Posts in category: Knowledge Base

When you have an active website, consistently coming up with blog ideas can be a challenge. So, what do you do when it feels like you’ve written about everything under the sun?

So, you finally managed to start your podcast. Nothing can beat that feeling, right? You are very excited, at the same time, have huge expectations from it.

And why wouldn’t you? All the hard work you have put into researching, interviewing experts, promoting brands, and gathering actionable tips must cultivate a great response.

Wait! You are missing one important thing. Where is your podcast promotion marketing?

Don’t tell me you still believe in the “Create and they will come.”

Realistically, you know this no longer works. Right? Statistics suggest that there are over 2.4 million podcasts with over 66 million episodes. To stand out, you need more than quality content.

What works today is: to create, market, and grow. So, if you have completed your first step by creating a podcast, now is the time for podcast promotion so it can reach millions.

This article will teach you tips and tricks to spread the word about your podcast.

Let’s get started:

1. Focus On Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the best ways to promote your podcast.

If you already have an email list ready, that’s a win. And if you don’t, you should get one because email marketing is the way to have a handful of podcast listeners even before it hits the floor.

Laurence Bradford, owner of Learntocodewith.me, had a ready email list she gathered from her consistent blogging.

Here’s a part of an email she shared to announce her first podcast:

What’s so special about this mail?

In her mail, she clarifies that her users will get another type of special content instead of a blog post this time. This will make users wait curiously for the new launch.

After sharing the arrival of your new podcast, you can continue to promote your latest podcast episodes in newsletters, just as you would promote your blogs.

Look how Emma Lemke, a business coach, promotes her latest podcast episode in this email. The perfect use of visuals in the header, along with a brief episode description and the CTA, is a great way to drive podcast traffic to your landing page.

2. Leverage the Power of Video on Social Media

Social media platforms provide you with both the audience and tools you need to promote your podcast in the most creative way possible and generate maximum exposure.

There are dozens of way to promote your podcast episodes on social media, but the best way is to turn your episodes into videos.

Start with Youtube and upload your podcast on it as a full-length show.

In the beginning, you don’t need a proper video. Just turn your podcast audio into the Mp4 format and play it over your podcast artwork as background, along with the captions and the audiogram graph.

Once the engagement starts rolling in, go ahead and start recording the video of your podcast sessions. If it’s an interview podcast, then you will have to use podcasting tools that can also record your video calls.

We do the same thing with every episode of our podcast, “The Art of Social Media.”

You can further repurpose the video on other social media channels by cutting it into bite-sized nuggets. Use short-form video features, such as Instagram Reels and Youtube shorts, to gain maximum visibility on your videos.

Are you finding it hard to manage podcast promotion on multiple social media platforms? Let SocialPilot make it super simple for you.

SocialPilot supports scheduling for every content type apt for podcast promotion on social. Be it the hour-long videos on Youtube or small video nuggets on Reels and Youtube shorts, schedule everything for multiple social channels at once. Doesn’t that sound so easy? Well, it is that easy!

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3. Run a Contest for your podcast promotion

A contest will do the trick even if your mail fails to entice the users.

You need a good amount of ratings and reviews to make your podcast rank well on podcast directories. Running a contest asking users to submit ratings and reviews in exchange for winning prizes will hike up your podcast’s search results.

On her first podcast launch, Laurence announced a contest where users have to submit reviews if they want to participate. She offered three prizes, one was $600 worth, and the other two were $200.

4. Collaborate with other Podcasters

As much as you would like to think otherwise, the truth is that, there are people out there who are covering the same niche as yours in their podcasts.

Believe it or not, collaborating with them is one of the best ways to promote your new podcasts. Make a list of podcasts targeting the same audience as you are and start reaching out to them. Make sure the pitch includes your expertise and your value proposition.

You can start with a simple promo swap, where they mention your podcast in their show and you do the same as well with the help of an audio trailer.

Did that work for you? Great!

Leverage the partnership more by inviting them on your show as a guest to discuss on the topic your audience loves.

In return, you can appear as a guest on their shows. In return, you can appear as a guest on their shows. Come up with topic ideas that aligns with the theme of their show and your expertise and mutually decide to pick one for the show.

After recording the show, both of you can share the podcast with your listeners via social media, email, and every other platform you would use to promote your podcast.

In a nutshell, networking is your best ally when promoting your podcast. Ray Blakney, host of the Learn Spanish with Live Lingua podcast, believes the same:

“A top way to promote your podcast is to appear as a guest on other popular podcasts in your industry. Every time you are interviewed on another podcast, you will be able to promote your own podcast show to new audiences and drive listeners back to your website or social media.”

5. Submit to Maximum Podcast Directories

When it comes to podcast publishing, the “Apple podcast” is the first thing that comes to everyone’s mind. With more than 28 million listeners, it is indeed one of the most significant places to release your podcast.

However, it is not your only destination.

For instance, “Spotify” is a great pick for connecting with non-iPhone users. It had recently dethroned “Apple podcast” by raking in 32.5 million monthly podcast listeners before losing it again to Apple just by a small margin.

Apart from these two, there are many other platforms that can give you the needed and better exposure. Plus, there is no downside to having your podcast uploaded on multiple directories. As a matter of fact, the more, the merrier. You must ensure that your podcast is accessible and well-distributed to gain as many listeners as possible.

Here’s the list of directories where you can submit podcasts:

1. Apple podcasts
2. Spotify
3. Google Podcasts
4. Pandora
5. Stitcher
6. Podtail
7. Podbay
8. TuneIn
9. iHeartRadio
10. Blubrry

You can use podcast hosting tools to publish your podcast on these multiple platforms at once.

6. Make a “New and Noteworthy” Section Entry

Let’s go back to the “Apple podcast.” Buzzsporut claims, “39.3 percent of podcast listening happens through the Apple podcast.”

So, if it doesn’t exist in your podcast marketing strategy, you risk missing millions of listeners.

But that won’t happen, because you will probably start with it. However, to reap a great deal of visibility for your podcast, just publishing will not do.

It would be best if you make an effort to land in the New and Noteworthy section. This front-page section is curated by Apple to promote the latest compelling podcasts. Getting a place on this page is a ticket to high engagement.

As Google puts high-ranking sites on the first page, similarly, Apple Podcast puts out the well-performing podcasts in their news and noteworthy section.

Your podcast goal is to appear there.

How to Enter the “New and Noteworthy” Section?

Same as Google, Apple never released any one formula to make it to the New and Noteworthy section. However, a few factors like rating, reviews, and subscribers can increase your chances of making the cut.

Here are a few steps you can start with to enter the zone:

• Gather engagement: Apple looks at how well your Podcast connects with people and measures it by considering the engagement metrics of the platform. That means you gather as many reviews, ratings, subscriptions, and downloads as possible.
• Create quality content: This goes without saying, but your content must be unique, fresh, compelling, and value-adding to your target audience. Mediocre content will not be able to generate organic engagement and hence won’t catch the eye of algorithms.
• Go sub-category: That’s the same as going niche. Instead of choosing a broad category to submit your podcast, narrow it down to a sub-category so that Apple podcast gets a clear idea of what your podcast is about. This way, your podcast has more chances of being listed in the Noteworthy section.
• Optimize your podcast listing: It’s a no-brainer to upload only high-quality audio podcasts with compelling artwork that abides by the established requirements.

7. Promote it on Your Website

Podcast promotion is just incomplete without finding a home on your own website. A landing page of your podcast makes it easier for people to discover and engage with your show.

This will give you a central place to point people to when you’re mentioned on other websites or on social media. Plus, it’s a great way to control your show’s branding.

Take a look at the landing page of the famous “The Smart Gets Paid” Podcast landing page. In the first fold, you will get links to different platforms to listen to the podcast. As you scroll down, you will learn more about the host and the list of episodes to engage more with the podcast.

Here are a few things you can add to your podcast landing page:

• List all the available directories
• Embed the player on your website so people can listen directly from your site
• Include clear calls to action on your website, such as “subscribe now” buttons or links to specific episodes
• Put up a page where people can learn more about you and your co-hosts

What else?

You can write blog posts announcing the launch of your podcast and providing a link to where people can find it.

You could also write posts highlighting individual episodes and linking to them. To make the content interesting, summarize the transcript and arrange the flow of information by using quotes and key takeaways in between.

8. Add Website Pop-ups

Pop-ups are a great way to let your website visitors know about your new podcast. Creating pop-ups gives you a great chance to tap into the audience who frequently visits your website.

To grab attention and get people to take action, your pop-up must include the following:

• The podcast name and a catchy description
• The main artwork
• A clickable CTA button to listen to the podcast

The pop-ups you see on Spotify are the perfect example.

Remember to change the pop-up after the launch of your podcast. For e.g., With the first pop-up, announce your upcoming podcast, then re-make it when the podcast goes live, and if this method works, do it for every new episode.

In a nutshell

The Podcast space is no longer an alien territory. Everyday a new podcast is coming ashore and making rounds on the internet.

If you want your podcast to taste success, then it’s important to understand how to promote your podcast. Luckily, there are multiple platforms that can get your show in front of multiple eyes.

Our above-curated list of actionable ideas includes most of the platforms necessary for podcast promotion. Depending on your target audience, you can start vetting each one and, with time, shift your focus more to the platform giving you the best results.

Happy podcasting!

In a typical month, Google sends hundreds of millions of website visits and phone calls to hotels around the world. That’s because travelers often come to Google to research and decide where they want to stay.

As a hotelier, you have an opportunity to ensure that potential customers on Google see you in the best light which will, in turn, help grow your business and get you free direct bookings. Here are 3 steps to help you optimize your presence on Google through the holiday season, and beyond.

Coffee packaging seems so ubiquitous in designers’ portfolios that it could almost be a design field in itself. For that reason, getting noticed with packaging design is a difficult mission, as you are competing with multinational companies as well as graphic designers who start importing coffee in their village. In this post, we take a look at a few packages that truly stand out in one way or another.

1. Lagarto Coffee Packaging

Gorgeous packages with a subtle color scheme and delightful illustrations, excellent work by FiveStar Branding.

2. Lucifer Coffee Roaster

A project that will gather instant hate from the more literal Christians out there for its blasphemous name and slogans. One should probably not see any bad intention there, only good graphic design by BIS Studio Graphique.

3. Garuda

Designed by Up Brands, a Russian studio based in Moscow, this coffee packaging built the brand on the impressive traditional masks of Indonesia, where the coffee sold comes from. Somewhat scary, this package is sure to attract a lot of attention in the store’s display.

4. United By Blue

A friendly-looking project with little information about it, but such a great use of illustration that it had to be included in this post. It was designed by Lindsay Muir.

5. 3-19 Coffee

For a special coffee company that combines coffee, community, and art (3-19 Coffee), a special collaboration was necessary to create the perfect branding and packaging. This is what Outfit Branding and Public Marking Creative did together with this colorful visual identity. See more on this Behance page.

6. Noma Coffee Packaging

What happens when tropical animals and plants are featured together on coffee packages? Lovely coffee packaging happens! Unfortunately, this is only a design concept, but we thought the work of Nadiia Miller deserved a feature too. Check more on this Behance page.

7. Paradise. Gourmet-Club Coffee

A special coffee packaging for a gift set designed by Artel Artyomovyh, a Ukrainian designer. The design was meant to symbolize a traveller’s suitcase and built for demonstration.

8. Narcoffee Roasters Packaging

The illustrated story of the brand is right on the package, with different colors for each coffee type’s location. A subtle design by Alexandra Necula.

9. Wishbone Brew

An attempt at rethinking the coffee package design by Also Known As Studio. Honestly, unless told, we couldn’t have guessed it was coffee packaging, but still feature it for the creative effort.

10. Woods Coffee Packaging

Nothing says camping and adventure like a pine forest and a hipster logo. The sparse use of color and wild minimalism does wonders for these packages of coffee for Woods, designed by Man Man Van.

11. Jed’s Coffee Packaging

A real typographer’s coffee packaging, uses only typography, a bit of color, and one icon. Designed by Shine, a design studio based in New Zealand.

12. Eos Coffee

A coffee stain for coffee packaging may not look like a very innovative idea, but Noem9 Studio managed to give it a special twist by making it evolutive.

Conclusion

As you can see, diversity is there in the coffee packaging industry, with plenty of great graphic designers to compete with, and this is just a tiny glimpse of all the coffee packaging that there is out there.

With a purchasing power of more than $340 billion, Gen Z is expected to shake up the retail industry.

Social media collaboration with your marketing team is like running a preschool. You want to keep the peace, but you’re constantly pulled in different directions.

If you’re not careful, it can quickly become a free-for-all, with everyone working independently and posting whatever they want. This can lead to inconsistency and confusion for your audience.

The advent of remote work has made the situation even more challenging. Many studies showcase this fact, especially in the area of communication workers, whose interactions have become more static and siloed.

The problem is many employees complain about the difficulties of sharing information in this context.

So, what do you do?

The key to successful social media collaboration is to centralize the approval process.

We’ll teach you the eight-step way to success below.

But first…

What Is Social Media Collaboration?

Social media collaboration is, simply put, working together on social media. Who you’re working with defines the type of social media collaboration you have; these include:

• External: In this case, you are working with another brand, sharing audiences, and planning your strategy together to attract a larger market. Therefore, external social media collaboration defines a social media marketing tactic.
• Internal: In this case, we refer to cooperation on a team or company level for your social media projects. Internal social media collaboration refers to a subcategory of marketing team interactions that can include anything from developing a strategy together to creating and curating content.

This guide discusses the second type of collaboration, specifically inside your marketing team.

Dealing With Common Social Media Collaboration Mistakes

Social media collaboration is usually troublesome when you don’t plan and organize it properly. Here are some common mistakes that hamper your endeavors and how to solve them:

Lack of Structure

Problem: Members of your marketing team don’t know their roles.

• Their posts/messages overlap.
• Everyone assumes someone else will handle a specific task.

Solution:

• Clearly defined roles and tasks.
• Smooth hierarchy.
• Streamlined horizontal and vertical communication.

Non-Acceptance of Automation

Problem: Some marketers hesitate to use automation because they feel it takes away the personal touch.

Solution:

• Use automation tools to schedule and publish content.
• Use software to manage your team’s activity (e.g., posts, chain of feedback).

The increasingly digital nature of customer engagement has meant that even the most well-rounded marketers are now technologists. As shown in the image above, 81% of marketing organizations use marketing automation/journey management tools, thus further cementing its importance. | Source

Pile-Up

Problem: People in your marketing team don’t know their roles clearly, so they pass on responsibilities to each other. Therefore, your backlog grows.

Solutions:

• Assign roles to everyone and set a clear schedule.
• Monitor the backlog.
• Assess issues as they arise and find suitable solutions.

Miscommunication

Problem: Your marketing team doesn’t share information well.

Solution: Find the source of your miscommunication. It could be a lack of expectations, goal-setting, or ineffective communication software.

• Make sure your team can communicate seamlessly on a specific platform.
• Ensure everyone is clear on their roles.
• Check in regularly with your team so that everyone is on the same page.

Cisco does a great job of ensuring there’s no miscommunication by having a single web page containing all the necessary information. | Source

Tip: The answer to all your problems is a streamlined social media approval process. That means nobody in your team posts randomly without going through a well-defined process first.

Thanks to this approval process, your marketing team members understand their roles and follow a hierarchy before sending out messages.

Thus:

• You can avoid conflicting messages and untimely replies.
• Your team is sending fewer messages to prospects.
• Your social media communication is more consistent.
• You are wasting less time and resources.

Now, let’s see how you can ensure seamless social media collaboration with these eight tips.

1. Set Goals

First, you need to set goals. These goals have to be:

• In line with your business goals
• Specific and appropriate for each smaller team inside your marketing team
• Clear for each member
• Split into clear objectives

Each team should know what is expected of them. More importantly, they should understand the order of their tasks.

Here’s what the process of setting goals would look like for your marketing team:

2. Establish Social Media Processes and Guidelines

After you have set the general goals, you need specific rules and guidelines for each goal. That means you want everyone to know the roadmap they’ll follow to complete their tasks.

You want to clarify the following:

• What team will first start the project
• Who will they pass the ball to, and what’s expected of them
• Deadlines for each smaller team/person
• Evaluation and verification process
• Overall schedule
• Performance indicators

For example, let’s say your goal is to produce one social media post. Your team has to know exactly the following:

• Who will conceptualize the strategy for that post, and by when
• Who will pick up the creative process, and by when should they finish
• What team should they be collaborating with
• Who they’ll present the finished creation to (e.g., stakeholders, clients, etc.)
• How the verification process is conducted and how approval is granted
• How the posting will occur
• Who will monitor that post and reply to it
• Who will monitor the KPIs (e.g., engagement rate, comments, shares, likes)
• Who will monitor this post’s success and how inside the ongoing campaign
• Who will change/edit the post if it’s not performing as expected

3. Assign Roles

The section above leads us to one essential observation:

You can’t establish a clear process for everyone unless you have precise roles for all your team members.

Usually, a marketing team that deals with social media has the following people:

• Social Media Manager, the overseer: The social media manager makes sure everyone collaborates with their team successfully. They also do general research and assign tasks.
• Content Creator, the enforcer: Content creators receive briefs, putting their creative cogs at work to research and deliver the required content.
• Community Manager, the connector. Community managers manage relationships with the community. They’re involved in communications and PR, including events and some customer service. They’re also the ears of your marketing team, using their top-notch interpersonal skills for social listening.
• Analyst, the checker: Analysts will monitor the result of your marketing team’s activities, ensuring that its endeavors are effective. Analysts provide progress reports with practical insights to reorganize a faulty campaign and plan more successful ones in the future.

4. Get Everyone on the Same Page

Once you have established the main processes and roles, it’s time for everyone in your marketing team to find out what they’re supposed to do.

Here’s how to make sure everyone knows their roles and how they should accomplish their tasks:

Create a Social Media Style Guide

Make sure your messages are coherent and consistent. The social media style guide ensures that your brand has one voice, one personality, and one set of values.

Otherwise, your company would seem unprofessional, chaotic, and untrustworthy.

Starbucks’ social style guide for US and Canada | Source

Set Up Your Social Media Calendar

Having a social media calendar is essential because:

• Everyone knows the deadlines for their tasks
• Your target audience and clients receive constant, clear messages from your side
• You can reply timely to queries or feedback
• You can target new prospects comfortably and effectively on social media

30-day social media calendar example. | Source

Set Up Effective Communication

You want to ensure everyone knows who they should talk with directly and for what purpose to achieve their tasks. That will save you time and resources.

For example:

As you can see, each team member knows who they should be talking with, both vertically and horizontally.

That’s why a content writer doesn’t speak with the marketing manager or the analyst directly, saving time and resources for everyone to do their job timely.

5. Collaborate With Other Teams

After establishing in-team communication from processes to style guides and syncing, it’s time to set up communication with other teams.

Who are these other teams?

Your IT department can be one of those teams, especially when your focus is social media. The IT team is essential, from solving glitches to optimizing and curating content for different platforms.

Then there’s the sales team.

Many social media channels have incorporated shopping features. From the Instagram Shop to Shopify synchronization and purchasing directly from your posts, the world is your oyster.

And if your marketing team is dabbling in social media, you want them to:

• Nail all that
• Collaborate effectively with all the involved departments, one of which is your sales team

But taking just this one example of shopping features and the associated pages, your marketing team will also have to collaborate with your:

• IT team
• Customer service department
• Analytics and research
• And possibly more

Remember: You need protocols, people, and rules for all those interactions.

6. Multi-Level Approval and Feedback Process

Now that you have your communications, roles, and tasks underway, people are doing their job effectively.

What happens after they finish?

They submit their work for approval, and there’s a process for that too.

At the risk of sounding too pedantic, these rules are not just for their own sake. They streamline your work and increase efficiency. Otherwise, you’re faced with late and incomplete feedback.

What happens when your entire team’s work gets delayed?

It’s not just about a fewer extra coffee breaks and shorter days. It’s not even about the money you lose.

It’s about missed opportunities.

To avoid that:

• Ensure everyone knows who to ask approval from, tagging the right people.
• Ensure the people in charge of approval/feedback have precise deadlines.
• Automatize notifications before deadlines (e.g., a day before).

You can also automatize the entire communications and approval process. For example, SocialPilot’s newest feature allows you to comment on each social media post you create, tagging specific team members.

That’s how you can ask their opinion, request feedback, or see if you can publish the post. It’s much easier than sending e-mails, having people open attachments, or visiting other websites.

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7. Scheduling/Automation

Use an automation tool to streamline scheduling too. It can be as simple as an Excel sheet or a software solution like SocialPilot’s scheduling tool that your marketing team can access.

Basically, you want your team to have the following:

• A holistic view of the entire team’s tasks and deadlines
• An individual view of each member’s tasks and deadlines

Tip: Allow your team members to publish their work in advance, checking a box each time they finish a task. That way, they can send this task further down the funnel, notifying the next team member who has to take it on.

You can also automatize:

• Recurring tasks (e.g., posts)
• Creating and approving specific social media posts in advance (e.g., before specific moments or holidays)

8. Regular Internal Updates

Your team’s goals and objectives will change weekly, so people need the most recent update to adjust their tasks.

You also need updates about the following:

• New guides and rules
• Changed processes
• Tools you’re incorporating into your process
• Roles and deadlines
• Everything else that might come up and affect their work

For this, you can use a software solution that:

• Records changes as it takes effect
• Automatically sends notifications to concerned team members
• Automatically modifies the approval process algorithm so that people don’t follow the outdated rules

In Conclusion

After going through this guide on social media collaboration, we’re confident you have the actionable toolkit you need. Following our advice, your marketing team will work together like a dream.

Remember, though, that you need plans and specific processes for everything.

That’s how you avoid wasting time, resources, and staffing on redundant tasks. So, take advantage of the best automation tools for your team.

As you’ve seen, SocialPilot has a slew of solutions at your fingertips.

SocialPilot allows seamless scheduling and publishing on all major social media channels. Besides, you will get a bird’s eye view of your entire strategy and execution thanks to our intuitive calendars. Our collaboration software increases your team’s efficiency, allowing you to set clear roles and responsibilities.

There’s something special about shopping in a store: the lights, the scents, the music. While we can’t experience all those little details when we shop online, we’re making big improvements to AR shopping on Google to bring the most important part of a store — the product — to life.

Find your foundation shade

Foundation is the most-searched category within makeup. It’s also one of the most personal products you can buy — the slightest change in color or tone can make a big difference. But photos of foundation on models don’t always reflect the diversity of shoppers, and other times, you can only find images of the product’s packaging. This makes it especially hard to find the best shade and product. In fact, among online beauty shoppers, more than 60% have decided not to purchase a beauty or cosmetic item online because they didn’t know what color or shade to choose, and 41% have decided to return an item because it was the wrong shade.

So today we’re announcing a new AR shopping feature that makes it much easier to find your foundation match. Developed with guidance from beauty brands, our new photo library features 148 models representing a diverse spectrum of skin tones, ages, genders, face shapes, ethnicities and skin types. Backed by Google’s technology, this library is a big step toward changing the way people shop for makeup online, helping you better visualize what different products look like on you.

Here’s how it works: Search for a foundation shade on Google across a range of prices and brands, like “Clinique Even Better Foundation.” You’ll see what that foundation looks like on models with a similar skin tone, including before and after shots, to help you decide which one works best for you. Once you’ve found one you like, just select a retailer to buy.

56% of surveyed consumers have made a purchase from a company after reading their blog and 10% of marketers who use blogging say it generates the biggest return on investment. If you’re writing a blog for a business, those stats make blog SEO a pretty big deal.

Do you want to design a book without special software? It’s time to use the ready-made book templates in Google Docs. They are easy to use, so you don’t need any special skills to handle them.

Non Fiction Book Template

This is the best online template for non-fiction books.

Book Guest Template For Google Docs & Wor

The template is useful for hotels and restaurants to collect reviews. The basic layout can be adapted to your place if desired.

Recipe Book Template

It is the best cookbook template. The convenience is that you can easily show the step by step preparation of each dish.

Marketing book cover template

Comic Book Template

Photo cookbook cover template

Children’s Book Template

Book Comic Template For Google Docs & Word

Employee Address Book Template

Book Children’s Template For Google Docs & Word

The serial home renovator. The gaming wiz. The health nut. The beauty buff. On average, Americans shop for more than seven people every holiday season, and nearly a third shop for more than 10 people. No matter who or how many loved ones are on your list, we’re here to help you find the perfect gift.

People shop with Google more than 1 billion times per day. So we’ve put together the Holiday 100 — 100 gift ideas and insights based on trending searches from 2022. You’ll find gift inspiration across categories like Home and Garden, Apparel and Accessories, Beauty, Gaming and Electronics, Health and Fitness, and Toys and Crafts.