November 2016

Top 25 Inbound Marketing Influencers You Need to Follow in 2017

Want to up your Social Media game plan in 2017? Here is a list of my favorite Social Media and Inbound Marketing influencers that are a must-follow for any business.

For people who have been following my blogs lately, you will see that I am more into lists these days. Previously I wrote on 101 Social Media Management Tools, and then on Top 10 CRO Tools and Top 10 Ecommerce Platforms in 2017.

I love writing listicles of my favorite things or people because it helps me in a variety of ways:

It’s a time saver when I need to get something done.
It acts as a great swipe file for on-demand industry research
It helps me find the right Twitter handles when I want to target my Twitter advertisements
Lists of people are particularly helpful to keep updated about industry news

The digital world has drastically changed how businesses market their services and how consumers behave. Traditional marketing is still in practice, but Digital marketing has taken marketers to a whole new level. Previously, I wrote on Top 5 Digital Marketing Predictions for 2017 to keep you ahead of the game.

By 2017, the Internet is expected to overtake TV to become the world’s largest advertising medium. TV ad spending will be 35.8% of total media ad spending in the US. Meanwhile, total digital ad spending in 2017 will be 38.4% of total ad spending.

According to a ComScore, the adoption of Social Media is increasing steadily. According to Smart Insights, 80% of users own a smartphone that is directly proportional to the accessibility of social media networks and this percentage will keep on increasing in 2017 as well.

In order to stay up with the competition, you need to be tuned in to those who are, themselves, in the lead of the game. The good thing is, due to the increased connectivity of social channels, you’re now able to do, keep you up to the fore.

So, who are the people lashing innovation in the marketing world? Keeping up with who’s already on top can be hard, which is why I have listed the top marketing influencers.

Thanks to the hard work of the Prime One Global research team, who carefully analyzed the profiles of over 5000 top social media influencers on the criteria of engagement levels, followings, contextual relevancy, fan appeal, industry reach, and hashtag power to distill the top 25 marketing mavens you must follow in due 2017.

Note that while some influencers only talk about their area of expertise, others talk about Inbound Marketing as a whole. Experts were discovered using a combination of Twitter follower count, engagement across social networks, and Klout expert rankings.

Without further ado, I would like to start the list with non-other than the co-founder of Vayner Media, Gary Vaynerchuk.

Gary Vaynerchuk

An Entrepreneur, Co-founder of VaynerMedia, Investor, Author, Public Speaker, and Internet Personality

Apart from co-founding VaynerMedia, Gary has also authored several books including, Crush It! Why Now Is the Time to Cash in on Your Passion and The Thank You Economy. He is one of a kind Social Media Guru because he has embraced a number of social media channels to showcase his expertise over the Socialverse. His Twitter feed is always lively and buzzing with content streams, meaning there is always something for everyone.

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Seth Godin

American author, entrepreneur, marketer, and public speaker

Godin is an ultimate entrepreneur, because he is as focused on spreading ideas, and he is about the ideas he has. Godin was first to launch a direct sales company called Yoyodyne, with the motive to make companies rethink the process of customer approach. The company was later acquired by Yahoo, after which Godin went on to form Squidoo.com, a platform for sharing ideas. Godin has been responsible for writing some highly acclaimed books like Permission Marketing and Purple Cow. If you love listening to Podcasts, you can listen to free celebrity guest podcasts at Earwolf, which is Godin’s brainchild again.

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Matt Cutts

Head of Web Spam Team at Google

If you have been in the SEO Biz or are somewhat even closely related to it, you will know Cutts. Matt Cutts is the former head of webspam at Google, and is currently on leave from the search quality team, to spend more time with his wife and to try out new things related to search, and how it can be made better. Don’t be disheartened by the news of his leave because that doesn’t deter him from sharing awesome SEO insights in his Twitter feed, or in his personal blog. Matt is one of the key influencers from Google, who sheds light on everything related to Search Engine Optimization and the role of authentic white-hat marketing.

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Larry Kim

Founder & CTO of WordStream, a provider of PPC management software, including the AdWords Grader and the 20 Minute PPC Work Week

Larry is the top columnist for WordStream Blog, Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Land, Search Engine Watch, Moz, Inc. Magazine, Small Biz Trends, Marketing Profs, Inbound .org, mobilemonkey.com, and many other online business and technology publications. If that is not reason enough to make him a must-follow Social Media Maven in 2017, then you should also know that he has authored 4 award-winning books on Software Development like Professional Java Server Programming J2EE Edition, The Official XMLSPY Handbook, Java Server Pages Application Development, and Professional JSP 2^nd Edition. He was also named as one of the most influential PPC Experts of 2013, 2014, and 2015.

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Danny Sullivan

Co-founder of Search Engine Land, Chief Content Officer at Third Door Media

One thing to note about Danny is that he is in Google’s good-book, meaning he has a great relationship with the company and is always one of the first people to make a statement about recent algorithm changes. He started Search Engine Land after his previous website Search Engine Watch was sold to Incisive Media for $43 Million. Danny was able to grow Search Engine Land from scratch to 93000 UVs in a year, by 2007. His Twitter feed is always lively and buzzing with great information on Search.

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Kim Garst

Founder and CEO of Boom and Author of “The Quick and Easy Guide to Branding Your Business and Creating Massive Sales with Pinterest.

Kim has been recognized as the Top 200 Leading Moms in Business by Startupnations.com and also as the Top 100 Branding Strategy Experts to follow on Twitter by the entrepreneurial coaching leader, Evan Carmichael. Kim made it to the Forbes Social Media hall of fame in 2012, and her Blog on Boom! Social is ranked as the Top 10 Social Media Blogs by Social Media Examiner. She is famous for providing actionable training and hand guides to her followers through her online contributions.

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Ted Rubin

Social Marketing Strategist, Brand Evangelist, Keynote Speaker & Acting Chief Marketing Officer of Brand Innovators

Ted is the most followed Chief Marketing Officer on Twitter according to Social Media Marketing Magazine. He is famous for his enthusiastic, spirited, and irrefutably personal connection with his followers. Ted is the go-to man if you want to learn how to build a great relationship with your blogger community, employees, and clients and drive growth in epic proportions for your business. Ted was also featured on the 13^th Position on Forbes Top 50 Social Media Influencers 2013 and Top 25 Most Mentioned people by digital marketers in Leadtail August 2013.

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Chris Brogan

CEO of Owner Media Group, a sought after public speaker, and the New York Times bestselling author of nine books and working on his tenth

Chris provides the right tools and education to help make a business thrive, by giving actionable insights for things that clients want to achieve. Chris is dedicated to helping his clients get the most out of their marketing efforts and to reach their next milestone, no matter where they are in their execution pipeline. His website was featured on the Top 100 Websites for Entrepreneurs by Forbes, and if that is not reason enough to follow him, Chris has consulted with some of the biggest brands ever like Disney, General Motors, Titleist, Scotts, Coldwell Banker, Microsoft, and Google.

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Rand Fishkin

Founder and former CEO of Moz, co-founder of Inbound.com, board member at presentation software Haiku Deck

Rand ‘a.k.a’ the Wizard of Moz, is the founder of Moz, (formerly known as SEOmoz), a SaaS-based company that sells inbound marketing and marketing analytics solutions, along with sharing key industry information that is not limited to content marketing, social media, community management, brand tracking, and other inbound channels.

Rand has authored books like Beginners Guide to Seo, and the Art of SEO: Mastering Search Engine Optimization (Theory in Practice). Rand is also a $6K Investor in Techstars Seattle. Apart from speaking at events and contributing to Moz Blog, Rand is also famous for his White Board Friday Series, which is a weekly free webinar on everything Inbound Marketing.

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Glen Gilmore

Digital Marketing Strategist, Author, Speaker at Rutgers University

Glen has been featured on the Forbes Magazine as the Top Social Media Influencers of 2012 and on the Inc. Magazine as the Top 30 Experts in IoT Technology in 2015. His Twitter feed is always buzzing with great information and content related to Information Technology, Marketing, and Social Media News. He is the author of Social Media Law for Business and the co-author of Strategic Digital Marketing. You will find information related to Crisis Communications, Digital Marketing, Reputation Management, and Social Media Law across his hugely popular social media accounts.

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Dharmesh Shah

Co-founder and CTO of HubSpot, Author, Coder, Speaker and Angel Investor in over 60 Startups

Apart from co-founding HubSpot, which has been declared the second-fastest growing software company in the Inc. 500, Dharmesh co-authored “Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media and Blogs,” in 2009, which ranked the Top 50 Marketing Books on Amazon for three years. Dharmesh also writes on www.onstartups.com, a popular startup blog that has over 500,000 members in its online community.

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Pam Moore

CEO and Founder of Marketing Nutz, Best Selling Author, Entrepreneur, Trainer, Social Media Speaker and Thought Leader

Apart from founding Marketing Nutz, Pam has 15 years of experience in helping budding entrepreneurs to Fortune 500 Companies, build a successful brand and business that sustain both life and business. Pam is a contributing author for many online publications like Social Media Today, Forbes, and USA Today. Her Twitter is always lively with great insights on thought leadership, social media, and business.

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Darren Rowse

An Australian Speaker, Blogger, Podcaster, and Founder of ProBlogger and DigitalPhotographySchool and co-Founder of B5Media

Darren’s main focus is on Blogging, but his social shares highlight a deep connection between social media and content marketing, either in the form of his own content or through content that he finds relevant to his topics of interest. In 2009, ProBlogger was named the second best-favorited blogs by Technorati. Rowse also earned the title of Forbes Web Celebrity in 2007. He also founded TwiTip, which is a blog dedicated to Twitter tips. You will find great insights on Blogging, Photography, and Social Media in his blogs, and Social Media Accounts.

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Neil Patel

Co-founder of Crazy Egg, KISSmetrics, QuickSprout, and Hello Bar

Neil was recognized as the Top 100 Entrepreneurs in the world under the age of 30, by former President Barrack Obama and the Top 100 Entrepreneurs under the age of 35 by United Nations. Wall Street calls him the most influential man on the web, and Forbes calls him the Top 10 Online Marketers in the world. If this is not reason enough to follow him, I do not know what is. Neil has consulted with companies like Amazon, NBC, HP, Viacom, and General Motors. Following him will give you access to a dearth of top-notch digital marketing, SEO and analytics information.

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Jay Baer

New York Times best-selling author, keynote speaker, digital media entrepreneur, and the president of social media marketing firm Convince

Apart from providing social media strategy to the leading brands through his blog Convince & Convert, which has been voted among one of the top 5 social media blogs worldwide, he is also a founder of Twitter 20 series of live interviews of the platform itself. Baer has been showcasing his expertise in Internet Marketing since 1994 and has helped more than 700 evolving companies including, John McCain, Nike, and much more. He has also co-founded azfamily.com, which is one of the largest local websites and also, vice president of the world’s first web hosting company.

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Susanna Gebauer

Founder and CEO of ExpolreB2B, Writer, Marketer at The Social Marketer

Susanna is one of the Social media influencers, whose Twitter feed is dedicated to business ideas and marketing strategies, which leads the budding brands to exponential growth. She holds a Ph.D. degree in Math and then, shifted to management consultant for utility and energy corporations. Later, In 2010, she founded ExploreB2B with her brother Jonathan to provide business strategies to the growing companies, but it resulted in bankruptcy at the end of 2014. But, her undying passion for Digital Marketing led her to found The Social MS in 2014 dedicated towards content and social media marketing. And, in less than a year, The Social MS got featured in the Top 8 most influential marketing by Onalytica.

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Hiten Shah

Co-founder of Crazy Egg, KISSmetrics, and Quicksprout

Hiten Shah has co-founded 3 SaaS companies CrazyEgg, KISSMetrics, and QuickSprout since 2005. He is also an investor and advisor to help companies to expand their businesses. Hiten has worked with many reputed brands like AppSumo, Buffer, Boostable, Brighten, and much more. Undoubtedly, his Twitter feeds are lively engaging that making him to our list of top 25 Inbound Influencer t following Twitter.

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Bryan Kramer

CEO and Social Business Strategist of PureMatter

Bryan’s leading agency PureMatter has been featured in Silicon Valley Business Journal for his company’s exponential growth. Bryan’s expertise in social media led him ranked 43^rd most talked marketer by seniors in the industry and has also made it to rank 26 by Kred as Global Top CEO Influencer on Social Media. No doubt, Bryan holds authority in the industry and provides you with some thoughtful insights into the industry.

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Brian Clark

CEO of Rainmaker Digital, Founder of CopyBlogger, Host of Unemployable, and Evangelist for Rainmaker

Brian Clark has been ranked in the 3^rd position of the Top 100 Most Influential Online Marketers and his thriving venture; CopyBlogger has been featured in Power150 list of Advertising Age. According to The Guardian, CopyBlogger is one of the most robust blogs in the world, which mainly focuses on providing online marketing strategies to developing businesses. Apart from that, he is also the CEO of Rainmaker Digital solely dedicated to providing tools and training for content marketers and digital entrepreneurs. Most of the Entrepreneurs follow Brian on Twitter for some handful of Industry tactics to empower themselves to sustain their online business.

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Avinash Kaushik

Digital Marketing Evangelist for Google and the co-Founder of Market Motive Inc

Avinash is one of those influencers, who has established authority in the field through his blog Occam’s Razor and his best-selling books, Web Analytics: An Hour a Day and Web Analytics 2.0.

With his veracious strategies, many brands like P&G, Dell, Porsche, Class Bank, and IBM have leveraged the power of the online platforms for their exponential expansion. Apart from Digital World, Avinash has lectured at many reputed universities at the University of California, Stanford University, University of Virginia, and many more universities. Avinash has always been awarded Statistical Advocate of the Year from American Statistical Association, Most Influential Industry Contributor from the Digital Analytics Association, and Rising Start Award from Direct Marketing Educational Foundation.

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Peter Shankman

An Entrepreneur, Author, and Founder of HARO

Peter Shankman is recognized as a “Global Connector” for connecting people by implementing new tricks in the trade. He is an all-in-one personality, who has all the solutions for frenetic social media, customer service, and PR. His successful endeavor HARO ( Help a Reporter Out) is an online platform for reporters and journalists to receive feedback from the audience. HARO offers a powerful journalist database of sources for the latest stories to be covered around the world. Back in June 2010, HARO was acquired by Vocus Inc.

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Marsha Collier

An Author, the Educator, specialized in Technology, Radio Personality

With over 1 million copies of books printed in 2007, Marsha is the top-selling eBay author with her bestselling books on eBay for Dummies and Social Media Commerce for Dummies. Apart from that, Starting An eBay Business For Dummies has been featured on the bestseller list of BusinessWeek Magazine. Marsha is also one of the top columnists on American Express Open and Entrepreneur.com and inspires hundreds of businesses on how to use online platforms for eCommerce and marketing. Her website CooleBayTools offers vital tools to augment Online Customer Service, eBay Sales, and eCommerce business. Collier keeps updating her followers with interesting reads and customer reviews.

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Neal Schaffer

Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Maximize Social Business

Featured in Forbes Top 35 Social Media Power Influencer, Neal is the founder of Maximize Social Business, a platform that provides business marketing resources to Social Media Professionals to help them grow their business. Apart from his marketing blog listed in AdAge as a top 100 global marketing blog, he is also the author of the Top 3 best-selling books on Amazon. Schaffer has offered on Social Media at more than 150 events globally and taught some insights of Social Media strategies at Rutgers University.

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Mark Schaefer

An Author, Podcaster, Speaker, and Business Consultant at Business grow

Mark is one of the top Marketing Influencers, whose blog Business Grow is one of the Top 5 robust marketing blogs in the world. His books The Tao of Twitter, The Content Code (featured in INC. Magazine), and Return of Influence are the top-selling books on Amazon. He gives lectures on marketing secrets at Rutgers University. Mark has worked with many reputed brands like Dell, US Air Force, Adidas, etc. Mark is also a persuasive speaker at many conferences including Marketing Summit Tokyo and Institute for International and European Affairs.

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Michael A. Stelzer

Founder of Social Media Examiner, Author and Serial Entrepreneur

And our list has come to an end with Michael Stelzer. Michael has founded Social Media Examiner, where he showcases social media marketing tactics to increase sales and boost Branding using Social platforms. He has written over 100 whitepapers for Globally reputed companies including Microsoft, Motorola, HP, SAP. Michael has authored books like Launch: How to Quickly Propel Your Business Beyond the Competition and Writing White Papers: How to Capture Readers and keep them Engaged. Apart from writing whitepapers, Stelzer is also a host of the Social Media Marketing Podcast and a weekly talk show Morning Social Media Marketing.

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Conclusion:

I wanted to make a top 100 or top 50 list, but I decided to make something more concise and narrow. Following these 25 people will give you access to the powerful insights and practices that will give you an edge over your competitors. Once you do follow them, don’t be just overwhelmed by the notifications in your news feed. Take some timeout in regular intervals to keep a tab of what these pros are suggesting you should follow.

Don’t be afraid to comment back on each of these profiles.. and surely use @mentions to ask them questions and sort out the confusion. Try to establish a relationship with these influencers, without getting too clingy.

So, what do you think about the list that I have made? Do you already follow any of the above Inbound Marketers? Would you like to read more Inbound Marketing on our blog? What kinds of topics are you interested in? Let us know in the comments below.

Let’s try for a top 50 next time! Comment down below with who you would add.

Have a good day!

16 NovSEO

Google Featured Snippet FAQs And How to Get Featured

The first few featured snippets were seen in the fall of 2014, ever since then, we have only seen a handful of websites trying to take full advantage of these handy little boxes, that have statistically proven to increase CTR by 20% or more, always.

What Are Google Featured Snippets?

When a user types a question into Google Search, Google might decide to show a special featured search result snippet at the top of the SERPs. This box will include a summary of the answer; that will be extracted from a web page, along with a link to the web page, page title, and URL. This is how it looks.

Who Is This Important For?

If your pages are already ranking on the first page of Google for certain Question type searches, then you can try to take advantage of featured snippets by making necessary changes to the ranking pages.

Pages that do not rank on the first page of Google do not get any benefits from Featured Snippet Optimization. So, ideally, it is only applicable if you have certain relevant question phrases that your website is already ranking for.

How Does Featured Snippet Help?

For one, it helps you stand out of all the other Search Engine Results. With so many different types of results like, Ads, Local Packs, Maps, Images, Schema, Reviews, etc., it is essential for webmasters to take advantage of any tool that gives them an edge over their competition. Featured Snippets are statistically proven to increase CTR by 20% or more, and they also add reputation.

Where Does the Answer Come from In the Featured Snippet?

Till date, I have seen three different types of Featured Snippet Answers.

Lists

Paragraphs

Tables

These are typically extracted from the results on page 1 that Google thinks to be worthy. There is no way around it. You cannot ask Google to put your website in the featured snippet, but you can optimize it to increase your chances of getting featured.

As you may have noticed, there is a small Feedback link that appears under the Featured Snippet Box. Users can use this feedback link to give their opinion to Google about the feature box. Google is constantly trying to improve ways to detect the most useful answers in the snippets, so they sure are open to feedback about what their algorithm is displaying at the moment.

Another question that I have received quite sometimes is,

What If I Don’t Want to Be Featured in Google Snippet?

Google does give the ability to webmasters to opt-out of the featured snippet box. This can be done by simply adding the tag: to your page. If you want none of your pages to be featured in the snippet, then you can add the code in the header.php of your website.

How Can I Opt into Featured Snippets?

The simple answer is, you can’t. No matter what you do, and how much you optimize, no one can assure you a guaranteed 100% featured image box listing on Google. However, there are certain ways that you can use to increase your chances of cracking the Google snippet code. Before I dive into the steps, take a look at some of the examples of featured snippets:

As you can see above, Google pulls the content from the site, showcasing the answer in the SERPs.

This instantly builds high authority for the website, to the users.

Let’s jump onto another example:

If you see in the above example,

Google randomly pulls this particular method from the list, but takes the content, also pulls one image.

Isn’t it Cool?

Now, here is the catch. If you find this answer helpful, isn’t it obvious that you would love to know the other methods as well?

So, moving onto …

How Can You Optimize Your Content for Featured Snippet Box?

Here are the four simple steps that you can implement to achieve Google’s Most Wanted Box:

Find out a simple question related to your niche. [If you are clueless about the questions, I’ll suggest doing a quick Quora search, which has the most basic questions related to your market area.]
Deliver a clear and simple answer to the question, not more than 50 – 60 words. [ Don’t go for a long detailed answer, just write the exact answer without beating around the bush. You can follow that by a long answer, or with other types of content on the page.] The idea is to have the question in one of the Heading Tags (H1, H2, H3, H4) on your page, followed by an answer in
tag
, that should not exceed 5o – 60 words.
Provide value to the readers. [Don’t just write bland answer, offer value through your writing what visitors actually want to read.]
Make your page Google-friendly. [Optimize your page for search engine robots, so that they can easily crawl through your content.]

Ending Notes

The key rule to land a Featured Snippet is to provide solutions to the most basic questions, what your potential customer might ask.

Getting ranked for snippet makes you look like an expert in that particular niche. It builds instant credibility for your brand and website.

I am sure I answered all possible questions that you may have had related to Google Featured Snippets, still, if you want help, you can reach out to me on Facebook, or Shoot a comment in the comments section below.

12 NovResearch

20 Fastest Growing Startups In Sri Lanka you need to know about

Sri Lanka is no Silicon Valley, but in the recent years, we happen to see a lot of startups in the environment. There are even events that help young generations to focus on innovative startups to develop this ecosystem. According to SLASSCOM’s survey report, there are 225 entrepreneurs in with 75% of them are just between the age of 25-35. It is also noticeable that such startups have influenced the economy pattern of the nation in a positive way as well. Not to mention, the revenue of such entrepreneurs is above LKR150M.

With 18 investors in the country, many entrepreneurs are coming up with their innovative ideas that lead them to the business of that innovations as well. It is also to be told that according to the Budget proposal by the Sri Lankan government for the year 2017, it is clearly shown that the government wants more startups around the country, especially in North and East. And that is partly why they have decided to get 200% Capital Allowances for Northern Province Investors, and 100% Capital Allowance for Eastern Province Investors.

It is not only about the role these startups play in the economy but also about the progress the following startups have seen in their milestones and achievements. Although there are successful startups, I think startups that have recently set their foot into it need some recognition among the locals.

I have chosen 20 of the startups in Sri Lanka among the 100s of the startups that are fast growing and that need to be encouraged in the market to innovate and achieve more.

1. PickMe

PickMe is the Sri Lankan version of Uber. Being intrigued by the technology behind Uber, Jiffry Zulfer, the founder of PickMe, worked on to know more about GPS and GIS system. Along with the knowledge of the technology and good business mind, Jiffry and two other worked together in bringing the similar concept for the locals. But the process of bringing the product to live was hard. Jiffry and the team had to work on the concept, convincing the investors and being something new, something unique on what Uber didn’t have then. Moreover, the team wanted to revolutionze the tuk tuk system in Sri Lanka. The features of PickMe was what that interested the people here, and The assistance of Google Maps and GPS system made things easier to calculate the fare as well. Since Uber is pretty late in Sri Lanka, it is currently a “PickMe Vs Uber” that is taking over the taxi industry in Sri Lanka.

2. Takas.lk

Takas.lk is a product of a young man who dared to oppose his family to achieve what he wants. Being a psychology student in the US, Lahiru Pathmal quit his studies and came back home to start this online portal, Takas with others Dilendra Wimalasekara and Murtaza Moosajee. Since he wouldn’t get a job from any of the corporate companies on the island, he decided to get his dream company born. Takas is a platform that will get electronics orders in their portal to be delivered to the doorstep. Since there are warranties for the goods bought and the sources of goods are from the reputed stores which the customers find quite supportive.

3. 24/7 Techies.com

The man behind the tech support startup is Dilendra Wimalasekere who decided to provide an online portal to those in needs with technical supports in handling the latest technology. Dilendra stepped into this technology sector back in 1996 through his first company Eureka Technology Partners. Following that, he began 24/7 Techies as an online tech support which is also a part of Eureka Technologies. Right now, the company is an “accredited partner of Cisco and VMware.”

4. Liveroom

Liveroom is an Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality platform development for those who wants their imagination turned into reality. Sameera Nilupul and Chameera Wijebandara were at the university when they developed this product as their final project. Finishing their Graduation they established it into a business through the money they have collected from their family and friends. The Liveroom is basically to make sure that you never buy a bad product!

5. Senzmate.com

Johnirajh Antoncrisis and Jeyjenthan Tharmakulasingam are two outputs of the University of Moratuwa, who are actually from Jaffna. They have grown up seeing continuous climatic change especially drought which made them think of using their passion in electronics to assist the farmers during drought. Their first product was an automated sprinkler system called Digital Irrigation Automation (DIA) which would detect the environment and water the plants according to the environment. Following their innovation, they decided to build more similar products which enterprises and business would use. That was the birth of this startup, Senzmate– an IoT-based startup in Sri Lanka.

6. Erbenlab

Unlike the other famous startups of Silicon Valley which began with garages, the story of Erbenlab began from Sachira Fernando’s bedroom. Sachira, who started coding since the age of 10, has set up a forum site, ElaKiri.com, with his friends and started it as an e-mag. And in 2009, it was ranked as the 11th site that got more traffic. At that time, there are was no Facebook event, but the site has been covering and running events.

The fun forum site gradually brought up this idea, Cloudsense ERP. Sachira decided to give up on WordPress and started on cloud computing which also focused on Sri Lankan IoT Market. This project is based on the artificial intelligent cloud-based application system development which will be a resource management and planning system for the SMEs. It is notable that this product represented Sri Lanka for the 4Y4N 2016 at Barcelona, and was recognized by AWWARDS.

And then there is NicNac, one of their online product. Running errands in cities can be sometimes annoying and frustrating. NicNac allows you to order anything ranging from laundry to medical, most importantly the license recovery. NicNac is going to purchase (get them) for you with some delivery cost. Everything you have ordered will be at your doorstep, simple as that.

7. BusSeat.lk

BusSeat is a product of Prasanth.The product’s prototype was first launched at Yarl Geek Challenge season 3. Their product was later invested by Lankan Angel Investors and turned into a startup. It is the potential and the dedication of the team that got recognized by the right people through the right platform to get it into the niche. What busSeat.lk does is that they give the customers and bus owners a common online platform to sell and buy bus tickets. The customer could buy tickets online through the online payment gateway or as direct cash and in return to confirm the booking, a text message with the details of the seats booked by the user will be sent. They have also developed a mobile app for the bus owners to get easy access to the seats booked online to make the manual booking easier.

8. Trackme

Trackme is another local startup that is built to track everything connected online as the user wants. The devices that are integrated with their systems can be connected and tracked through the available GPS system. Interestingly, their services are extended broadly according to the users’ need. The app is available for mobile and PC as well with the Trackme Features like “Real time location details” and fall detection. The idea is to make sure that loved ones are safe!

9. Emojot.

Emojis have taken over everywhere. Wouldn’t it be better to collect user’s feedback through emoji, rather than typing paragraphs of comments? In 2014, Emojot was founded by Shahani Markus, Manjula Dissanayake, Andun S. L. Gunewardena and Sachintha Rajith which will allow the users to express their feeling about an event. This is a duplex system that gives a real-time update to the contexts.

Emojot successfully closes Series of Seed funding round of $ 1 million from Asian and US investors. Emojot team also participated in the RISE conference that took place in Hong Kong July 31 – August 1. They got to participate in that conference because their product is the only platform for now that can ‘analyze streaming of crowd perception to meaningfully respond to targeted client segments in real-time.’

10. OMAK Technologies

How long are we to have the same routine whenever we go to a hotel or restaurant to eat? Ehantha Sirisena wanted to bring a change in the experience the customer and owner of restaurants. The result was OMAK Technologies. This startup focuses on giving the best to the diner and the owner of the restaurant. The main service is done through getting the total hotel management that is from ordering a food to getting the bill, digitized. The company provides its services through the packages like OMAK POS 360, which helps the hotels in boosting their sales and revenue and building an effective and efficient customer relationship. And then there is Reztguru that handles the reservation and online ordering. OMAK technologies is a solution for those hotel and restuarant owners who want to provide a digitized services.

11. LayUp

It is time to revolutionize the way of learning. LayUp is the new version of e-learning that implies the “Engaged Education Methodology” as an agile 3-step learning methodology. The cloud computing system allows the ones with the access to study from anywhere and collaborate anytime. Layup being the brainchild by Sheran Corera, has won the best startup award of Seedstar Colombo, 2016. And the startup will be competing for the Seedstars Summit in Switzerland in March 2017 for $1 million in equity investment.

12. HypeHash

Not everyone knows about the trending topic on social media. Trends are usually decided through the hashtags. Hyperhash is the ‘world’s first trending hashtag based merchandise platform’ where users can find the sales related trends and this gets the sellers and buyers get collaborated. The platform has 1,100 designers and sellers from the world while the number of fans collaborating through this platform is almost 2,130. Being a Seed-star Colombo winner, the startup is the product of Ravihans Wetakepotha. The interesting startup has also been recognized through AngelHack and the team behind the startup is about to fly to the Silicon Valley’s investor pitch!

13. Katha, now known as ShortKast

Mahen Ratnayake and Mudith Uswatta are the men behind this interesting app called Katha. It is a social media app that allows its users to share or collaborate with their followers through voice casts instead of texting,and it is actually a different way of podcasting.

The journey of Katha began on 2013 by the above said youngsters for “HSBC Youth Entrepreneurship Awards.” It is during this award selection, Mahen and Mudith became friends and started working on this app for Colombo Hackathon. They became one of the winners and the judges who were from Lankan Angel networks got them into Venture Engines as well. Handshaking with Lankan angel networks, they started planning and building the app with the guidance of the investors. With the beta testing of the app in 2015, a few months later Katha came official to the wide world. And recently they have modified Katha and renamed it as ShortKast with the fully different app. An app built with the lessons learned from Katha. And its beta version is only available on Martket for now.

14. Quickee

There is nothing annoying like going into a supermarket during the rush hours, or when it is really late. As a solution to such problem comes in Quickee.lk. Ashan Whittall and Mariam Moosa are the minds behind Quickee.lk that was launched back in 2013 (and got revamped recently.) The idea of Quickee is to deliver goods you need at your doorstep. They provide their services until 3 in the morning so that you don’t have to worry about your safety in getting into a supermarket to get goods. All you have to do is buzz them and hand them the list of things you need and they’ll get everything you need to your door.

15. Trekurious – This Startup Permanently Closed.

Replacing a tour guide is not an easy task, says Rukmankan Sivaloganathan and Dilendra Wimalasekere out of their experience in 2012. The result of his tour experience was Trekurious.com. Through Trekurious a tourist in Sri Lanka could find better places to dine at and to get better experiences through activities that can be done in Sri Lanka. Interestingly, you can purchase locally made gift items and book the needed experiences at Sri Lanka. You can make your vacation experiences more interesting and valuable through Trekurious that has also established its branch in Bombay.

16. Creately ( Startup now emerged as Corporate Company )

Cinergrix is a Sri Lankan company registered in Australia which is a brainchild of Chandika Jayasundra. In 2008, Cinergrix launched their software, Creately which is a diagramming tool. The concept of Creately is to give a web-based diagramming tool for those in needs of making diagrams like the flow chart. Back then it was built by a bunch coders from Borella who were into hacking. Chandika has been named in Echelon Magazine’s 40 under 40, a list of some of 2014’s biggest “risk takers and rule breakers”. Not to mention that his partner in crime, Hiraash was also very fond into technology. It is both their effort and hard-work that brought a team behind which Creately was built by. Within a year it came to a hit and is being used by the very well known companies like PayPal, Ebay, Amazon, IBM, Nat Geo, Google, Adobe, and even NASA.

17. PayHere

With the emergence of several eCommerce platforms, there is a need for Sri Lankans to have a proper online transaction method. With no PayPal available in SriLanka, Dhanika who is the founder of Bhasha has brought Payhere as a solution to the above said problem. Bhasha wants to localize all software for Sri Lankans. And Payhere is going to act in the way how PayPal function to the world. Dhanika Perera calls it a “comprehensive solution for online payment barriers in Sri Lanka, offering Online Payment Accepting facilities to Sri Lankan Online Merchants in a convenient & affordable way, with a mission to Empower Sri Lankan eCommerce Industry.” It basically provides a platform for online payment facilities to the ones in Sri Lanka. In Spite of the charge for every transaction, you are free of charge to set up an account on Payhere, unlike the local banks. For those who worry that there is no PayPal in Sri Lanka, here is your answer.

18. ShoutOut

Wanted to stay connected to the customers, and want their real time feedback? ShoutOut is one of the solutions that is available to the local merchants to collaborate with their customers and feel more engaged than the usual collaboration. It is a data-driven collaborating platform that connects you to the customer through real-time connections and automated messages to the clients. The product is the dream of Tharindu Dassanayake who badly wanted to give the best of the best services to the customers.

19. Kadira.io

Lots of web app developing companies develop web apps through Meteor Real Time web framework. But when it comes to fixing such web application, most of the web app developers struggle. Kadira.io, the brainchild of Arunoda Susiripala is a solution to such technical issues with Meteor development. It is a Meteor Error tracking system that is transparent to the meteor based app developers that show what exactly is happening with the framework.

20. Law| Envoy

Law | Envoy is a product of Damith Amarakoon and Kalinga Gunawardana. It is a cloud-based intelligence program that helps lawyers and other legal officers with research and various other professional practices. This doesn’t stop with getting all lawyers in a platform, but also works on helping the organizations with legal decision making through massive of information.

Conclusion.

All the above said 20 startups are still budding ones, but fast budding ones. It is notable that such startups are innovation and most of them are IT based startups. With the gradually increasing internet penetration rate, it is interesting to see these companies already onto using www as a platform to monetize their innovations. I personally feel that such immense of interest shown into innovations and startups should be appreciable for the broad view of the founders of their market.

There are several other local startups I might have happened to miss while writing. If you find something missing, why not let us know them through the comment box below so that our reader know more of them.

11 NovSocial Media

Social Media Management For The Future – 2017 and on!

Social Media Management can be a pain in the all wrong places if you do not execute it in an organized manner.

If you are a Social Media Manager, you would know that it takes a considerable amount of time to do the various, small-small activities. Needless to say, that it is super easy to find yourself distracted and waste a lot of time in the process, all thanks to BuzzFeed, Upworthy, and Unilad.

If you are like me, then you spend part or almost all your day hopping from Facebook to Twitter to LinkedIn and on and on, checking analytics, strategizing and performing one out of your million tasks.

Back in 2014, Snap Chat was closing three years, and still failing to explain to marketers that it was not a sexting application.

News stories had predictions about Pinterest beating Facebook and Twitter in the race to paid advertisements.

Why Pinterest Ads Will Beat Facebook Ads – Mizz Information

How Pinterest can win advertisers and maybe beat Twitter – Digiday

Live Video Play, Face Swapping, and Auto-play, etc. were all on the horizon, lurking to unleash a different mix into the Social Media we once knew, and truly so. Social Media has evolved at a much faster rate in the last 2 years, than in the last 10 years before that.

As you can see from the image above,

With evolution, comes adaptability and us, Social Media Managers need to keep update with all the new skills this job keeps demanding. So, I want to talk about my key predictions for Social Media Management for the future and the most important skills the future SMM needs to have,

The 9 Key Characteristics of Future Social Media Hero’s

What are the ideal ingredients of a Social Media Manager in 2017? If we were making a list for 2014, it would still be a fairly short list. But, Social Media has evolved frantically with the rise of new technology and wider audience, certain top skills can be seen common in the most successful marketers, and they are:

Community Administration:
If you compare all the top brands on Social Media, you will notice that they all have one thing in common – it’s their community. A good Social Media Manager must be able to manage a community, administer it, create connections and also grow the community by connecting the brand to its audience.

Customer Service:
If you haven’t realized how important Social Media is for your customer service, then you are surely doing something wrong. According to research, more than 72% customers who complain to a brand on Twitter, expect a response in the next hour. Not to forget the Facebook Business Pages, which have constantly seen an up in Customer Interaction, thanks to the privacy quotient.

Content Curation:
The end all and be all of Social Media. Content curation is the savior, especially for businesses that do not have the time and resources to create original content for their social media. It is an important skill to have for an SMM as you need to know what to share and what not to share, and when to share what you share.

Relationship Building:
Relationship building is different from Community Management for reasons, because here you need to not only connect with your audience but also with your key influencers. This is a crucial skill, but unfortunately so, this is the most lacking skill for most managers. Proper Relationship building can give you access to, more credibility, larger audience; user generated content, social influence and of course, new leads and customers.

Videography:
If you are thinking 2016 has been a massive year for Video, then just wait for 2017. 70% companies state that video is the most important part of their marketing strategy, and 2 out of 3 companies state that video will continue to dominate their marketing spend in the coming years. You need more reason to get this skill into you DNA? Facebook Live Videos are going to kill it in 2017, go ahead get the camera.

Creative DNA:
22% of customers would unfollow a brand on Social Media if the content were too repetitive and boring. Thanks to lt and BuzzSumo for getting this data together. Social Media Managing needs to be top of the line in the coming years. With the rise of Social Platforms like WhatsApp and Hike, Google Allo and Facebook Messenger, people are becoming wary of the same type of content constantly flooding their news feed from different brands. The scene will soon get saturated to the point where people will stop reacting to the same things over and over again. We need to get more original.

Organization Skills:
I am not simply talking about having a routine or a publishing schedule. With more features being unleashed in Social Networks than ever, managers need to stay ahead of the curve to make the most of the new features. This calls in for a little more than just having a content calendar. Better organization skills can entail having time every day to research and curate ideas for content that is out of the box.

Selling Skills:
Gone are the days when Social Platforms merely used to be a mode of contact between brands and customers. Selling on Social platforms goes way beyond the conventional means of traditional selling. For one, you cannot be a pushy salesman on Facebook, but again you do not want to miss out on a likely customer by being too slow. To be better able to sell in the social realm, you need to quickly find customer pain points and demonstrate how your product or service can give them relief.

Tech Savvy:
Yes! You read that right. The key here is to be tech savvy to the point that you can spot key market shifts and adapt to changes quickly. With new Social platforms coming up, as a Social Media Manager, you do not need to become a pro in all platforms. But, if your audience is adopting a new network, so should you be able to learn the ins and outs of a social network and develop a Social Media Plan accordingly.
Search Engine Optimization:
As Social and SEO get interconnected, SEO is going to be in the top 5 skills for Social Media Managers by next year. With more and more Social content finding its way into the search engine results, Social Media Managers should take the hint and learn basic things like Keyword Research and Link Building.

And lastly, as a Social Media Manager you should allocate time every day to:

Review the day’s content
Provide social media insights for major campaigns
Read industry news
Indulge in Live Q&A with CEO on Facebook
Resolve customer queries
Curate content for staff to share throughout the day
Schedule the content for the coming days
Go home and pass out browsing funny memes on Facebook.

Now, since you know what sets the stage for the Social Media Warriors of tomorrow, let’s take a deeper look at some of the interesting changes in Social Media, that are set to share the Social Verse. I am going to talk about 5 important things that have happened or are soon to happen; that should be on the priority list of Social Media Managers in 2017.

Virtual Reality to Soon Set Foot into Social Media –
Well VR is already in action on Facebook and YouTube with the 360^ophotos and videos, but we are sure to see even deeper integrations in future. Facebook is already integrating Oculus Technology in its 360-degree photos and videos, which allow users to look at a scene from different angles by looking right, up, left and down, allowing for a more captivating experience. It would be the perfect time to start learning how to use 360-degree cameras, as they are going to be huge for businesses. Don’t go about telling me you ain’t a photographer. I ain’t But I love what I do, and I am willing to adapt as times change, as my audience is more receptive to this new form of content in their news feeds.

Takeaway: Social Managers who are keen to stay on top of the line, should learn the ins and out of VR technology and how it can be used better to engage the audience in the coming days. Think about 360-degree event coverage, sneak peek inside company tours to adventure destinations and more…
Social Shopping To Take Off Soon –
In the past two years, all major social platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram have released in-line buttons. It is not too long before when YouTube may launch a 360-degree virtual shop for sellers wanting to market their products with a personal touch. The options that we presently have on these platforms are enough for customers to make purchases, without leaving the comfort of their news feeds. What is next? Facebook has recently launched a Shop section for Business Pages. Even though integrating storefronts is possible with third-party applications in the Business Pages already, but this is the Social Giants’ first move to shifting e-commerce right into the social space.

Takeaway: If you have not integrated Shop into your business page, then you should do it at the earliest. Try to measure the insights from any movement in your business page to make data-backed decisions to sell products. Not all products are born equal, so you might as well find out which products your community is more interested in. While, you have been promoting the wrong products all this while.
Live Streaming To Get Even More Mainstream –
We already saw an uprise in the consumption of live streaming media, when Twitter-owned Periscope reported 10 million active users at the start of 2015. Then came Hubspot, one of the best moves from Facebook till date. I am sure that you are aware, but for those who don’t know or have magically skipped all the live videos in the news feed since March, this year – Facebook Live allows you to stream real-time videos from your mobile or desktop, without using any third-party application. This has technically changed how the massive 2 Billion user base of Facebook interacts with each other. And that’s not the end of it; Facebook has also introduced tons of Hubspot that give you eye-to-eye insights about the performance of your live videos.
Takeaway: Integrating Live Streaming goes way beyond the means of standard Social Media Management Suits like Hootsuite, Sprout Social, and Buffer. At least, for now. If you aren’t already taking advantage of live streaming yet, then the time is now. Take a look at this post on Hubspot for Livestreaming ideas.
Priority Customer Service in Social Media –
Social Media and Customer service have always been key players. Why would people like to wait on the phone, when they can get their query resolved on Facebook or Twitter? According to our study of 500 Sri Lankan retailers, we noted that only 60% of them were using Social Media to answer Customer Queries. And out of that, only 17% were using Twitter and the rest 83% were doing on Facebook. The average time for customer response varied from 24 Hours to a Week, which surely has a lot of room for improvement.
Most businesses do not realize the need to have a dedicated Customer Support in Social Media Channels due to the added costs. Even though customer service falls under the skill of a Social Media Manager, it should be taken more as a supervisor.
Interesting Read: 75 Customer Quotes Facts, Stats, and Quotes
Takeaway: Customer Support is a time taking process, needless to say, it is best served ‘right-from-the-oven.’ If your business is yes to extend full customer support in Social Media, it would be a right time now to start and slowly get a dedicated staff to manage incoming queries at the earliest.

Heard of Community by YouTube Yet? –
Well, if you haven’t already heard about YouTube’s latest endeavor to make the channel a bit more social, then you sure are not keeping up with your industry news. Nonetheless, it is not too late to jump into the YouTube bandwagon if you have been skeptical of YouTube as a one-sided media platform. Recently, YouTube announced a new tab next to Channels, that will allow content producers to indulge in lightweight conversations with their audience. This is what the official announcement from YouTube read.
“do things like text, live videos, images, animated GIFs and more, giving [them] easier, lightweight ways to engage with [their] fans more often in between uploads, in real-time.”
..
So it is self-explanatory right. A community for YouTube is going to be a huge success in the coming days. Not only will it allow content producers to interact with fans more often between uploads and video production, but it will also allow them to get feedback about what type of content their fans would like to see from them in the future.
Takeaway: Having a video streaming channel was a must in 2015, 16, but this move from YouTube is surely going to huge and result in an increase in the -ever-so-exponential- the amount of time people spend on the channel. Hop into the first ever Video Social Network and start building your own YouTube community from now! The time is bright my friend.

There is an interesting book I read on YouTube for Business. Read pages 192 – 225 or 7.

And now, since I have given you a fair insight into what is going to change in the coming days, let’s take a look at some of my Social Media Management Hacks, that are sure to increase your productivity as well…

Social Media Management Hacks for Productivity

I am going to list all the things that I use myself. Some may be tools, some maybe nifty little tricks. And they are in no particular order of importance or anything. Here you go:

Increase Tweet Reach with This Nifty Little Trick:

Use a period before tagging anyone with the @symbol at the beginning of a tweet to increase the tweet reach to your followers as well. Without the period, if you tag someone at the beginning of a tweet, your tweet will only be visible to them and their followers. A small but great hack if you want to include more people in your tweet battles.

Social Buzz Club to get more shares:

I see a lot of startups and new businesses struggling to get shares on their content in Social Media, no matter how much time they spend in research and development of content. Apart from leveraging employees, family, friends and supporters to share your content, you can also make use of Social Buzz Club. In this network, you can share your posts and others will share it in their networks. When you share, other content you get points, and these points can be redeemed into posting your content on this platform. It’s a great tool to build a community of people who constantly engage with your content.

Use Crystal Knows to Craft Better Introductory Emails:

Now, this trick is for Gmail. You can use com to find out how to break the ice with your prospective client or lead. What this tool does is, it analyzes public content in your name, to help you better communicate with them. The tool tells you about the personality, style, and communication and gives even deeper insights like – “this person tends to trust people easily.” Or things like “don’t write too much” .. “use emoticons wisely..”

Use IFTTT to Automate Content Sharing:

I use IFTTT to Automate my content sharing across various web platforms like WordPress, Blogger, Weebly, Tumblr and also have the content shared on Facebook and LinkedIn, right when I click the publish button. I have lots of other IFTTT Recipes, and I find it a great tool, which saves me hours of work, that I would need to individually cut and paste links and titles, and images into various platforms individually.

Use The Reply Button To Create Twitter Threads:

I don’t see many people using it, but it’s a fantastic way to share longer content in the form of tweets. The idea is to have the contents ready according to Twitter’s character count, and post your primary tweet, followed by the rest as replies to your own You can create a complex blend of content, by mixing videos, pictures, links, and text into your tweet threads, making them stand out in other people’s feed.

Use Tweetfull To Drive Twitter Engagement and Traffic:

As Tweets only tend to last for 24 minutes, you at least need 12 tweets to cover the entire day. What I do is, I use Tweetfull to auto re-tweet popular content based on keywords and hashtags that you select, which keeps your Twitter account lively all throughout the day. Even if the automation is good, I would suggest keeping the tweets on a lighter note, since you do not want to look like a spam haven.

Rapportive Helps Me Connect with People Who Mail Me:

Rapportive is also a web app for Gmail, like Crystalknows. What Rapportive does is it shows me all the places I can connect with a person, who has emailed For example, if a person emails me, I can directly send them a Connection Request on LinkedIn or follow them on Twitter, without leaving my email. This is another great tool for Influencer outreach.

Optimize Your Opengraph Tags:

I learned this from the master – Neil Patel. When Neil started paying more attention to Open graphs, his traffic from Facebook increased by 174%. Don’t get baffled by the term, Integrating Opengraph Tags into your website is a matter of 10 seconds, which I am sure you can spare. The latest version of WordPress SEO by Yoast comes with Opengraph Tags integration as well.

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Ending Notes:

On a parting note, I would like to remind you about all the things I mentioned in this blog.

Social Media Managers should have skills like Community Management, Content Curation, Customer Service, Creativity, Analytical Decision Making ability, Creative DNA, Social Selling, Relationship Building, Search Engine Optimization, and Organization.

Top things to integrate into your Social Media Action Plan in 2017, if not yet are, Understanding and leveraging Facebook Live, Getting used to VR technology, Selling Your products and services through social storefronts, using Social Media to master Customer Service, and lastly, join the first ever Video Social Platform – Community by YouTube!

All in all, Social Media Management can be a really time-consuming task, and it can be tough to accomplish if you are not doing it as a dedicated job. Irrespective of whether you do Social Media full-time or part-time, you should always take one full day out for Content Curation in a month. This should be the day when you shut off your distractions and solely focus on collecting the best possible content for your audience, be it in the form of Images, Text, Videos, Gifs, or any other media.

Use Google Calendar Alerts to the fullest by marking important dates for dynamic content sharing like Facebook Live Videos, Q&A Interviews with Staff and HOD, Virtual Reality Casts, etc.

I hope you found my study helpful. If you need help managing your Social Media Profiles, you can connect with me on our Facebook Page, or simply drop a comment below and I will get in touch with you. Thanks for reading.

01 NovDigital Marketing

Top 10 Conversion Rate Optimization Tools to Increase Your ROI

If you have been in the online biz for sometime, you would know that number of visitors on a website mean nothing. What good are a 1000 visitors to you, if you are hardly generating any sales from your website. This is where Conversion Rate Optimization comes into play. Forgive me for beating around the bush if you are aware, but there are tools that can help you enhance the value you are getting from the current traffic on your website.

In simple terms, Conversion Rate Optimization can help you get more bang out of your bucks, without spending an additional penny on marketing.

Spending more to get more customers is the old form of marketing.

Here I have listed tools, some of which will potentially increase the number of leads you capture from your website, while others will work to tell you how your visitors are interacting with your website, which parts of your website are getting the most attention, while which parts need significant improvements in order to convince and convert more customers.

HelloBar

HelloBar is a lead capturing tool that allows you to add a form to your website, which pops up while visitors navigate through your website. This will help you to grow your email list, showcase your services or sale or promote your social media pages. The free version of HelloBar lets you create a CTA that will be visible to every tenth visitor. However, its premium version offers a more advanced setups.

Pricing:

Basic	Pro	Enterprise
Free	$4.95/mo Onwards	$83/mo

SumoMe

SumoMe helps you grow your website’s traffic by offering conversion tools like a ‘Welcome Mat’ popup CTA, scroll triggered box, Contact Us form and a Smart Bar to grow email subscribers. Also, it integrates with major email management software providers like MailChimp and Aweber. SumoMe also offers integrated Google Analytics in your SumoMe dashboard.

Pricing:

Basic	Pro	Enterprise(Customized)
Free	$29/mo – $119/mo	Contact SumoMe

BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is a research tool, which compiles the most shared content on a particular topic. It gives you insights on the most trending content for a keyword or niche of your choice. Once you enter your keyphrase into Buzzsumo, it will spit out the most viral content on the web based on the traction it received. This can show you what kind of content is working best for others in your niche and help you replicate the strategies that worked for them to get more conversions for your business.

Pricing:

Pro	Agency	Enterprise
$99/mo	$299/mo	$699/mo

SimilarWeb

SimilarWeb allows you to compare your website’s traffic with its advanced traffic estimator tool. SimilarWeb allows you to track your traffic sources and determine the most profitable channels of marketing for your business. You can make strategic decisions based on data to pull back the marketing budget from channels that are not that great, and invest in channels that bring home the bacon.

Pricing:

Basic	Ultimate	Custom
Free	Contact BuzzSumo	Contact BuzzSumo

CrazyEgg

CrazyEgg is an amazing tool to visualize where your visitors click. Its Heat Map functionality shows you what is grabbing your visitor’s attention or what is turning them off. And its Scroll Mapping tool highlights how far down the page your visitors are scrolling. In a nutshell, CrazyEgg provides you a thorough report to understand how well your visitors are engaging with your website and you can boost your conversions from the existing traffic by doing little changes to your site.

Pricing:

Basic	Standard	Plus	Pro
$9 /mo	$19 /mo	$49 /mo	$99 /mo

Unbounce

Unbounce is a robust marketing and A/B testing tool that allows marketers to create, publish and test landing pages. Its drag and drop functionality gives you a clear picture of how your website looks and functions for your visitors. This can help you make strategic changes to things that are not appealing to your visitors, meaning more conversions and money to you.

Basic	Pro I	Pro II	Enterprise
$49 /mo	$99 /mo	$199 /mo	$499 /mo

Kissmetrics

Kissmetrics is an analytics tool that integrates with your email service provider to analyze your audience and email them specifically. Kissmetrics helps you conduct A/B testing to figure out your most profitable campaigns and capitalize on them accordingly. It increases your ROI by analyzing your customer’s behavior on your website and helping you make strategic changes to have higher chances of converting visitors into leads.

Pricing:

Self-Service	Growth	Power
$220 /mo	$500/mo	$700/mo

Really Good Emails

Really Good Emails provides you a bunch of ready-made email layouts, which are beautifully crafted to drive the viewer’s attention. Emails are the best way to outreach your audience and Really Good Emails ensure that your messages reach your audience in the best way possible. Their layouts are pretty fab to be honest.

Pricing: It’s FREE!!

Headline Analyzer

Headline Analyzer by CoSchedule analyzes how strong your content headline is and gives you a score between 1-100. It determines the Emotional Marketing Value of your headline. The score is based on common, uncommon words, vocabulary, and characters used in a headline.

(P.S. I am a fan of this tool!) It has helped me drive more click throughs to my old blogs by simply making some keyword changes.

Pricing: It’s Free!!

User Testing

User Testing is an online testing tool that allows you to gather videos of real people interacting with your website. The videos show how visitors react to your site and their opinion on what’s good or what’s bad on the website. This tool conducts user’s studies across demographic groups. It lets you observe your target audience’s experience with your site, and you can change your website accordingly to provide a great user experience to them.

Basic	Pro
$99 /video	Contact User Testing

Start Optimizing Your Conversion Rate Today!

Hopefully, these 10 tools will help you increase your conversions. While some of these tools are free, but their features are limited. You can mix and match some of the free and paid tools to optimize your website for the best retention.

These tools should be more than enough for you to get started. If you are a beginner I would strongly suggest trying Crazy Egg and Hellobar, because they have great documentation and resources online.

If you need any help while setting up a conversion tool for you, feel free to contact me via Our Official Facebook page or quickly drop a comment down below!

Have you tried any of the tools we’ve listed above?

If ‘Yes’ then, which tools you found to be the most helpful for your website? Let me know, I am excited.

Gary Vaynerchuk

Seth Godin

Matt Cutts

Larry Kim

Danny Sullivan

Kim Garst

Ted Rubin

Chris Brogan

Rand Fishkin

Glen Gilmore

Pam Moore

Darren Rowse

Neil Patel

Jay Baer

Susanna Gebauer

Hiten Shah

Bryan Kramer

Brian Clark

Avinash Kaushik

Peter Shankman

Marsha Collier

Neal Schaffer

Mark Schaefer

Michael A. Stelzer

Conclusion:

What Are Google Featured Snippets?

Who Is This Important For?

How Does Featured Snippet Help?

Where Does the Answer Come from In the Featured Snippet?

Lists

Paragraphs

Tables

What If I Don’t Want to Be Featured in Google Snippet?

How Can I Opt into Featured Snippets?

How Can You Optimize Your Content for Featured Snippet Box?

Ending Notes

1. PickMe

2. Takas.lk

3. 24/7 Techies.com

4. Liveroom

5. Senzmate.com

6. Erbenlab

7. BusSeat.lk

8. Trackme

9. Emojot.

10. OMAK Technologies

11. LayUp

12. HypeHash

13. Katha, now known as ShortKast

14. Quickee

15. Trekurious – This Startup Permanently Closed.

16. Creately ( Startup now emerged as Corporate Company )

17. PayHere

18. ShoutOut

19. Kadira.io

20. Law| Envoy

The 9 Key Characteristics of Future Social Media Hero’s

Community Administration:

Customer Service:

Content Curation:

Relationship Building:

Videography:

Creative DNA:

Organization Skills:

Selling Skills:

Tech Savvy:

Search Engine Optimization:

Virtual Reality to Soon Set Foot into Social Media –

Social Shopping To Take Off Soon –

Live Streaming To Get Even More Mainstream –

Priority Customer Service in Social Media –

Heard of Community by YouTube Yet? –

Social Media Management Hacks for Productivity

Increase Tweet Reach with This Nifty Little Trick:

Social Buzz Club to get more shares:

Use Crystal Knows to Craft Better Introductory Emails:

Use IFTTT to Automate Content Sharing:

Use The Reply Button To Create Twitter Threads:

Use Tweetfull To Drive Twitter Engagement and Traffic:

Rapportive Helps Me Connect with People Who Mail Me: