Pictures are also worth a crap load of money to the person suing you for copyright infringement. Today we’re talking about online images copyright and fair use laws (in the United States). Pay close attention folks; this could save you a lot of Benjamins down the road.

All About Online Images Copyright

As content creators, we understand the importance of images. Using images to break up a wordy post can make it appear less daunting, and the right image can drive your message home. At a more juvenile level, images make reading way more fun. The average two-year-old has no idea how to read, but if you give him/her a stack of picture books they are entertained for hours. I’m of the belief that we never grow out of loving pictures – and while it’s tempting to Google the exact image we have in mind (I’m guilty of it!), it’s critical that we don’t get sloppy and neglect copyright laws.

What is Copyright?

We see the little © all over the place, but what does it mean and how did it get there? To get a comprehensive and accurate understanding of copyright, I went to the most official source I could think of – the United States Copyright Office.

Copyright, a form of intellectual property law, protects original works of authorship including literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works, such as poetry, novels, movies, songs, computer software, and architecture (source: US Copyright Office).

Now that we have a pretty explicit description of what copyright is, it’s time to address when copyright protects a piece of work.

Copyright attaches the second a piece of original work is created and fixed. This applies to both published and unpublished works. Copyright protections are in effect the moment you write a blog post, snap a photo, or create a video. The moment you upload a selfie, you’re protected by copyright. Even if you never publish that selfie on Instagram because your face looks so splotchy that a filter can’t fix it – that image is still protected by copyright law.

You may be asking, “What’s the deal with the ©?”. Copyright is an automatic right and registering a piece of work with the US Copyright Office is voluntary. The automatic nature of the law gives you the freedom to place a © on any of your work. However, if you choose to bring a lawsuit for infringement, you will have to register your work.

Exclusive Rights of Copyright

A serious perk of copyright is that it gives the creator of an original work complete control over its use and distribution. The Copyright Act grants five rights to a copyright owner:

1. The right to reproduce the copyrighted work.
2. The right to prepare derivative works based upon the work.
3. The right to distribute copies of the work to the public.
4. The right to perform the copyrighted work publicly.
5. The right to display the copyrighted work publicly.

Start analyzing your images with a free Rival IQ trial.

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When can you use someone else’s image?

The rule of thumb is that you must receive authorization from the creator in order to use his/her image (you’d be smart to get this in writing). Does this mean that every single one of the billions of pictures on the internet is either authorized by the creator or in violation of online images copyright? The answer is no – and this is where fair use comes into play.

Source: Sebastian Pichler via Unsplash

All About Fair Use

Fair use is an exception and limitation to the rights of exclusivity that are granted by copyright to the creator of a piece of work. In the US, fair use allows for limited use of copyrighted material without authorization from the author of the creative work. The purpose of fair use is to provide limited use if it benefits the public.

Don’t get too excited! Fair use isn’t a green light to use any image under the sun – like everything in life, there are rules, and this isn’t one that is meant to be broken or exploited. After reading Section 107 of the Copyright Act, I not only gained an enormous respect for law students, but I also learned the limits of fair use.

The fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright (source: 17 USC Section 107). 

As you can guess, fair use isn’t a black or white sort of thing. If you aren’t a lawyer with a very in-depth understanding of copyright law and online images copyrights, there can be a lot of confusion as to what is considered beneficial to the public. To help clarify things, four factors determine whether the use of an image is considered “fair”:

1. The purpose of use: educational, nonprofit, scholarly, reporting, reviewing, or research
2. The nature of use: fact-based or public content (courts are usually more protective of creative works)
3. The amount and substantiality used: using only a small piece of the image, using only a small thumbnail/low-resolution version of the image
4. The market effect: you could not have purchased or licensed the copyrighted work

As you can imagine, using a low-resolution image is probably not the ideal situation if your goal is to create a professional-looking piece of content. On the flip side, if you’re doing a movie or book review, it’s nice to know that inserting a picture of the film or book won’t get you in trouble.

These fair trade rules are pretty nitty-gritty. If you’re interested in learning a more about what is considered fair use, check out this article from Columbia University. You can also familiarize yourself with some specific internet cases. Reading about the rulings should give you a better understanding. 

Source: Josefa nDiaz via Unsplash

How does this affect content creators/curators?

The answer is pretty simple: As content creators and curators, we have a responsibility to follow these rules for online images copyrights because, at the end of the day, it’s on us if we mess up. I assure you the company you’re guest blogging for will be very unhappy if they receive this in their inbox:

Just to be clear, in the case above the demand for the single image misuse was $8,000! Now before you start getting all stressed out by this excerpt of a cease and desist email, I have really good news for you: this email can be easily avoided.

Safe Options For Online Images Copyright

It should be pretty clear by now that fair use laws are pretty complicated. Heck, if you’ve gotten this far in the post, past all the legal jargon, I commend you! While you can choose to do a ton of research, familiarize yourself with the rules, and continue to use Google Image search to source images, I personally think this is a pretty risky choice. It only takes one slip up to get slammed with a very unwelcomed cease and desist email.

Create Your Own Images

What do I recommend? Elect to either create your own images using graphic design tools like OmniGraffle, Indesign, or Photoshop. If you don’t have an ounce of design skill in your body, try using a tool that aims to make design simple for everyone like Canva, Snappa, or Pablo. If the cost of design software is holding you up, try testing out Vectr, a free graphics software, or Gimp, a free and open-source image editor.

Download Free Stock Photos

If you use a TON of images, or you don’t have the budget to pay for images, you can always download free stock photos. Here is a shortlist of some of my favorite free stock image sites:

• StockSnap.io: StockSnap has hundreds of beautiful high-resolution photos that are free from copyright restrictions. They add new photos every week and can subscribe to have them sent to your inbox.
• Unsplash: Unsplash is built by a community of over 41,000 photographers who aim to inspire. This site has over 200,000 images that companies including Slack, WordPress, Squarespace, and Apple have used.
• Flickr: Flickr is probably the most popular resource for free stock images. They have a combination of professional photos and amateur photos, so you may have to do some digging to find what you want. While a lot of the pictures are fair game on Flickr, you have to confirm that you follow the rules of the creative commons license they have selected.
• Stock.Xchng: With a robust search engine, this is one of my preferred places to “shop” for free images. Stock.Xchng is owned by iStock, so the first row of images are often paid images – but the pictures that follow are entirely free!
• Pixabay: If you’re after high-quality images, Pixabay is where it’s at. Also, you don’t have to create an account to download a picture. Just click “download,” and you’re set to go.

Speaking of free, check out our free social analytics.

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Purchase Stock Photos

The perk of choosing paid over free is that you’ll have a much easier time finding what you’re looking for. Here are a few of my favorite resources:

• Getty Images: With one of the largest image databases (over 80 million still images and illustrations), you’re guaranteed to find what you are looking for. The downside: the images are often expensive, and Getty is one of the biggest purveyors of cease and desist emails (so make sure you pay for them!).
• Fotolia: Fotolia’s subscription service can save you a lot of money if you plan on using images often.
• iStock: If you have a particular image in mind, iStock’s awesome search box will help you quickly get what you need.
• Cutcaster: If you aren’t a fan of subscription services, Cutcaster gives you the opportunity to pay as you go. Also, their photos are extremely organized, making finding what you want a pain-free process.

If you are going to take one thing away from this post, make it this: If even an iota of doubt exists as to whether or not an image is subject to copyright, assume that it is. Either consult an expert in copyright law, or take the safe bet and visit one of the stock photo sites I’ve listed above. I can not express how expensive of a mistake using a copyrighted image is. The good news – it’s a mistake that can easily be averted!

If you have any questions, please leave them in the comment section below. I’ll do my very best to answer them.

This article was originally published on January 16, 2014, and has since been updated. 

The post A Guide to Online Images Copyright and Fair Use Laws appeared first on Rival IQ.

Photo Courtesy of: Marketing-Works.Net

If you’re spending money on Twitter campaigns, you absolutely must measure your results.

Much like any marketing strategy, the key to running a successful Twitter campaign is to continuously measure your performance. You can then use this data to revise and improve your strategy.

Here are four steps to building, defining and measuring your Twitter campaigns, starting with defining your goals and determining the correct metrics.

Step 1:  Establish clear goals

As the saying goes, start with the end in mind.

The first question you should ask yourself when running a campaign is, “What are my goals?” It’s impossible to determine which metrics are worth measuring if you aren’t certain which results you are hoping to see.

Set goals the SMART way!

Here are just a few examples of some good goals to keep in mind when planning your campaign.

1. Engagement: Social media engagement is critical! Is your campaign resulting in more interaction between your account and other Twitter users?
2. Drive traffic: Are people coming to your website or landing page via Twitter? Are they performing the desired task once they land on your site?
3. Brand Awareness: How many people are exposed to your ad?
4. Influence: How are you comparing to your competitors? Are a lot of people talking about your brand?
5. Fans: Is your follower count growing? Are influential people tweeting about your brand?

The process of defining your goals is arguably the hardest and most important component to consider before investing money in a paid campaign. There are few things more frustrating than a campaign that returns results you have little to no interest in. You’ll find yourself with useless data and much lighter pockets.

Photo Courtesy of: Social Media Today

Step 2:  Identify key metrics 

Now that you have determined your goals, it’s time to identify which metrics are useful. This is about being efficient. For example, if you are interested in driving traffic to your site or landing page, measuring retweets and shares is most likely not time well spent. Spending time in measuring referral traffic in Google Analytics, however, is extremely productive.

Keeping consistent with the examples of common goals listed above, let’s chat about which metrics are important to consider for each of these goals.

1. Engagement: Great metrics to measure are retweets and replies. This data can be easily viewed under the engagements tab in your Twitter campaign dashboard. Also, what engagement rate would make this successful? 
2. Drive Traffic: If you’re interested in driving traffic to your website or landing page, it’s important to measure both clicks and referral traffic to your website. Like retweets and replies, clicks can also be found under the engagements tab in your Twitter campaign dashboard. To determine referral traffic, look no further than trusty old Google Analytics. Put down a specific traffic increase metric and conversion goal.
3. Brand Awareness: If you’d like to measure how many people are exposed to your campaign, impressions (also found in your dashboard) is a key measurement. I would also suggest considering metrics like follower count and engagements. With hundreds of Tweets flooding a newsfeed, it’s likely to miss updates, making impressions alone an unreliable measurement.
4. Influence: When measuring influence, it’s important to consider your performance relative to your competitors. Are you the most talked about brand on Twitter in your industry? If the number of mentions increases in the weeks following your campaign, you have strong reason to assume improved influence. This is an achievement that will likely be welcome in every campaign you run.
5. Fans: Put a stake in the ground for the quantity and quality of followers you want to add with this campaign.Who is retweeting and engaging with your campaign. Are these people “big hitters” with a strong following? I suggest using a tool like Followerwonk to determine the influence of those spreading your message. You may consider cultivating a relationship with these influential people moving forward. Remember, you can also use the Twitter Mentioners report in Rival IQ to find key influencers talking about you and your competition.

Rival IQ’s Twitter Mentioners feature allows you to see which influencers are talking about you and your competitors.

Note that because organic Twitter traffic to your website is likely, setting up a landing page with a unique URL is a much more reliable way to measure the effectiveness of your campaign.

Step 3:  Analyze where you need to improve

While it’s great to understand your campaign’s performance, the work doesn’t stop there. Once you have the metrics at hand, it’s time for the hard work: figuring out how you can improve.

• Was your performance better or worse than the last campaign you ran?
• Were there metrics you should have measured but didn’t?
• Is the content you are sharing having the desired impact on your target audience?

If you spend the time answering these questions, you can optimize your strategy and improve your performance moving forward.

Photo Courtesy of: Twitter Analytics

Step 4:  Adjust your goals and metrics

Based on your analysis of what worked and what didn’t, adjust the current campaign, or use the learnings to make changes to the next campaign.

As with any Agile Marketing methodology, the key here is incremental improvement, both in your campaign goals and set-up AND in the results!

Remember: set goals, measure, revise, rinse & repeat!

What have you found works for your Twitter campaigns? Please share with everyone in the comments.

The post How to Measure Success of Your Twitter Campaigns appeared first on Rival IQ.

Help put an end to hashtag abuse!

We’re all familiar with hashtag abuse. Some of you may be culprits of this heinous Internet crime; others may be victims. Regardless of where you fall, there is no denying that this little waffle-shaped symbol can be a useful addition to your marketing efforts when used well. We have seen successful hashtag campaigns in Charmin’s #TweetFromTheSeat and Make A Wish Foundation’s #SFBatKid. What sets these apart from the overwhelming number of hashtag fails that flood our Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram feeds? These organizations follow best practices, and in doing so, engage with their communities.

Following hashtag best practices improves your marketing

By following a few hashtag best practices, you not only can improve your online marketing efforts, you can make the Internet a better place. We’ll even help you with our new hashtag analysis tools!

Here are my recommended 10 hashtag best practices: 

1.  Less Is More: As a rule of thumb, never use more than 3 hashtags in a single post or tweet.

2. #LongStringsOfWordsAreANNOYING: Do not ever use outrageously long hashtags. It’s confusing at best and does nothing to drive search results to your twitter profile or tweets.  Here’s an example of bad hashtag usage (and generally a tweet that makes you go — What?)

3. Be Specific: Using generic hashtags, such as #marketing or #running in a campaign results in an abundance of hashtags that are coincidental. This will make it near impossible to track the Tweets and posts that are in response to your specific campaign.

4. Easy to Remember/Easy to Spell: Using overly complicated hashtags for campaigns will result in less engagement as well as a variety of wrong spellings. No beuno! Keep it simple (yet creative) and catchy.  One way to make it easy to remember is to speak to YOUR audience. Doritos nailed it with their #crashthesuperbowl Twitter campaign that followers are still talking about.  You want to learn some great hashtag campaigns, check out Doritos profile.

5. Be Original: Don’t be the one that “borrows” a trending hashtag. Nobody likes a copycat! Be original, be creative, and have fun brainstorming the perfect and unique hashtag. Plus, stealing someone else’s hashtag could backfire in a big way. Just read about #NotGuilty. Talk about a hashtag disaster!

6. Understand the Platform: Hashtagging on Instagram is entirely different than hashtagging on Facebook or Twitter. Understanding the differences will make you a more affective “Hashtagger”. Do your research and see what works best where.

7. Include a Call to Action: Just sticking a fun and creative hashtag in your Tweets and posts isn’t enough. Make sure you give your followers an objective. Whether it’s a competition, sharing a photo, or telling a story (just not a McDStory, please!), make sure you get some value out of your hashtag campaign.

8. Double-Check and Then Check Again: The majority of epic hashtag fails could have been avoided with a tiny bit of quality control. Make sure that you think of every possible interpretation of your hashtag before you use it. Don’t be the person that comes up with the next #susanalbumparty or #McDStories.

9. #CapitalizationIsAwesome: Capitalizing different words in a hashtag makes it easier to read and can prevent unfortunate interpretations (#SusanAlbumParty vs #susanalbumparty).

10. Have a Backup Plan: The Internet is a ruthless place. Even if you do your research, there is a chance that your campaign could take a turn in the wrong direction. Always have a crisis management plan in place so that you can respond quickly and effectively.

Using hashtag best practices doesn’t mean you can’t have fun

Lastly, have fun! When you have fun and don’t take yourself too seriously, your followers also have fun. Look at Charmin – I can always count on their tweets and hashtags to add a spice of fun to my newsfeed. Have fun, and be fun!

Do you know any hashtag best practices that you feel I’ve left out? Please share in the comments below!

The post 10 Hashtag Best Practices You Should Start Using Today! appeared first on Rival IQ.

Just like Americans declare their Independence in the month of July, we will be declaring a hot dog winner today.  Because, let’s face it, not all hot dogs are created equal.

Why did we focus on Facebook?  Because when it comes to consumer brands, Facebook is a MUST have social network.  As you can see from the social matrix below, Facebook is also the ONLY social network where all hot dog brands have a presence, so we also wanted an apples-to-apples (or in this case a dogs-to-dogs) comparison!

Facebook is the only social network with all hot dog brands present

Facebook Top Dog

Based on followers alone, Applegate is crushing the competition with 879K fans. Nathan’s comes in a not-so-close second with 280K fans.

With over 870K followers, Applegate is crushing the competition.

However, being the biggest dog does not automatically translate into being the best. As proof of that – despite Applegate’s large following and high number of Facebook posts, they really fall short when it comes to engagement. Like I’ve said before, a primary goal of social media is, as the name clearly suggests, to be social, which means interacting and amplifying your content and messages. When brands aren’t interacting regularly with their fans, high post frequency and high follower count is wasted.

Frequent posting and high engagement rates are strong signs of an active and successful Facebook presence.

Unlike Applegate, Hebrew National is doing a hot doggity good job on Facebook, with each post receiving an average engagement rate of 12.4.  Throw in a healthy number of followers (115K), and you’ve got yourself a large and lively hot dog loving community!

Conclusion: Hebrew National takes 1st place for best hot dog brand on Facebook. Congratulations!

The Taste Test

Now for the fun part, the taste test! As a data-driven company, we don’t mess around when it comes to quantitative measurements of success. For this reason, we not only had a hot dog taste contest, but we also developed a clear set of guidelines to aid in the selection of the most delicious hot dog. I must note that there will be two separate competitions: meat and veggie. Due to the number of Seattlites on the Rival IQ team, it’s expected that we have a disproportionately large representation of vegetarians.

The Guidelines:

1. Appoint a “Meatiator” to hide the true identity of each hot dog to avoid expectation bias – DJ was ours!
2. Cut each variety of hot dog into equal size pieces
3. Present the congruent chunks of dogs to each team member – by the Meatiator
4. Each team member ranks the hot dogs
5. The Meatiator determines (using math) the winner and runner up for each category (meat and veggie)

The Process:

And the Winner is . . .

Congratulations to Nathan’s and Tofurky for having the best tasting hot dogs (according to Rival IQ, of course).  I should note that there were a couple people due to dietary restrictions or just plain old pickiness that did not taste either the meat dogs or the veggie dogs.

The Results:

***Questionable results: We used the 97% fat free variety, no bueno.

The post Hebrew National Is The Hottest Dog on Facebook appeared first on Rival IQ.

So, how exactly does one create a thriving and engaging Twitter presence? We turned to Jackie Jordahl, a digital marketing expert with Heinz Marketing, to give the top 5 best practices for successful engagement on Twitter..

1. Start and engage in conversation

It’s easy to get comfortable with simply posting content to your Twitter feed, but it takes more than that to connect with your audience. Every tweet on your feed is a new opportunity to engage. When someone is tweeting about an event, jump in! If someone mentions you in a Tweet, thank them. Post questions to generate conversation. Don’t be afraid to comment and engage.

2. Tweet more than once a day

Twitter is the fastest moving social channel in terms of newsfeeds. Something you post at 9 am will be “old news” by 3 pm. Needless to say, posting at least three times per day is the best way to stay in front of your audience.

3. Think of what your audience would want to read

Part of developing a successful social strategy is being aware that all of your content should be directed towards your audience and what they care about. Many companies make the mistake of posting about what interests them and their product, however this deters from being seen as an industry thought-leader. When you serve up information and content related to your customers’ needs and interests, they’ll come to think of you as a thought-leader, someone that knows the business and cares about the customer.

4. Share timely articles

A pet peeve of mine is coming across a post with a link to an article from 2010. Unless the information is incredible you shouldn’t post or retweet articles that are over a year old. I’m always looking for articles that are current, that day or week, but if I find something awesome that’s a few months old, I’ll share it. Just remember, if you find something that’s older than a few weeks, make sure the content is still relevant. For example, social media articles and best practices from last year are probably not the same as they are this year.

5. #Think #before #you #hashtag

Hashtags get used and abused in the Twittersphere. It’s important to understand what a hashtag is and how to use it correctly. For example, don’t use too many hashtags in your post (i.e. #sun #summer #schoolsout #fun). The overuse of hashtags screams, “I don’t know what I’m doing”. When used properly, hashtags can add visibility to your Tweet after it’s posted and link your brand to conversations around a particular topic.

A big thanks to Jackie for taking the time to give us her top 5 best practices for engaging on Twitter. Hopefully these tips inspire you to start interacting and reaching out to other fellow Twitter users. To learn how you can manage your Twitter presence with Hootsuite and further improve your engagement strategy, check out part one of our interview with Jackie! 

The post 5 Best Practices for Engaging on Twitter appeared first on Rival IQ.

If you’re like most marketers, you are attempting to manage multiple social media channels. Plus, you are most likely using and/or trying a myriad of social marketing tools.  Sometimes, the number of tools can be as overwhelming as multi-channel marketing itself!  So, we turned to Jackie Jordahl, an expert with Heinz Marketing, one of the leading agencies in digital marketing.

Jackie is a big fan of Hootsuite, so we asked her some key questions to help you get started on your Hootsuite journey.  Of course, the end goal with using Hootsuite, or any similar tool, is increasing your Twitter followers, deepening engagement, and driving stronger business results with your Twitter strategy and implementation.

Rival IQ:   Why Hootsuite over other tools?

Jackie:  We use a number of tools to optimize social strategy for our own company as well as for our clients, but in terms of social engagement, Hootsuite’s real-time dashboard takes the cake.  I use it daily for customer projects to complete the following tasks:

• Listen and engage with influencers, prospects, and customers
• Generate curated content
• Gain insights into what topics are currently trending

Once I customized my Hootsuite dashboard, I was able to significantly reduce the amount of time I spent on social media. More specifically, I no longer had to individually search for content or locate specific influencers, because everything could be found in my dashboard.

Rival IQ:  How do you set up and customize your Hootsuite deck?

Jackie:  My dashboard is constantly being modified, but when I initially set up a Hootsuite deck, I start by defining the categories I want to be monitoring, which typically are:

• My followers
• People I’m following
• Industry influencers
• Top blogs
• Target prospects
• Customers
• Relevant keywords

Although you may already have a list of blogs, keywords, and influencers ready to load into Hootsuite, it’s always good to do a little extra research. For example, if I was targeting sales people, I might Google “top sales blogs in 2014” or “top salespeople in 2014”. I would then skim through to find people or blogs I believe would be good resources of valuable information for my followers.

A look into Jackie’s Hootsuite dashboard setup. Please click to enlarge.

Rival IQ:  What is the best process to finding influencers to follow or engage with on Twitter?

Jackie:  My go-to tool for discovering and engaging with influencers is Little Bird. The platform is a quick way to get my hands on hundreds of top influencers. Their user-friendly dashboard offers geographical information, ways to share and connect instantly, and export options that streamline the process of getting a new list from Little Bird into a format that’s useful for me. Researching applicable LinkedIn groups is another strategy, however it requires more effort than Little Bird.

Once I’ve curated a list of influencers, I also create a stream for each influencer under the “influencer tab” in my Hootsuite dashboard. With their tweets clearly displayed, I watch for opportunities to interact and engage with my targeted influencers, and ultimately work toward building a relationship with each of them.

Rival IQ:  What does your morning social “routine” look like?

Jackie:  The first thing I do in the morning is open up my Hootsuite deck. I’m looking for two things:

1. engagement opportunities
2. interesting content

For engagement opportunities, I go straight to the prospects, customers and influencers tabs in my custom deck. I skim through these streams looking for pain points and content/conversation themes, and paying attention to various events that are coming up or currently happening. All of these are openings for me to reach out and engage.

For content curation I peruse through the influencers, blog and keyword tabs I’ve added to my deck to see what people are posting and/or talking about. As I’m doing this, I’m simultaneously de-cluttering my dashboard by removing any streams that haven’t been offering valuable content or conversations.

Rival IQ:   How long do you spend executing your social strategy on an average day?

Jackie:  Not long, thanks to tools like Hootsuite and Buffer. Both tools streamline the engagement process and allow me to be effective without wasting too much time digging through the internet. Collectively, I spend between 30 to 45 minutes researching, evaluating, connecting and posting each day.

A big thanks to Jackie for taking the time to answer these questions. Hopefully these tips give you some insights into how you should be leveraging Hootsuite and setting up your dashboard. For information on how to engage and interact on Twitter, be sure to check back for part two of this interview next week!

The post How to get started on your Hootsuite Journey and rock Twitter! appeared first on Rival IQ.

Today we will be covering some tips to help you get started and be successful on this channel.

Customize Your Channel

It astounds me how many companies have blank, uncustomized YouTube channel pages. YouTube is a visual channel, and the visual appeal should begin the second a person lands on your channel page. Make sure that you spend time customizing your page so that it clearly represents your company. If you neglect to do this, you’ll have people wondering whether or not your YouTube page is legitimate, and who wants that?

Implementing the following three page components is a great way to get started:

Icon

Including an icon allows a person to quickly identify your brand. It’s best practice to make sure your icon is consistent with all of your social channels.

The following are the YouTube channel icon technical specifications:

• Square images which render at 98 x 98 px
• YouTube recommends uploading an 800 x 800 px image
• JPG, GIF, BMP, or PNG

Custom Channel Art Banner

A custom banner adds color and personality to your page. When designing your banner, keep in mind that the colors/images you choose should compliment your icon (because your icon is overlaid on your Channel Art banner). YouTube suggests a banner size of 2560 x 1440 px.

A high quality banner that compliments your icon will add to the visual appeal of your page.

The Kraft’s Recipes channel does a great job with their banner. It’s visually appealing, not too busy, compliments their icon, and they’ve linked their website and social media handles, which are clearly displayed on the bottom right of the banner. Definitely a win for Kraft and something to look to for inspiration.

Channel Trailer

The channel trailer is only available to channels that have the channel browse view enabled (which you should!). Only unsubscribed visitors will see your channel trailer, so think of it as your “elevator pitch” to get people to subscribe to your channel, learn about your company, visit your homepage, or accomplish whatever your goals may be. This video will be displayed at the top of your Channel page, so make sure it’s great!

I’m a fan of Annoying Orange’s trailer. After watching this video, you know exactly what to expect from subscribing to their channel.

Be Consistent

Like every social media channel, consistency is key. If your business feels that they can really benefit from YouTube, it would be wise to come up with a posting schedule. Whether it’s once per month or twice a week, stick to the schedule! This is not to say that every single one of your videos must be a high budget, complicated video – your content can (and probably should) vary.

Here are a few ideas to get your creativity flowing: 

• Product demonstrations
• Video recordings of presentations
• Interview influencers
• Short videos with nuggets of information that your followers will find valuable
• Video customer testimonials
• Team interviews
• “How To” videos to help your customers better use your product and/or service

Once you’ve decided what your goals are for this channel (establishing thought leadership, humanizing your brand, teaching your customers about your product/service, lead generation, etc), coming up with content ideas should be less of a challenge.

Promote Everywhere

While posting frequently is definitely the first step to success on YouTube, don’t take for granted that people are just going to magically appear on your channel homepage. When you post a new video, be sure to share it across all of your social media channels. Additionally, a great way to “repurpose” your videos is to incorporate them into appropriate blog posts. YouTube makes it really easy to embed videos into WordPress. Just remember, the more you amplify your content, the higher the likelihood that people will actually see it.

Measure, Measure, Measure

Creating amazing content is only part of being successful on YouTube. Measuring how well your content is performing is equally important to your success. If you’re producing awesome videos with no audience to watch them, you’re sadly wasting your time. Measuring your performance and analyzing traffic source and demographics will allow you to tweak your YouTube strategy for optimal performance. 

YouTube Built-In Analytics:

YouTube has pretty robust set of built in analytics. They can be easily accessed by clicking on the little gear at the top of the page.

YouTube Analytics can be easily accessed by clicking the gear on the top right hand side of the page.

Things to pay attention to: demographics, engagement, and my particular favorite, traffic source. For everything there is to know about YouTube’s analytics, visit the YoutTube help page for detailed instructions.

Learn From Your Competitors

Rival IQ has added YouTube to the growing list of channels we track. Once you create your landscape, checking your performance is quick and easy. You can learn who is being effective and posting good content by watching companies you compete with or companies you find interesting. Using the custom dates option allows you to target a specific period of interest, so you can get in and get out with the information you need (without the time wasted!).

Rival IQ provides you with awesome YouTube metrics. Pay extra attention to Subscriber % Change and Post Engagement Rate.

By regularly measuring your performance on YouTube, you can determine which videos are well received by your audience and which are not. Keep that information in mind when you plan out your content calendar. Closely measuring your past performance will be the key to optimizing your YouTube presence, and ultimately will determine your success on this channel.

If you’re considering becoming more active on YouTube but aren’t sure where to begin, I’d recommend checking out my last post, “The Top 5 Best Branded YouTube Videos” for some inspiration.

What is your number one tip for YouTube success? Let me know in the comments below!

The post YouTube for Business: Tips and Best Practices appeared first on Rival IQ.

Recently, Rival IQ added Youtube and Instagram to the growing list of channels we track. In celebration of this exciting product rollout, last week’s post featured the top 5 best branded Youtube channels. In that post, I promised a top 5 Instagram post – and now I’m delivering on that promise! Instagram provides an amazing platform for companies to express their creativity. The best part? It fuses video and images, which makes the possibilities endless. So, without further ado, here are my top 5 picks for the best branded Instagram accounts.

Illamasqua

I’m sure a bunch of you are wondering who the heck Illamasqua is. Illamasqua is a cosmetics brand that aims to inspire creativity, color, and artistry. On their Instagram, you’ll find tons of inspiring and creative makeup looks, nail designs, and new products put to action. There are two main factors that make Illamasqua a standout on Instagram:

1. They encourage their customers to share their works of art with the hashtag #Illamasqua. Customer makeup looks contribute to at least 30 percent of their pictures. Hello engagement!!
2. Their budget is essentially nothing. Between uploading pictures of Illamasqua artists and their customers, they have found a way to be creative and successful on Instagram with very little money spent.

Kayla_Itsines

Ok, so I admit, this one isn’t technically a company – BUT, I think it’s an amazing testament to how being active on Instagram, combined with posting great pictures/videos can result in massive success. Kayla is an Australian personal trainer who took to Instagram to post short videos of her workouts as well as progress pictures of her clients. These pictures and videos attracted a lot of followers (over half a million!), which resulted in tons of questions about her detailed diet and workout regimen. So what did this smart girl do? She created the Bikini Body Ebook, containing a nutrition plan and a 12 week training guide. Since then she’s created another Ebook, The Healthy Eating & Lifestyle Plan.

Key Takeaway: Even if you are a small company with a tight budget, or a single person offering a service (wedding planning, personal training, etc), Instagram is an amazing place to get the word out.

Click the image to be redirected to Kayla’s Instagram page.

Sharpie

I’ve talked about Sharpie before, and I’m going to talk about them again. This company kills it on social media, and Instagram is no exception. Where Sharpie shines is in their amazing use of color and creativity. They light up your newsfeed with bright and exciting drawings, all which showcase their incredible variety of products. They’ve managed to advertise their product in a way that is enjoyable and actually gets people interested in following them. That’s a win win in my book.

Unfortunately, Sharpie has been MIA on Instagram since the end of December. I really miss seeing their bright and fun pictures show up in my home feed – which leads me to the #1 lesson on Instagram success: Be consistent. 

Click the image to be redirected to Sharpie’s Instagram page.

Starbucks

With over 2.3 million followers, Starbucks is crushing it by numbers alone. But what exactly caused them to be so popular on Instagram? They are pros at getting their followers to share content (#Starbucks), which they later repost to the Starbuck’s Instagram feed. Their followers’ pictures are creative, artistic, and a welcomed addition to my home feed. Can we say “hello free advertisement?”. Additionally, they showcase their product with some pretty impressive coffee art (this alone is worth checking them out!).

Click the image to be redirected to Starbuck’s Instagram page.

Annie’s Homegrown

I’m already a huge fan of Annie’s Homegrown, so their awesome Instagram presence just makes me love them even more. For those of you that are unfamiliar with Annie’s, they are a food company that adds an organic, all-natural spin on American favorites (mac & cheese, graham crackers, pizza, gummies, etc.). Annie’s continues to target their demographic with recipes, healthy lunchbox ideas, and adorable pictures of their food. After visiting Annie’s Instagram page, you’ll quickly recognize the importance of creatively marketing your product in a way that doesn’t come across as too “selly”.

Click the image to be redirected to Annie’s Homegrown’s Instagram page.

 Success on Instagram

As you’ve probably already figured out, there are a few common characteristics that make a company successful on Instagram.

1. Be consistent: Post frequently, and don’t go MIA for extended periods of times. It’s really disappointing and a little unfair to your fans.
2. Creativity is key: Incorporating fun and unique pictures/videos into your feed will get people following and interacting with you on this channel.
3. “Selly” is so uncool: Finding ways to market your product in a way that doesn’t come across as too “selly” is hard. Fortunately, if you’re creative, Instagram is a great platform to set yourself up as both genuine and fun.
4. Use hashtags: Instagram is all about the hashtag. Encourage your followers to use hashtags, and share their pictures on your own Instagram page.
5. Be colorful: You want to stand out in a home feed – having colorful and attracting images can help you accomplish this goal.

The last, and arguably most important component of being successful on Instagram is to continuously track your efforts. Rival IQ’s new Instagram metrics makes this a painless and simple process. Easily see your follower growth, top engaging content, and so much more. The more you measure your efforts, the more you can tailor your Instagram strategy for increased success.

What is your favorite company to follow on Instagram? I’d love to know!

The post Top 5 Branded Instagram Accounts appeared first on Rival IQ.

In honor of Rival IQ adding YouTube and Instagram to the growing list of channels we track, today I’m going to let you in on my top 5 picks of B2C branded videos that completely killed it on YouTube (Check back next week for a top 5 Instagram post!). Making a great YouTube video can be challenging, but having a source of inspiration can help you get the ball moving – and these videos do just that.

Old Spice

It’s no secret that Old Spice has great advertising, but what people may not know is that they have an amazing YouTube channel. Their videos are entertaining, funny, and effective. Check out their latest video, you’ll be sure to laugh, feel “sad”, and then laugh again – it’s an emotional rollercoaster and I love it!

http://youtu.be/eaOz_pFnX38

Poo-Pourri

This one just does it for me. I watch a lot of YouTube videos, and I think this is hands down the best brand video I’ve ever watched. If you’re unfamiliar with Poo-Pourri, it’s basically a toilet spray, which claims that if you “Spritz the bowl before you go and no one else will ever know”. Unlike Old Spice, Poo-Pourri is a brand that is not especially widely known – but with amazing branding, a pretty large Youtube advertising budget, and a hilarious sense of humor, they are doing a phenomenal job at rocking the YouTube world (and the 25+ million views on this single video proves it!).

Dollar Shave Club

Most YouTube nerds, such as myself, will agree that the Dollar Shave Club continuously sets the bar for this channel. Every single one of their videos is pure advertising gold. They are funny (as you can see, there’s a trend with funny videos and YouTube), creative, and most importantly, they do an amazing job at persuading you to give their product a shot. After watching the video below, you’ll be asking yourself the same question I’m sure you’ve asked yourself before – “Why the hell am I spending so much money on razor blades?!”. The good news? With Dollar Shave Club you don’t have to anymore.

Pepto Bismol

Pepto Bismol has unfortunately not been uploading to YouTube recently, but their last stretch of videos were great. For their launch of “Pepto to Go”, they introduced a little squirrel that would save someone’s day by offering them some Pepto to Go. These videos were short (30 seconds or less), entertaining, and unfortunately, relatable.

http://youtu.be/1fzjc3LaO-Y

GoPro

For amazing quality videos, there is no other channel that does it better than GoPro. From outer space, to the ocean, to a live sporting event, visiting GoPro’s channel will guarantee a video that is both amazing and high quality. GoPro does have a bit of an advantage in that their product couldn’t possibly line up any better with YouTube. With that being said, I think learning which social media channels a company should spend their time and focus on is a good predictor of future success.

Now it’s your turn!

YouTube is such a great social media channel (my favorite!). It gives companies an opportunity to get creative, let their consumers in on their company culture, and display their products in a fun and unique way. The possibilities are endless, and great results can be seen with a variety of budgets. Get inspired by the companies that are already putting out successful videos on YouTube and then get started on making your own! Just remember, like any other social media channel, it’s important to track your results. Rival IQ’s YouTube metrics make doing this easy as 1, 2, 3.

Also, if you’d like to explore another amazing visual social media channel, check out my top 5 post on Vine!

Are there any brands on YouTube that you feel should have made my top 5 list? If so, let me know in the comments below!

The post Top 5 Best Branded YouTube Videos appeared first on Rival IQ.

The clock was winning.

However, I’m not one to succumb to defeat so easily! Nay, I was determined to fight back and find a way to regain control of my workday. After perusing the web for the best productivity hacks, I’ve found a combination of “best practices” that have made the past workweek less stressful and much more enjoyable. I encourage you all to take charge and give these productivity hacks a shot.

Plan Out Your Day

We’ve all experienced that feeling of doom that accompanies long to do lists and strict deadlines. Past Danielle would have spent time being anxious and flustered, resulting in even lower levels of productivity. The new and improved Danielle plans out her day down to the hour.

Here’s an example of what yesterday’s schedule looked like:

• 7 a.m.: Make/eat oatmeal, watch a few Youtube videos
• 8 a.m.: Edit companies
• 9 a.m.: Work on guest blog post
• 10 a.m.: Meet with Doc to work on metrics
• 11 a.m.: Work on metrics
• 12 p.m.: Make/eat lunch
• 1 p.m.: Fill Buffer for FB, Twitter, G+, and LI
• 2 p.m.: Edit companies
• 3 p.m.: Optometrist appointment
• 4 p.m.: Send/respond to emails
• 5 p.m.: Go to gym
• 6 p.m.: Make/eat dinner
• 7 p.m.: Edit companies
• 8 p.m.: Watch movie with Gabe
• 10 p.m.: Shower, read
• 11 p.m.: Go to sleep

By listing out a strict, hourly schedule for your day, you’ll be happy to see how relaxed and in charge you’ll feel. Simply seeing on paper that it’s humanly possible to accomplish all the tasks on your to do list eliminates most of that unnecessary anxiety. Additionally, you’ll be pleasantly surprised that you actually have time to spend doing fun things you enjoy. Just be sure to stay on task, and to set realistic goals and timeframes to accomplish each task.

Schedule Times to Read Email

It’s easy to fall into the habit of compulsively checking emails. Whether it’s in between writing blog posts, or while you’re hanging out with friends, obsessively visiting your inbox is a killer to productivity and your social life.

Earlier this week, I had a mammoth of a blog post to write. I’d come to learn that checking my email always gets me off track and, in turn, makes the writing process way longer than it needs to be. With this in mind, I emailed the Rival IQ team to let them know I’d be offline for 3 hours, and to text me if anything was important. I like to call this being in airplane mode. My phone is off, my email is off, and my internet is off. I’m happy to say that I finished the post in record time. Success!

Work is important, but so is your social life. Don’t let email interfere with the time you set aside for your friends and family. Chances are an email that lands in your inbox isn’t a “ticking time bomb.” Give people the courtesy of undivided attention, your email will still be there when you get home.

Take a Break!

Back in college I was the queen of all nighters. Like most college students, I’d convinced myself that I worked best under pressure. I’d plow through my lecture notes, absorbing tons of information and feeling really positive about my progress. However, like clockwork, the second 3 am rolled around, I’d find myself reading and rereading the same paragraph of my unbelievably boring Microbiology book. I’d reach a breaking point and no matter how hard I’d try to push myself, nothing would stick.

The same can be said for a regular work day. There’s only so much your brain can handle. Sometimes not being productive for 10-20 minutes is the most productive decision you can make. Take breaks, refuel, stretch, go for a walk, hang out with your coworkers, and then dive right back in to where you left off. Learn to be OK with taking a break.

Now It’s Your Turn

I can honestly say that after trying these three “productivity hacks”, I’ve been more focused, more productive, and less stressed. I encourage all of you to try to incorporate some of the tips I’ve covered into your daily routine.

I’d love to know what helps you stay productive throughout the day. Let me know in the comments below!

The post Beat the Clock: Productivity Hacks For The Win appeared first on Rival IQ.

I must admit – LinkedIn intimidated the crap out of me for a really long time. It was the only social network that felt completely foreign and unfamiliar. However, after reading a lot (and I mean a lot!) about LinkedIn, it became less and less scary and more and more exciting. With a few easy to follow guidelines, you’ll be well on your way to developing a strong and powerful LinkedIn business page presence. I hope you’ll join me on the journey to LinkedIn Stardom!

Why A LinkedIn Business Page is Awesome!

Before we cover the steps you should take in order to optimize your presence on LinkedIn, let’s discuss some of the use cases that make this networking site so exciting.

LinkedIn allows you to:

• Build a network of advisors: You can cultivate relationships with influencers who are oftentimes more than willing to lend you their knowledge and guidance.
• Set yourself up as a thought leader: By joining groups, answering questions, and sharing your content, you become a thought leader in your space.
• Generate leads: LinkedIn is particularly good at generating B2B leads
• Keep up to speed on news in your field: By following influencers in your space, you will be kept in the loop on the latest industry trends and news.
• Find qualified candidates for employment: Easily view a person’s experience and skill set to determine if they are a right fit for the job.
• Create partnerships: If you are an early stage business, LinkedIn is a great place to find entrepreneurs with similar interests.

As you can see, LinkedIn possesses so much power; all you have to do is tap the resource!

Getting Started: Setting Up Your LinkedIn Company Page

The first step to getting started on any social media site is setting up your page. Much of this is self-explanatory and LinkedIn will prompt you with clear directions. There are, however, a few best practices to keep in mind.

Setting Up Your Home Page

Like Google+, Facebook, and many other social media sites, your homepage on LinkedIn is an opportunity to grab the attention of those who land on it. If you have a really uncool homepage, you’re going to have an equally high bounce rate. However, if you have a homepage with great language and visuals, you have a much higher chance of your visitors sticking around and learning more about what your company has to offer. Note that it’s best to use language that is consistent across all existing channels.

Banner

The banner is the next step to making your homepage fabulous. Take advantage of the LinkedIn Banner space to bring some visual appeal. The best banner is one that is both easy on the eyes and contains good branding and messaging. The size of your LinkedIn Company Page banner should be 636 x 220 pixels.

The above banner, as you probably guessed, comes from the Walt Disney LinkedIn page. It’s immediately clear the primary purpose of Disney’s LinkedIn presence is recruitment. If this is your primary goal on LinkedIn, be sure that your banner paints a picture of a great work environment. It may be difficult to come up with a better catchphrase than “Your story could begin here”, but I’m confident you can come up with something equally awesome.

Here are some more ways to optimize your homepage:

• List your specialties: This is great for the people that just want to do a really quick scan of what you’re all about.
• List your contact information: You want to make it as easy as possible for potential leads to contact you.
• Post great content: All of your posts are visible on your homepage, which gives you to opportunity to liven up your page with pictures and videos. Post content that you think will interest your ideal customer. This is also a great opportunity to post some of your own content. To avoid coming off as completely self-absorbed, try following the 3:1 rule: one of your own links for every 3 links that aren’t your own.
• Make the first 156 characters of your description count. Google previews the first 156 characters of your description. Do you know what I’m getting at? That’s right, SEO people! Use strong wording and phrases that will attract your target customer.

Careers Tab

As we discussed earlier, one of the most powerful LinkedIn use cases is its networking potential. Unfortunately, using the Careers Tab will cost you, as it is a paid feature. The good news is that it’s money well spent and will give you the opportunity to reach a multitude of qualified applicants.

Products and Services Tab

Think of the Product and Services tab as the sales section of your LinkedIn profile. If your goal on LinkedIn is lead generation, then this is a section you don’t want to miss. Be sure to use compelling and concise language that clearly describes your product, and take advantage of visual appeal by including images and videos.

It’s also good to note that you can link to practically anything from the Product and Services tab. This means you can include your latest blog posts, white papers, webinars, case studies, videos, etc.

Make sure your most important product is listed first. The first listing on your product and service page is the only feature that is listed in the sidebar located on your home page. As you can probably imagine, a large number of people that land on your LinkedIn page won’t make it past your home page unless given a reason otherwise. Entice them with your most exciting product by listing it first!

Good Manners Matter

Considering I spent 23/24 years of my life growing up in the Deep South (maybe a bit of a stretch, but Orlando is technically almost as south as it gets), I feel like I’ve earned the right to preach the importance of good etiquette. As someone who by nature is petrified of being the annoying person, I’ve never experienced LinkedIn wrath before. However, after reading a few stories of others being blatantly called out on LinkedIn, I know for a fact it exists.

Here are some tips to avoid being shamed and ridiculed. You can thank me later for saving you the embarrassment.

Business cards ≠ excuse to be spammy. Networking events are a great way to expand your network in “real life”. Historically (meaning a few years ago), you’d leave an event with a stack of business cards, courtesy of all the lovely people you met. Now, let’s be real for a second: the majority of those business cards were later used as bookmarks or a place to jot down notes. With the addition of LinkedIn, you can quickly go home, search for the names on those business cards, and continue to build relationships with those people via LinkedIn. In order to present yourself as the lovely and personable person that you are, send requests with personalized messages. Include a short line of how nice it was to chat about xyz and how you’d like to continue the conversation in the future.

Be personable when reaching out. If there is a person that you’d like to connect with, do not reach out with a cold and impersonal message. You should never come off as a user with an agenda. Be personable and build a strong relationship before you ever ask for something. When I applied for my job at Rival IQ, I reached out to one of the cofounders via LinkedIn. I sent a message including a summary of my background, how I heard about the job, and how I’d love to further the conversation. I feel pretty confident that this approach worked, because my boss messaged me back a day later. Success!!!

Do not be self-absorbed: I’ll admit, I’m guilty of this LinkedIn faux pas – but hey, we all have things we can improve on! To avoid appearing self-absorbed and spammy, post interesting content asides from your own. Posting the content of influencers in your space is a great way to give them “kudos” and build relationships.

In summary: be genuine, be friendly, be helpful, and you’ll be a great addition to the LinkedIn family.

How To Generate Leads

I mentioned earlier that LinkedIn is particularly good at generating B2B leads. I’m about to share a stat that may just knock you off your seat. LinkedIn’s rate of conversion is three times higher than Facebook or Twitter for B2B leads. Taking advantage of LinkedIn for lead generation if you are a B2B company is a must. Here are some ways that can help you turn into a lead gen machine.

Groups

A LinkedIn group is a community forum that focuses on a particular topic. Think Google+ Communities. Make sure you search around to find groups covering topics that line up with your product or service. You can learn about the topics covered in the group by reading the information in the group profile.

Determine if a group lines up with your product or service by reading the group description.

If you want to get really sophisticated, click on the little “i” at the top right of a group page and then click “Group statistics”. Here you will find information on the demographics of people in the groups, including seniority, function, location, and industry. Doing a little of this research will ensure you are finding a group that matches up with your business goals.

Learning about the demographics in a group can help you decide if joining lines up with your lead generation goals.

Now that you’ve found which groups to join, you need to start engaging. Providing answers to questions, sharing interesting articles, and being accessible when someone asks for advice are all ways to gain the title of thought leader. The number one key point to remember is: be consistent. Gaining the respect of your group members will not happen over night. It takes time and dedication. Continuous posting and commenting is the only way for people to remember you.

InMail

Linkedin’s free plan limits you to sending messages to members in your network. However, by purchasing the premium plan, you have access to LinkedIn InMail, which allows you to send messages to people outside your network. With a paid plan, you are allowed a certain number of InMails per month, depending on the plan you choose. LinkedIn feels so strongly about their InMails, that they have a “money back guarantee” of sorts; if you don’t get a reply in 7 days, you get refunded the InMail credit.

LinkedIn goes as far as saying that InMail is 30% more effective than regular mail! With that said, whether you are contacting the CEO of a company or a director of marketing, InMail can be a great way to start a conversation and potentially gain a new customer. Follow the link to find out how to write a great LinkedIn InMail.

LinkedIn Ads

Unlike Facebook and Twitter, LinkedIn Ads allows you to select a target audience and essentially specify which members view your ads. Whether you customize by job title, job function, industry, age, or LinkedIn Group, LinkedIn Ad’s are a great way to increase conversions with little cost. To learn everything there is to know about LinkedIn Ads, I suggest you read this Getting Started Guide to LinkedIn Advertising.

KPIs You Should Be Tracking

If you plan on investing time and resources on LinkedIn, you should 100% be monitoring your progress on this channel. How will you know whether or not your efforts are paying off if you don’t keep track? Following your LinkedIn progress in Rival IQ will ensure you’re on track to meeting your goals. The following are some metrics that I feel are the most important.

Follower Growth

It’s important to measure how many people are following you on LinkedIn. Think about it: the larger your reach, the more potential for traffic that you can drive to your site. It’s all about pushing qualified leads into the funnel.

The larger your following, the larger your reach. Keeping tabs on your follower goal will let you know if you’re on track to meeting your lead generation goals.

Frequency Of Update

Keep track of how often you post and compare this number to your follower growth. Pay close attention to whether or not a correlation exists between the frequency of your updates and your new follower growth. Experimenting with your posting frequency while keeping new followers in mind, will help you discover the optimal number of times you should be posting per day.

Experimenting with your posting frequency while keeping new followers in mind, will help you discover the optimal number of times you should be posting per day.

Content Type

Keep track of the type of content you share (pictures, videos, links, interviews, etc) in addition to the topics you post about. Do pictures get more engagement than links? Are team update posts more engaging than product update posts? You should always be asking yourself these questions; it’s the first step to developing a LinkedIn strategy that works.

Tracking which content receives the most engagement allows you to continuously improve your content strategy.

Update Engagement Rate

Your update engagement rate is the average number of interactions (likes and comments on updates), per thousand followers during a set time period. If your goal is to generate leads and fill the top of the funnel, it’s essential that you not only have people following your LinkedIn page, but also have them engaging. This boils down to whether or not you are posting content that resonates with your followers.

Tracking your update engagement rate will give you insights into whether or not your content resonates with your followers.

Awesome LinkedIn Pages To Inspire You

Now that you hopefully understand the basic steps to getting started on LinkedIn, I suggest seeing them put into action by visiting some really great LinkedIn pages. Get inspired, start experimenting, and get active!

Now that you hopefully understand the basic steps to getting started on LinkedIn, I suggest seeing them put into action by visiting some really great LinkedIn pages. Get inspired, start experimenting, and get active!

Adobe: The Showcase Pages experts

Dell: Pros at creating awesome headlines for their content

Kellogg Company: Awesome at incorporating brand culture into their page

Mashable: Get inspired by the content they post

Teach For America: These folks are experts at using LinkedIn as a recruitment tool

Remember, the number one rule to LinkedIn is to be genuine, helpful, and consistent. Success doesn’t happen over night, and LinkedIn is no exception.

What are some of your favorite LinkedIn pages that inspire you? Please leave them in the comments below!

The post How To Optimize Your LinkedIn Business Page and Generate Leads appeared first on Rival IQ.

While both of these are great options, there are many photo editing tools that are readily available online that make the process easier and oftentimes cheaper. So for you folks out there that aren’t the most Photoshop savvy or for those of you who are on a budget, this post is for you!

Skitch by Evernote

If you’re looking to make very simple changes to your images, like adding arrows and text, then Skitch is the photo editing tool for you. Skitch allows you to take a screenshot, make changes, and easily export to pdf, jpeg, or pretty much any format imaginable.

For the people who are looking for the simplest of ways to get a point across in fewer words, there’s no better tool than Skitch.

An example of Skitch at work. Skitch allows you to get your message across quickly and in fewer words.

Canva

If you have ever tried to create an infographic with little to no design background, then you know how frustrating and painful of a task it can be. With Canva, graphic design is made easy – and the best part? You literally need absolutely no graphic design background to create beautiful images.

Their drag-and-drop design tool makes doing basic graphic design work easy. With a library of over 1 million stock photos, you’ll never feel limited or restricted. These photos are royalty free, and are either free or only cost one dollar! Check out the quick video below and see how awesome Canva is.

PicMonkey

PicMonkey is an awesome online photo editor. If you need a fast, simple, and fun way to make beautiful pictures, look no further. Some of its free capabilities include adding text, a collage maker, photo touch-ups, photo cropping and resizing, and a variety of frames. The paid option will get you more options for frames and texts, different photo effects, and a ton of touch up options.

Another really awesome feature is the Facebook banner and icon button, which, as you probably guessed, allows you to design your Facebook banner and icon. PicMonkey has a pretty large fan base, and I’d say it’s well deserved – definitely one to check out!

PicMonkey gives you tons of options for editing and touching up your photos.

Fotor

If you’re looking to edit your photos or make amazing collages, look no further. Fotor allows you to crop, rotate, and resize your images. It also gives you the option to change the brightness, contrast, saturation, sharpness, and exposure of your images. Fotor is also my go to choice for collages.

Photo collages can be a fun and refreshing way to display images on your blog posts – and if you aren’t the most creative person in the world, Fotor provides you with tons of templates to get the job done. The best part? It’s free!

Fotor helps you create awesome collages as well as edit your photos. The best part? It’s free!

Some Final Thoughts

I can’t emphasize enough the importance of steering clear of Googled images. With companies slamming people with cease and desist notices left and right, using these images can be a very expensive mistake. The tools I’ve listed above are great (and safe) alternatives to using copyrighted images.

By creating your own images, you dodge the “copyright bullet”. My advice to you? Play around with each of the tools, discover the unique features they have to offer, and start getting creative! There’s no time like the present!

The post Photo Editing Tools For Online Images appeared first on Rival IQ.