view your profile.

Note: you don’t always have to do things this way. TikTok-style Reels are just as successful when you want to provide value for your audience. It all depends on how you want your brand to come across.

Increase your views with email

When you have an established newsletter audience, monetizing Facebook Reels can be as simple as publishing a few videos, activating the ads, and sending out a link.

But that assumes you have an audience. Ready to start building yours?

Integrate your newsletter audience with your Facebook presence whenever possible. Get started with AWeber to integrate your Facebook presence with a captured email audience. 

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Your leadership team is crucial to the success of your business, but how do you go about building this team, especially when this is your first time doing this? Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be that complicated because there are step-by-step instructions in several places on the Internet. Leadership teams usually include a president, CEO, vice president, chief financial officer, and several others. If you need a laid-out plan to go by, below are some easy steps to follow to build an excellent leadership team.

1. Determine Your Priorities

A leadership team has to share the same priorities, which the business itself has to decide first. If you want things to go right from the very start, make sure everyone knows what the priorities are so that everyone’s on the same page.

1. Decide What Personal Qualities You Want in Your Team

Professional expertise is important when building a leadership team, but you should also consider what personal qualities you’d like these people to have. After all, if people don’t get along, it can ruin everything, so make sure they have the qualities you like.

1. Make Sure Definitive Goals Are Developed

In addition to priorities, you have to have clearly defined goals, too. Once these goals are determined, it’ll be a little easier to choose the team members who will do best in this endeavor.

1. Start Selecting the Team Members

Whether you’re looking for people with experience in a certain area or people who are already good leaders, you can get to work on choosing them at this point. If you’re already successful with steps one through three above, this step should be simple.

1. Share the Mission and Vision With Shareholders

Once your team is in place, you should share the organization’s vision and mission with your shareholders or stakeholders. This is one way to hold yourself accountable to your goals, among other things.

1. Decide How You’re Going to Measure Goals

You have to have a reliable way to measure your goals, and this needs to be done as the final step. Measuring your goals is important so this step should be considered important.

The post Building a Solid Leadership Team first appeared on Ken Hitchner NJ | Business.

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Somewhere out there, someone is logging onto YouTube. They’re clicking on a video that looks perfect for them. And when they do, YouTube’s algorithm delivers a perfectly-placed ad, generating a tiny bit of revenue for the uploader.

In fact, it’s not happening just once. It’s happening to the tune of 2 billion active users on YouTube every month.

All the while, someone’s YouTube channel earns them money while they sleep. It’s the ultimate form of digital leverage. With a well-viewed YouTube channel, a one-time upload can earn you money for years.

But none of that happens unless you can carve out your piece of the YouTube advertising revenue pie. And on YouTube’s algorithms, that comes down to one thing:

Getting more views.

How do you do it? The conventional advice is to be consistent with uploading your videos, stick with it, and keep on posting until you eventually rack up views.

Unfortunately, anyone who’s tried it knows that YouTube isn’t as simple as that. 

What are the specific ways to improve and grab YouTube users’ attention so you don’t feel like you’re just another penny in an ocean of billions?

With YouTube, the ad revenue game is all about the views. Here’s how to get more for yourself if you’re on the accelerated plan:

Why views are important on YouTube

Views are the name of the game on YouTube. But let’s explore what that means: how much ad revenue you can expect per view, not to mention what even counts as a “view” in the first place.

YouTube views: defining the currency of videos

How much does YouTube pay for views? Average YouTube creators can earn as much as $4,161 per month. And that happens based on how many times someone clicks on your video and an ad plays.

For every dollar an advertiser pays, you’ll get 55 cents. On average, you can expect to make about $0.18 per view, or $18 per 1,000 views, as FinanceBuzz notes.

It’s not a bad deal. If you have a popular video, it’s not uncommon to have tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of views.

But let’s back up. What is a “YouTube view,” exactly?

A “view” officially registers with YouTube via two key pieces:

• A viewer-initiated play on your video—a click or a mobile phone tap
• The video is “despammed” in YouTube’s algorithm: i.e., YouTube verifies it wasn’t a robot doing the viewing

This makes a YouTube view largely a psychological challenge: how can you get someone to want to take a genuine action? How do you get them to click?

We’ll talk about that. But before we do, let’s address what you need to start before the views rack up those advertising dollars.

How to get monetized on YouTube

YouTube’s house; YouTube’s rules. Before you start, learn the requirements to activate monetization—and see if you can handle them.

Here’s a quick run through YouTube’s monetization requirements:

• You’ll need at least 1,000 subscribers before you can start monetizing videos. If you’re wondering how many views to get paid on YouTube, the process actually begins with more subscribers.
• You’ll need a linked AdSense account so you can collect that revenue when it starts pouring in.
• You have to meet the YPP (YouTube Partnership Program) requirements. If you don’t live somewhere YPP is available, it won’t matter how many views you rack up—you won’t be able to monetize.
• To qualify, users should have watched your content at least 4,000 hours over the past year. It’s better if your users tend to linger on your videos for a while, but this also means that each view adds to that tally.
• Your channel shouldn’t have any community guidelines strikes against it.

Pay attention to those community guidelines. If you don’t adhere to them, YouTube can de-monetize your content. Then it won’t matter how many views you have. 

The good news: if you make videos for general audiences, you’ll typically stay within the guidelines. But make sure to avoid the following:

• No spam or fraudulent practices. If you’re faking someone else’s account for the instant views, YouTube will catch onto that in a hurry. And you might turn off YouTube audience members who feel duped.
• No sensitive content. Anything that endangers child safety or uses vulgar language in titles is going to get a strike—so keep it family-friendly if you want the widest appeal possible.
• No violent or dangerous content like graphic content, hate speech, or anything that might advocate on behalf of a violent organization. 

Following the above will give you a baseline for building an account that’s ready for monetization when the views roll in. 

But why are views so important, specifically to YouTube? It’s a bit complicated. 

Technically, you don’t get paid by the view. You’re paid by the ad revenue that your views bring in.

Since you won’t bring in much ad revenue if you don’t have views, this makes your mission pretty simple: get eyes on your videos. And get as many of them as possible.

But what does it mean to get people to view your content? After all, YouTube is a big maze, featuring all sorts of ways people can discover what you’re publishing:

• YouTube’s search feature
• YouTube’s suggested algorithms
• Off-YouTube search engines, like Google
• Direct links from social sharing

Where you get your views doesn’t necessarily matter. But you will need to stick to a few principles to build the habits that stack views over time.

How to create a channel worth viewing

Your first step is to answer a simple but vexing question: what do YouTube viewers want?

You might put hours and hours into your videos, after all. Lots of editing time. Production value galore.

But unless people feel compelled to click on what you’re offering, your video isn’t going to get views. This means it’s not going to result in you getting paid for your hard-earned creator dollar.

Here’s how to create a channel that people will connect with:

Selecting your YouTube niche

The Oxford English Dictionary defines niche as a specialized segment of the market for a particular kind of product or service. Swap out “product or service” with “YouTube category,” and you know exactly what this means.

You don’t have to spend much time on YouTube to discover there are lots of markets out there. After all, 2 billion active users is a lot. 

And 2 billion people aren’t always going to share the same interests.

Paradoxically, the best way to get more views isn’t to cater to everyone. There is no everyone. There are 2 billion active users with different tastes and preferences.

That’s why selecting a niche for your videos actually means scaling up your appeal. 

Consider ASMR, for example, or Autonomous sensory meridian response videos. These videos are all about high-fidelity audio: life-like sounds that activate our auditory circuits.

You wouldn’t expect a video of dishwashing sounds to strike it big. Yet there are over 60,000 people who found it worthy of a click.

As The New York Times notes, we all have a love of “satisfying” sounds, such as clicking locks or…whatever you call the noise you make when you shave a bar of soap.

It sounds incredibly niche, right? ASMR is a great example of something that sounds like a matter of highly specific tastes but has broad appeal. In fact, ASMR is often among the most-searched non-branded words on YouTube.

(If you’re curious, other top search terms include “Minecraft,” “TikTok,” and “comedy.”)

The point? Not everything is so “niche” that no one will find you. In fact, choosing a specific niche could land you a bigger audience than you imagined. 

Consider some niches you can choose from:

• Gaming (which is full of its own niches)
• Cooking
• ASMR
• Tech and tech reviews
• Music and music production
• Educational content
• Finance: investing and personal finance
• Fitness
• Travel/lifestyle
• Makeup tutorials
• Cars
• Home improvement/DIY
• Relaxation videos

The key isn’t to try a little bit of everything. The key is to pick one you know you love, then become known for it.

Consider Betty Rocker, if she didn’t have a specific niche, then a 30-day course about fitness might not make sense.

Instead, people might find her YouTube videos because they’re looking for fitness tips. They then subscribe to a 30-day email course, which sends out automatically.

Each time it does, it’s as simple as including a YouTube video link within that automated course to draw more attention to her videos.

Niche is what makes this kind of synergy possible. When you know someone is interested in your content, you know that your lead magnets are going to appeal to them.

Brainstorming your best YouTube video ideas

Is learning how to increase YouTube views as simple as setting up shop, declaring yourself a fitness YouTuber, and watching the views roll in?

Unfortunately, no. 

But don’t get discouraged. A lot of people will try a niche, get a handful of views, and conclude that their niche is saturated.

The solution is to stand out. Don’t slap up the first video that comes to mind. Instead, take an intentional approach to what you put on your YouTube channel. Here are a few strategies to consider.

Use YouTube suggestions to identify what people want

When you enter a term into YouTube, it will use an auto-suggest feature to fill in the rest. This is perfect for brainstorming because it tells you what YouTube’s users tend to look for.

Use a “niche + keyword” search on YouTube and see what pops up. Then try another. Don’t make any key decisions yet—just grab a list of potential ideas.

Once you have that list, sort them from most interesting to least. Voila. You now have a content schedule that’s perfect for your niche.

Note: you can also use Google-suggested questions with key terms in your niche for the same effect. These likely won’t be exactly what YouTube users are looking for, but they can help you formulate key ideas.

Use an idea formula to bring two ideas together

Sometimes, a video is compelling not because it’s got one great idea, but two regular ones. 

You can use an idea formula, such as “[How-to] + [Benefit]” to stack two different ideas together and come up with something unique.

For example, let’s say you make videos in the real estate niche. “House Hacking 101” is a fairly common YouTube video. But by combining ideas with the formula above, you can create: “How to use house hacking to buy a $500,000 home.”

At the very least, you have a more precise and specific headline—which could entice more YouTube users to click.

Spend more time on your ideas than you think is necessary

One last note about ideas: they matter more than you think.

According to YouTube star Mr. Beast—who has over 150,000,000 subscribers on YouTube—most YouTubers can grow simply by taking more time to pore through their ideas.

He recommends spending an hour a day on ideas alone. Of course, he’s almost solely YouTube-focused, so that might not be realistic for your circumstance.

But the point remains. Mr. Beast’s mantra is that one good idea is worth 100 bad videos. Don’t be afraid to spend more time brainstorming and less time filming. 

It may save you time in the long run.

Name and brand your channel

A good video idea is helpful, but building a solid reputation on YouTube makes your success repeatable.

The name and brand of your channel should spring out from your niche. In other words, it should be obvious what your videos are about simply by glancing at your username or profile.

Consider a highly successful YouTube channel, Binging with Babish. A glance at his banner link tells you a few things:

• Babish, or Andrew Rea, is out of focus but clearly the star of the channel. The out-of-focus shot is also in line with the videos, which tend to show “Babish” from the chest down, emphasizing the recipe.
• A tagline: “serving up new episodes every week.” This means we know exactly what to expect, and the pun on “serving” hints at the culinary content.
• The logo includes a small whisk, further explaining—without explicitly telling us—that the channel is about food.

Babish has a lot of brand recognition built up. With 10 million subscribers, it’s hard not to. 

But even if you were new to the channel, you’d know what it was all about. 

Here’s how you can do the same with your brand:

Choose an appropriate, catchy name for your channel

Search Engine Journal has some great tips here:

• Give it some thought, as YouTube only allows you to change your channel name 3 times every 90 days.
• Make it memorable. Alliteration helps here: “Binging with Babish” or “The Confident Content Writer” are two examples. And in each case, the brand name hints at the content itself.
• Build off of existing name recognition, if you have it. Don’t start off fresh if you already have a powerful newsletter audience, for example. Keep it consistent so the people who should recognize you do recognize you.

Maximize your YouTube profile’s capabilities

There are some elements here that you’ll want to keep consistent. For example:

• Your picture/avatar. The more professional, the better. Psychologically, people tend to be drawn to faces—you’ll notice Mr. Beast includes a face with every YouTube thumbnail.

• Banner image. Your banner image is prime real estate. Binging with Babish, for example, explains how often new episodes come out. Meanwhile, the illustrations clearly lay out that it’s a cooking channel.

• Channel trailer. Click on a YouTube channel, and you’ll notice some have a “channel trailer.” This is a video that’s all about the channel itself. Use this as an introduction for any curious viewers who want to know more about what you do.

• Custom handle. Once you have enough subscribers (100) on YouTube, you can select a custom handle and URL for your YouTube page, which further simplifies the branding. 

Mixing both long and short-form videos

YouTube has entered the short-form video game, competing with Facebook and Instagram Reels and TikTok’s bread and butter.

But let’s talk about how this can help you. What’s the appeal of posting short-form videos?

Think of it as advertising. These YouTube shorts can serve as fun teaser videos that draw attention back to your account.

Ideally, a YouTube short can go viral by itself. But also think about it as a YouTube subscriber funnel. Every time you intrigue someone, they might click on your username—and land on that carefully-crafted profile page you’ve built.

When you build things the right way, every view on a YouTube video becomes more than just a view. It should have the potential to land you multiple YouTube views across your entire video portfolio.

How to increase YouTube views for each video

With your YouTube presence sorted, you’re ready for a video that lands it big. But that still leaves out a big piece of the puzzle: optimizing each video for top viral potential.

Optimize your thumbnails

If optimizing for Google is all about writing a great title for an article, the YouTube equivalent is your thumbnail. A good thumbnail will show up in search results or under YouTube’s suggested videos. Whether someone clicks it is up to the quality of that thumbnail.

According to Agency Analytics, a good thumbnail creates good click-through rates, which in turn boosts the chances YouTube shows your thumbnail to more users. You’re looking to build a virtuous circle.

“YouTube thumbnails play an important role in YouTube SEO,” writes Agency Analytics.” The main way they accomplish this is by grabbing attention and generating clicks, which--in turn--helps to improve rankings.”

But what does a “high-quality” thumbnail actually look like? Here are the results for “Cooking Tips”:

Consider what these successful thumbnails have in common:

• Bright, bold colors. A bright red onion. High-contrast font for the text. These thumbnails all suggest a well-lit, appealing video that’s going to be a pleasure to look at.
• A preview of the content. A smiling chef standing over a cutting board with a knife? We know what we’re about to watch. Notice there’s no ambiguity about the content of the video: people who want chef tips are about to get some chef tips.
• Faces. Human psychology is such that when we scroll, we’re attracted to faces. We can’t help it—we’re social creatures. YouTube’s thumbnails are just another extension of that. Even if your YouTube video is a book review, include your face along with the book in the thumbnail.
• Readable text. Big, high-contrast font provides some additional context for the video. Notice that the font is bright, typically white, but with black outlines to stand out from the rest of the brightly-lit thumbnails. This is especially important on YouTube’s mobile app, where reading the thumbnail can be a bit of a challenge.

YouTube thumbnails are essentially an industry unto themselves. You can even explore AI thumbnail analyzers to help you pick the best to publish.

Just as a good copywriter thinks about their first headline, a good YouTuber will pour themselves into the quality of their thumbnails. Don’t start publishing until you can include all of the elements listed above.

Optimize your headline

A good headline does two things: it summarizes the content you’re about to read and leaves something to the imagination.

A good headline creates a “curiosity gap.” It should hint at a secret that you can find in the video. The ubiquity of “here’s what happened” in Internet headlines is one example: you have to click to find out.

For example, consider this headline:

The Force Awakens My 2 Year Old!

It suggests both what’s to come, and leaves a curiosity gap: just what is that reaction, anyway?

Of course, there’s a fine line between curiosity gaps and “clickbait.” On YouTube, clickbait will sometimes work. Even dedicated, high-quality channels will resort to clickbait-y tactics to get views.

However, if your video is more than just clickbait, you’ll still win. You simply need to deliver on what the headline suggests.

The best video ideas should have some curiosity built into the idea. For example, consider this headline:

We gave this server a $5,000 tip.

Right away, there’s a built-in gap: we have to know the server’s reaction to that amount of money. There’s no need to say “here’s what happened next.”

To improve your headlines, write down ten ideas within your niche. Then sleep on them, revisiting them the next day. You’ll likely have a better sense of which idea seems the most fresh and interesting.

Share your videos

So far, these are all on-platform tips for getting more views on YouTube. But what if you need a springboard to get an injection of views?

The YouTube algorithm, after all, is something of a popularity contest feedback loop. YouTube will reward your most popular videos with more prominent placement in the algorithms.

So start sharing. Reddit, Quora, Twitter—wherever you can find an audience, consider sharing your most useful videos in the context of providing the answer to a question that another user is posing.

If enough people see the link—and share the same question—you could have a mini-viral sensation on your hands.

And of course, it never hurts to get traffic from other sources. AWeber’s YouTube Automation, for example, can automatically have emails sent to your audience the moment you publish a new YouTube video without adding another task to your to-do list.

How to optimize each video for more views

Tag your videos

Download a browser extension like TubeBuddy to find out which tags your competitors use. Then start using the tags that apply best to your videos.

Like any social media platform, YouTube sometimes relies on tags to delineate the content of a video. No, this won’t transform your quiet YouTube channel into a viral sensation overnight—but every little bit helps.

In fact, Backlinko found that tagged videos with relevant keywords correlated with higher rankings, which at least gives you a foot in the door.

How should you order your keywords? Start with your main targeted keyword first, along with that keyword’s variations. 

Then follow that up with the rest, like long-tail keywords and category keywords that aren’t as relevant but still need to be in there.

If you don’t expect to rank for “Minecraft,” for example, it would be a category keyword and you can focus on a more specific term.

Write video descriptions

YouTube viewers are scanning video descriptions, so there’s no need to write a giant block of text here. Write a summary at the start—a brief “mission statement,” since the first sentence is what will get the most eyeballs.

Remember that most people only see about 1-2 lines above YouTube’s “show more” button. Write to that. You’re writing for the average video scroller—not necessarily an interested YouTube viewer just yet.

Don’t forget those target keywords—the same ones you placed most prominently in your video tags.

Get more out of your videos themselves

Ideally, you don’t just attract the click. You also keep your viewers’ attention—which potentially turns them into subscribers. At the very least, their prolonged interest should mean they click on other videos you’ve published.

Hooks

Your video needs a “hook” in the first three seconds—something that grabs attention off the bat.

If you have a long video, include a preview snippet from something interesting that happens. If it’s a short video with a single idea, cut right to the main idea.

And as your video goes, don’t forget to vary your shot styles. Maintain interest by mixing things up. Add different elements: captions, graphics, and “B-roll” cutaways that keep the tempo quick.

An exception? One long, dedicated shot makes sense for a podcast.

YouTube end screens

“End screens” are the last 5-20 seconds of your videos, and they’re rife with opportunity.

Don’t write “conclusions” in your videos here. Instead, keep telling the story and link to other videos on your channel. Your goal should be to make your entire channel “stickier” by logically leading from one video to the next link.

Consider photographer Jared Polin, who uses a signup image with his videos, offering an incentive. Once a viewer clicks on the image of the sign-up form, they go to his landing page.

That directs people to his newsletter. But if you want a stickier YouTube channel, you can use the same strategy by linking to other videos. 

Owning your audience

Even if you get a lot of YouTube views, there’s one potential downside: you’re renting the audience from YouTube.

It’s better to own that audience when you can. If you can control how and when your YouTube subscribers view your videos, you’ll be able to increase your views more quickly.

What do we mean? Take AJ Hoge, who doubled his YouTube views by incorporating YouTube automation with AWeber.

Hoge created a sign-up page through his AWeber account, meaning anyone coming to his site from YouTube could opt in and receive his newsletter.

This transmuted YouTube subscribers into an audience Hoge owned outright. Now, if he wants YouTube views, he can send out a quick message to his audience and watch as the clicks roll in.

Even if you don’t have a huge email audience you can grow both simultaneously and use these synergistic effects to slowly build popularity. It’s a way to turn YouTube viewers into stickier subscribers—people who know you and love your content.

And you can incorporate other media as well. Alycia from Zumba with Alycia used a signup form combined with Facebook to get more signups with AWeber. Now if she wants more YouTube views, she has a reliable, self-sustained audience to turn to.

Turn an audience into more YouTube views

Views are the currency of YouTube, and if you want to cash in, you’re going to have to drive attention to your YouTube channel. 

Fortunately, it doesn’t have to require a lot of guesswork. Use AWeber’s YouTube Automation to link your existing audience with a properly-optimized YouTube account. You might be surprised at how quickly the views start rolling in.

The post How to get more YouTube views: a comprehensive guide to video success appeared first on AWeber.

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Reviewing portfolios from design students or other artists getting started in their career is important to me. I often have calls with these students to provide feedback on their work.

Mentors made a huge impact on me when I was trying to become a working designer, so this is an opportunity to give back. I know I was an absolute pain who always thought he was right about everything.

Thanks to my mentors, now I just usually think I’m right about everything.

Normally in these calls there’s a healthy back and forth of critique and response; but lately there’s been one topic looming over every conversation.

Is AI going to take my job?

These students are worried that junior design roles they traditionally would’ve landed in after school are going to be replaced by AI image generation tools. I’ve heard this same stress coming from copywriters too. And it’s not just folks in school who are concerned, 38% of employees expect their job will be automated by the end of this year (I think that's way overstated).

The hard truth is yes, some jobs are likely to be replaced by AI. But the vast majority of disruption isn’t going to come from AI taking human jobs, it’s going to come from humans who know how to use AI being more effective and productive.

In that future, one of the best things you can do is to learn how to use AI tools to give yourself superpowers.

To figure out where to best spend your time with AI, let’s take a look at the pros and cons of artificial intelligence and how you can use these to your advantage.

Pros of artificial intelligence

? AI is good at common, repetitive tasks

Generative AI tools like AWeber’s writing tool, ChatGPT, and Midjourney all rely on large amounts of training data where humans have spent time categorizing and scoring responses to teach the tools how to understand things like relationships between words in sentence, what vocabulary is used to sound more friendly, and what a tiger looks like.

It’s no surprise that these tools are better at producing interesting results in areas where they have a lot of training data.

One of the reasons that models are getting so good at passing exams like the SAT, bar exam, and even sommelier exams is that the training data gives very clear answers to questions the models might be asked.

What to do as a result:

Try using an AI tool to save you time on common, repetitive tasks so you can spend more of your time solving complex creative problems.

For example: instead of fumbling through getting the right Google spreadsheets formula, just describe the content in your sheet and what you’d like to see as a result.

Column A on Sheet1 has a list of email addresses. Column A on Sheet2 has a list of email addresses. Give me a formula to show all email addresses that are in both Sheet1 and Sheet2 in a new column.

? AI is good at summarizing content

The large language models that are used to power AI writing tools are good at understanding the relationships between words and concepts in a chunk of text. This makes them effective at things like summarizing, rephrasing, and expanding on text you’ve already written.

What to do as a result:

Use artificial intelligence tools to help you create supporting content for your newsletter. Need social posts? AI can help you with that. Looking for a subject line that screams “open me”, AI can help with that as well.

For example:  This is my own personal prompt I use to get great subject lines:

Write 3 subject lines and preheaders for my email message. They should be intriguing enough to get someone to notice it in their inbox and choose to open it to learn more about what is inside. The subject line and preheader should each be no longer than 50 characters. The email is: [add your email content]

For example:  Since AI is so good at rephrasing and summarizing you can do things like experimenting with different tones of voice:

Make this sound more friendly, like I’m talking to someone who I mentor who feels comfortable asking me questions and values the stories and lessons I have to tell: [add your content to rephrase]

? AI is good at representing a variety of perspectives

AI tools are often trained on a wide variety of source material. That makes it possible for them to change perspectives with relative fluidity.

This is helpful for stress-testing your ideas and assumptions.

 

What to do as a result:

Use AI tools to challenge your ideas.

For example: you can ask ChatGPT or another AI tool the following:

Tell me why [your idea] might be a bad idea. Give me examples of people or companies who have tried it before without success.

A general watch out for artificial intelligence

⚠️ AI can be iffy on details

The goal of these models is to get you one great response to what you ask for. One of the problems right now is when a model doesn't have enough information to get you an accurate response, sometimes it just... makes things up.

This phenomenon - "hallucination" - is something AI researchers are constantly working on improving.

In my experience, this type of inaccurate response does not represent the majority of responses from models and I don't want to discourage you from using AI tools. Most of the responses I get in personal use are accurate.

I expect this to be one of the areas where we see constant improvement in the models as people use them more, and builders create better safeguards.

What to do as a result:

First, check your work.

No prompts here. Just think critically about the responses you're getting and double check important facts against other sources.

If you are looking for a prompt to help here, one of the first things I'll do is ask a "yes" or "no" question about a response I'm unsure of to gut check.

For example: I asked AI to create a blurb about my accomplishments as an artist (something there is very little, if any information online about):

Write a 1 sentence blurb promoting Chris Vasquez, the digital artist. Include one of his major accomplishments.

The response was flattering, but inaccurate.

Chris Vasquez, the talented digital artist whose work has been featured in renowned art galleries worldwide and created the mesmerizing digital installation "Neon Forest" that explores the intersection of nature and technology.

I'm pretty sure I never created a mesmerizing installation of that name, so I asked:

Did Chris Vasquez create a digital installation called "Neon Forest"?

And got the response:

I could not find any information about a digital installation called "Neon Forest" created by a person named Chris Vasquez who is an illustrator or digital artist.

Second, make your prompts specific. The more specific your ask, the less room there is for a model to go off script.

Instead of writing overly simple asks like write a paragraph promoting my copywriting services, include relevant information that you have and know to be true to get better results. Something like:

Write a paragraph promoting my copywriting services. My name is Chris Vasquez and I have experience writing emails, blog posts that interest large numbers of people. I also have experience writing technical documents.

Cons of artificial intelligence

? AI is bad at generating completely novel stories

Like I mentioned earlier, AI tools give human sounding responses by referencing their training material to give a best guess as to what an answer might look like. A major con of artificial intelligence is that generative AI tools don’t have novel thoughts.

This means that even models that are connected to the internet are referencing information that other people have created, and aren’t independently experimenting and learning new things in the same way humans do.

What to do as a result:

Experiment all the time, and then share your results.

Your unfair advantage against AI is to have an audience, the ability to communicate with them in different ways and observe how they respond. Use this to test things constantly.

This is how you discover entirely new things that AI tools just don’t have access to.

AI can help here by acting as a research assistant who gives you ideas on how to test a hypothesis, change behavior, or analyze data. Mix the ideas you get from AI with your own ideas to help remove your personal biases.

For example: I’m constantly trying to get more direct replies to emails I send to our audience. So I asked in the AWeber AI tool:

I write a newsletter about email marketing for creators. What are some specific, clever ways I could ask for replies that would make readers think and actually want to reply?

Many of the ideas were duds, but I got a couple good ones in there to work with:

• Share a challenge you’re having: Present a real-life challenge or problem related to email marketing and ask your readers for their suggestions on how to solve it. This engages their problem-solving skills and invites collaboration.
• Two truths and a lie: Present three statements related to email marketing (two of which are true and one that is false), and ask readers to reply with their guess on which statement is the lie. This encourages engagement and interaction while also teaching your readers something new.

? AI is bad at human experience

The development of AI is moving so fast that some of the things we’ve talked about are going to change, and quickly. But something that is going to stay the same for at least the foreseeable future is that AI is incapable of moving through the world and interacting with people in an emotional sense.

You exist in a world of other humans where you bump into and pass through innumerably varied situations with other people and your environment. Sometimes they’re formal, others more casual. Some are with people you know well, others with people you’ll never talk to again.

This diversity of experience is unique to you and will continue to grow until the day you die.

What to do as a result:

Have actual conversations with your customers or audience. This is how you unearth stories that have never been told before - things that AI models have no concept of.

Then be vulnerable and tell stories of your highs and lows, and what you learned from both. Don’t shy away from the things that might make you look bad. Don’t be afraid to use the language you use in everyday conversation.

These are the things that make us human.

For example: here’s an email from one of our content creators, in the email they took a personal experience and turned it into a newsletter topic. This is an advantage that you as a content creator have over artificial intelligence. 

Using AI to your advantage

When I think about where we are with AI authoring right now I can't help but think it's the right time to add AI authoring to AWeber.

We’re not building AI tools to try and replace people like you and me.

We’re building them because we think they can unlock creative super powers in all of us - to provide you with an easy-to-use pro artificial intelligence resource..

Our AI tool is currently available to a small group of creators who are helping us shape it into something truly awesome.

The goal is to make sure AI serves YOUR needs - it should fit into your workflow, save you time, and leave you feeling more stoked and confident about what you’ve created.

Learn more about AWeber's AI authoring tool.

The post The pros and cons of artificial intelligence: Using AI to your advantage appeared first on AWeber.

via AWeber https://blog.aweber.com/learn/pros-and-cons-of-artificial-intelligence.htm

As the U.S. prepares to celebrate Independence Day, there’s another holiday trend Americans can expect to look forward to: July 4th promotional emails.

Whether you plan to host a huge sale, offer exclusive discounts or simply take a holiday spin on your typical content, getting your emails to stand out in the inbox can be a doozy – especially when there are hundreds of other businesses tying the holiday to their emails too.

So what can you do?

8 cool ideas for your 4th of July email campaigns

My goal is to help you stand out in crowded inboxes by giving you some different (and slightly out of the box) ideas for your independence day emails.

1 - Fireworks picture contest

Fuel the excitement of Independence Day by inviting your audience to participate in an exhilarating photo competition. Encourage customers to showcase their photography skills and artistic vision by capturing mesmerizing fireworks and sharing their best shots on social media, while tagging your business page. 

As the skies ignite with vivid colors and explosive beauty, this contest offers a unique opportunity for your brand to engage with customers and generate buzz around your products or services. 

You can have a prize for the photo that gets the most likes.

2 - Red, white, and blue product collection

Everybody loves a deal. So if you’ve got products that could be bundled together and fit a red, white, and blue theme, wrap them up as a discounted bundle.

3 - 4th of July quiz

Create an interactive email by quizzing your audience on how well they know their American history.

Here’s a nice example from RoadScholar:

4 - Support a cause this Independence Day

Highlight your brand's commitment to a specific cause or charity aligned with patriotic values. 

Offer a percentage of your sales during the 4th of July period to support that cause. Inform customers that by choosing your product or service, they are not only celebrating but also making a positive impact on their community or the nation.

5 - Show your patriotism 

On Independence Day, how about a nice and simple “Happy 4th of July” message. 

Here’s an example from TradeGecko:

6 - 4th of July themed products

Just highlight red, white, and blue products.

Brit+Co does just that in their 4th of July email:

7 - Online scavenger hunt

Who doesn’t love a good game? 

You can play to the inner child of your audience by having some fun with your 4th of July email campaign. Provide some clues in your email and send your audience to your website to find them.

Maybe you add historic pictures throughout your blog, whoever finds all the images can win. 

8 - Send your email before or after July 4th

Keep in mind that your subscribers may not be paying close attention to their inboxes on July 4. Consider sending your holiday email before or even after the holiday when they’re more likely to open it. Plus, it’ll also give you an edge over the competition. 

Considering a post-holiday message? You might want to try a subject line like, “We’re Still Celebrating July 4th: Buy One, Get One Cupcakes!”

Or, if you want to get a head start, try a subject line like, “Ready for this early July 4th deal?”

Give your emails a patriotic theme

Transform your 4th of July email messages into a celebration of red, white, and blue.

Infusing your emails with patriotic elements can help you create a memorable and engaging experience for your audience.

Here’s some ideas on how to leave a lasting impression on your subscribers as you celebrate the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Subject line tips

Here are three tips to keep in mind when writing eye-catching subject lines for your July 4th emails.

1. Use time-sensitive words, like “July 4th” or “Fourth of July”.
2. Create a sense of FOMO — or fear of missing out — with your subject line. This is one of the most effective psychological drivers of email opens.
3. Referencing specific dates in your subject lines creates a sense of urgency with your subscribers, and ultimately encourages more subscribers to open your emails.
4. Mention how long your promotion is running. Having a week-long sale? Be sure to mention it. This not only tells subscribers how long they can access the deal, it’ll entice them to act faster and take advantage of it as well.

4th of July email subject lines examples

• This Week Only: Hot July 4th Sales! 
• The 4th of July continues with 60% off!
• Sales That Even Uncle Sam Would Want
• 50% off Patriotic Tanks & Tees for July 4th!

4th of July email template

Unlock the true spirit of 4th of July in your email campaigns with captivating and visually striking email designs.

I’m not a designer, there’s no way I’d be able to create a 4th of July email that radiates patriotism. And I’m not alone, for those non-creative people you can use a pre-created email template. And there are plenty of options out there. You can purchase a 4th of July email template from companies such as BEE Free or Stripo. Or you can use one from your email provider.

Here are a few Independence Day email templates that you can use in AWeber.

Use 4th of July images

You don’t need to create a whole new email template, just adding holiday-inspired images like a 4th of July email banner, GIF, or images to your email signature is perfect.

Email banner example

I love this example from Kindlendar. They do a great job incorporating the summer fun of an Independence Day holiday into their email banner.

You can create your own email banner in do it yourself graphic design tools like Canva. They make it so easy to create your own 4th of July email banner, when you’re done it will look like you paid someone to professionally design this graphic.

And if AWeber is your email provider, you can actually design in Canva within your email builder, making it that much easier to create your email.

GIF example

Check out this simple yet effective use of a GIF in UBERs email. The fireworks are a nice creative touch. And I especially like how the fireworks draw your attention to the CTA.

Looking for your own 4th of July GIFs? Here’s a few that our design team created. Feel free to use them in your emails.

Add some red, white, and blue to your email signature

Celebrate Independence Day in your emails by adding a touch of patriotic flair to your signature. 

Include a small American flag icon or a festive red, white, and blue banner that showcases your holiday spirit.

Start creating your July 4th email

Sending holiday-themed emails keeps your brand relevant, but be sure to keep these tips in mind for success.

Are you sending any July 4th emails to your subscribers? Tell us about it in the comments below!

The post Cool 4th of July email ideas and creative design inspiration appeared first on AWeber.

via AWeber https://blog.aweber.com/learn/4th-of-july-email-ideas.htm

​​For as transformative as modern technology is, at the end of the day, it’s still just tech and thus a tool that we choose how to use. While the modern world can feel isolating and anxiety-inducing, when used properly, modern tech can help us build happier and more productive lives.

Establishing a Work-Life Balance

This is perhaps the most imperiled aspect of modern working life. The interconnectedness of tech and ease with which we can now be contacted 24/7 means we’re prone to getting constant messages. It is, therefore, essential to avoid falling into the trap of answering messages outside working hours, no matter how “small” or “quick” they purport to be. Establishing work-life boundaries is essential for achieving a sense of balance and avoiding burnout. By contrast, you likewise want to avoid distractions while working. If you feel overwhelmed or keep getting sidetracked, try turning off work notifications while off duty and turning off social notifications once you’re back on the job.

Quality Over Quantity

It’s now possible to connect with more people in more places than ever before. Having 1,500 “Friends” or 5,000 “Followers” on Facebook and Twitter doesn’t make those connections genuine or meaningful, however. The same is true if you generate impressions on those platforms for social media marketing that don’t, in turn, lead to conversions or engagements with your posts. For personal and professional online posting alike, focus on quality rather than quantity. A tight-knit circle of friends is worth more than those 1,500 Facebook “Friends,” and achieving actual conversions with several customers is more beneficial than simply blasting out posts lots of people see but nobody actually clicks on or cares about.

Review Progress

When you’re online for hours on end day after day, aspects of your life can start to blend together or feel fragmented like so many still-open browser tabs. As such, it’s a good idea to pause and reflect. Offline, this can mean reading, meditating, and simply unplugging from the digital world for a while. Online, it can mean doing a personal or professional status check. Review your vital stats, see what information is out there about you and your company, look at what customers are saying, and take some time to decide what you want to do next.

Taken together, these small but effective tech steps can help you lead a happier and more productive life online and offline.

The post Using Technology to Create a Happier Life first appeared on Ken Hitchner NJ | Technology.

via Ken Hitchner NJ | Technology https://kenhitchnernj.net/using-technology-to-create-a-happier-life/