Do you think that Facebook and Twitter are the only channels for Social Marketing? If so, think again because you may be missing out on a little more than “just a lot” of customers, that you could reach if you were to tap the power of Visual Content.

Pinterest, in its entirety, is a Social Discovery Platform that allows marketers to create Image Pin Boards, which they can share with their followers.

Speaking of how effective Pinterest pins can be, they are 100 times more effective than a Twitter tweet, and they annihilate Facebook Posts by a massive margin with the half-life of a Pinterest pin being 16000x timed longer than that of a Facebook Post. Ever since Instagram has been purchased by Facebook, the popularity of Pinterest as an Image Sharing platform has also surged. It is becoming the go to place for marketers from all industry dimensions.

Other than that there are quite a few reasons, apart from these statistics, that should make you want to hop onto the Pinterest bandwagon…

Why Should You Use Pinterest?

The Pinterest community has grown to more than 150 million active users around the globe every month.

Despite this expeditious adoption, I often hear, “I don’t get Pinterest like I get other social networks.” And I too felt the same way when I come across this platform.

But let me tell you a secret. Pinterest is insanely simple and easy to use software that has a great influence on your business.

I am not saying this for the sake of pushing you onto this platform like others. Pinterest is not like a regular social site to have maximum followers or likes. It is different. It is performing really well for driving traffic and leads and uplifting sales.

Before jumping right into the matter, here are some crazy Pinterest statistics to consider:

1. 87% of Pinners have purchased a product because of Pinterest
2. 83% of Pinterest users would rather follow a brand than a celeb
3. Those who interact with a promoted Pin spend 7x more than others
4. 70% of sales due to Promoted Pins are from new customers
5. 67% of Pinners are under 40-years-old.

Here are 5 reasons why you should consider marketing on Pinterest for your business:

1. Discover Customer Behavior 

Pinterest is a great source of discovering customer behavior. People are open to brands, and their perceptions have a high degree of commercial intent. Thus, marketers have the opportunity to connect with people who are honestly interested in their products and services. I keep hearing people say that Pinterest has changed our mindset of purchasing products.

For sellers, the route to purchase from a social network is no more direct than on Pinterest. ‘See it, like it, buy it’ happens very often. You may notice the path to purchase is not as straight, but you get to see purchase-linking of an item from a social network.

When you see an image of your favorite product on Pinterest, and you are only one or two clicks away from landing on an e-commerce site.

2. Easy To Manage

Brands have a genuine concern for adopting a new platform because of the expenses related to hiring an employee. The coolest thing about Pinterest is that it comes with easy to operate dashboard, which you can manage single-handedly. Except for pinning, sorting, and tagging pictures, you don’t have to worry about anything.

3. Engage Over Visual Elements of Your Audience

Pinterest is all about visual content. So, it attracts the part of the audience, who prefers pictures over texts. This part of the crowd relates more with the images than with written words.

The perk of using visual content is that you can tap a new segment of consumers, who might be interested in your product but never come across it. You can attract people by maintaining a community around your pinned images and encourage them to buy your products and services.

4. Augments Content Reach

Over 80% of pins on Pinterest are re-pins. That means if you are the creator of a pin, your pin is already being repinned multiple times amongst a wide range of users. Most re-pined words on Pinterest are a recipe, DIY, chicken, cheese, cake, step, fashion, etc. Pinterest amplifies your pin reach with a larger audience.

5. Addictive User Engagement

Pinterest is highly addictive. I find myself hooked onto Pinterest for Sunday Brunch recipes on every weekend.

You get to see the latest trends in the market and make your marketing game plan based on popular trends.

“An increase in 94% click-through’s is seen in pins that are related to trending topics.” Observe the popular section on Pinterest and your Pinterest analytics to see what is trending and pin similar images.

These should be reason enough for you to make you want to join the Platform today, but if you are still considering otherwise, check out the strategies that are bound to give even the most off-beat businesses a push from the fifth dimension.

Strategies for Pinterest Marketing.

Unlike others, Pinterest also comes with its own set of rules and regulations. Make sure to check them out before embarking on your Pinterest journey.

Most Important Thing to keep in mind before signing up on Pinterest

“Never, ever use Pinterest as a tool for self-promotion.”

If you don’t want to get your pins unnoticed, then don’t use Pinterest for self-promotion.

Here is our blueprint for promotion on Pinterest.

1. Online Prospectus

For most businesses that have a physical product to sell, an online prospectus/catalog is the most obvious thing for them to create. For example, if you have an apparel business, you can showcase your clothes with a price tag. Don’t forget to link each product to its description page.

2. Create Boards Dedicated To Your Customers

You can create boards devoted to your prospects and where you can boast your prospect’s best pins they love.

3. Create Pins About Your Upcoming Event

If you are hosting an event, then create a dedicated board for the event and pin images related to the event. Users can curate content on topics like conferences, speakers, and highlights of the conference.

4. Create Board On A Product Launch

Pinterest is an open platform for showcasing new products. This is the reason why startups find it a perfect fit for their product launch. You can keep a user interested in your products this way.

5. Optimize Pin Descriptions

Besides creating user-generated boards, you should also focus on pin descriptions. Pin descriptions are frequently overlooked, but it helps users understand the context of the picture. “Pin descriptions of about 200 characters are most pinnable.” – says Social Media Scientist Dan Zarrella.

6. Run A Contest

Propose your followers to create boards about your brand on their accounts and pin pictures that resonate why they like you. “Pin To Win” – has been a successful formula for increasing user engagement for many businesses.

7. Integrate Rich Pins

Rich pins come in 6 varieties: Recipe, Movie, Product, Article, Place and App. Applying for rich pins gets you instant information update on your pins automatically. This leads more people to your site if you linked your website to those pins.

8. Cover Your Face

Statistics have proven that images lacking human faces get repinned 23% more than images that contain faces.

Take a look at this infographic beautifully explained by Curalata.

    9. Include Watermarks To Your Pictures

An average image gets repinned multiple times. So, it is quite easy to forget the original creator. If you add your brand’s watermark to your images, the chance of getting unrecognized becomes less. On top of that, your brand name revolves among users, and that simply increases the user reach of your site. I recommend using the Site name because that makes your brand significant.

     10. Install Pin It Button

Have you ever noticed the “Pin It” button on top of images of various websites?

The Pin It button allows users to pin an image from the website making the pinning process quicker, better, and a lot easier. To integrate the “Pin It” buttons, all you need to do is to install the “Pin It” plugin on your website. And voila! Your readers can pin directly from your site, blog, or product catalog This is good for businesses and retailers because it means your pins are more likely to be seen, engaged, or go viral.

5 Tools To Help You Treasure Great Content For Pinterest

Most of us come across great content while surfing the internet daily. However, curating content for your site needs a little push as for pinning. Here are 5 tools I vouch for.

1. StumbleUpon
2. Tumblr
3. Facebook
4. Google+ 
5. Twitter

Final Words

Do not use Pinterest for the sake of using it just like other platforms. Use it if you are ready for it and can benefit your business out of it.

Pinterest is clearly here to stay, and it opens new doors to boost your business. It may not be suitable for all businesses, but if you find yourself a perfect fit for the platform, you have ample of ways to go about marketing on it.

As you intend to scale your business, these 10 Pinterest marketing strategies will help you drive more traffic to your website.

Have you leveraged Pinterest marketing for your brand? How did it go? Which strategies have worked for you? Let me know in the comments below!

Project management tools – So, you are here in search of open source and free project management tools because you are juggling with managing projects with your team.

If you are one of those, who is still struggling with To-Do lists and emails to communicate with clients or team for a project and gets stuck in the middle and all tasks as TASKS become a horrible nightmare, then you are not alone. We all have been through that phase.

Whether you are a small business or an enterprise, a team management tool will help you to complete tasks within the deadline and reach your milestones more efficiently than ever.

So, without further ado…

What Is a Project Management Software?

Project management software is an online platform for collaborating with team members on projects in real time. This workplace is designed to help with better communication with clients and the team and to keep an eye on the progress of each task. It simply provides you an overview of laid-out tasks to the corresponding person.

How does it help?

This will help each member to stay organized and bring a project to fruition. You can track and measure the performance of an individual employee or overall team at the end of the month.

Our Top 10 Free Project Management Tools Picks of 2017 are..

With a vast array of project management applications available online, here are our top picks in the market. These software are free for you for unlimited users and projects. You always get the opportunity to upgrade these tools in future.

So, get your hands on this free project management software to get the most out of your team performance in real-time.

Asana

Asana, created by Dustin Moskovitz, co-founder of Facebook and Justin Rosenstein, former teach-lead of Facebook and Google, is a project management workspace that lets you break your projects down into small-small listicle tasks along with easy to understand dashboard to track the progress of the tasks.

Features:

• Create a task for yourself or assign task to team members
• Organize tasks into shared lists for your meetings
• Add new workflows with pre-made templates
• Break up the work of a task into smaller parts
• View progress of any project at a glance
• Due dates set the deadline for a task
• Add files from your computer, Dropbox, Box, or Google Drive
• Get team updates
• Compatible with desktops, tablets, and smartphones.
• The free version is limited up to 15 users.

Pricing:

Free	Premium	Enterprise
Up to 15 team members	$8.33/mo No team member limit.	Contact Asana

Trello

Trello is a free project management software that helps in organizing your projects in Kanban boards. You can start out by organizing Trello Cards or Boards containing to-do lists of tasks and break down the project. Trello lets you add tasks, checklists, comments, due dates, and more to shape them any way you like and keep track on the progress of your project to bring a task to fruition.

Features:

• Include comments, attachments, and more to Trello cards
• Manage multiple projects
• Trello Power Ups integrates the app that your team use
• Add voting options on tasks
• Older and completed task gets deleted automatically
• Sync across all IoT devices
• Free for unlimited projects and users

Pricing:

Free	Business Class	Enterprise
$0 Forever.	$9.99/user/mo	Contact Trello

GanttProject

If you need a place for project management, a collaboration of the team, and get your work done in real-time, consider GanttProject. This free open-source platform was created by Alexandre Thomas in 2003 and this platform has been through many developments and recycles phases since then.

Features of GanttProject:

• Create and manage tasks and milestones
• Break down tasks into smaller tasks and work in an organized manner
• Add a lag or draw dependency constraints between the tasks
• Create a baseline to compare between two projects
• Generate PERT Chart for only reading purpose
• Generate reports in HTML or PDF foprmats.

Pricing:

Absolutely free! No Sign-up required.

Freedcamp

This open source platform lets you create tasks, reach milestones, manage events all in one place. You are free to create multiple projects with multiple users with unlimited storage. It helps to stay organized and complete a project on the due date.

Features of Freedcamp:

• Issue tracker helps to solve issues like unique user ID, save searches, extra statuses and perform bulk actions.
• Send invoices to clients
• Create a rich and shareable document
• Use templates to create and differentiate multiple projects
• Organize tasks or to-do lists or a Kanban board.
• Discuss inside a project and include attachments
• Free for unlimited projects and unlimited users.

Pricing:

Free	Lite	Business	Enterprise
$0	$4	$8	Contact Freedcamp

Wrike

Have you ever tried managing projects in spreadsheets?

Wrike is a free and open source project management software that lets you outline your tasks into a spreadsheet. You can jot down every bit of details of a task into columns of spreadsheet and keep an eye on the progress of the tasks.

Features of Wrike:

• Easy to use dashboard
• Mark on-going task status as in-progress, deferred, completed, canceled or any status of your choice.
• Add text notes to tasks
• Collaborate with team members and set goals for company improvement

Pricing:

Free	Professional	Business	Marketers	Enterprise
$0	$ 9.80 / user / mo	$ 24.80 / user / mo	$ 34.60 / user / mo	Contact Wrike

Podio

Podio is a project management tool that lets you create and customize tasks on the simple table to dynamic cardboards and create project reports that keep you up to date on the progress of a task.

Features of Podio:

• Drag and drop style builder
• Visualize your projects in lists, calendars or cards
• Monitor the overall progress of your team
• Integrates with Dropbox, Google Drive, Evernote, Microsoft Exchange, Zendesk, and many more.
• Sync Podio with your mobile device to track from anywhere you want
• Streamlined communication with team members
• In-built search to find custom apps.

Pricing:

Basic	Plus	Premium	Enterprise
$9	$14	$24	Contact Podio

Meistertask

Meistertask is an online task management tool that offers easy-to-use and customizable dashboard or Kanban boards. Its intuitive interface makes tasks look more fun and even increases the productivity of team members with its task automation features.

Features of Meistertask:

• Integrate MindMeister, a mind-map app that helps to plan a project and drag each step of the project in Meistertask to complete it
• Overview on-going tasks and focus on completion
• Discuss projects, upload files, set due dates, add checklist items, and a lot more into your task
• Integrate with other apps such as Slack, GitHub, Google Drive, etc.

Pricing:

Basic	Pro
Free	$7.5per user/mo

Bitrix24

Bitrix24 is an online project management system that has extensive organizational features to manage and monitor tasks for the completion of a project in an effective manner. Bitrix24 lets you delegate tasks to employees, dedicated a group to a project. It also offers Gantt Charts, listicles task management ad time tracking to reach the milestone in due date.

Features of Bitrix24:

• Perform bulk action in sending emails in one go
• Share editorial calendar and generate CRM reports
• Get notified by email on any update on the assigned task
• The intuitive interface makes file sharing convenient
• Bitrix24’s task automation helps you automate regular responsibilities and recurring work schedule
• Add checklist and breakdown tasks into smaller points
• Aggregate, filter, and sort report data to display them in an organized form.

Pricing:

Free	Plus	Standard	Professional
$0	$39/mo	$99/mo	$199/mo

Zoho Project

Zoho Project was launched in 2006 as a comprehensive project management system, which has been evolved since then and has been adopted by many enterprises to plan, track and collaborate with a team for the completion of a project.

Features of Zoho Project:

• Manage tasks and track time delegated for a task
• Take control of subtasks and recurring tasks
• Gantt Chart provides an in-depth insight of progress of the task
• Collaborate and communicate with team members easily with Collaboration Tools
• Generate invoices automatically from timesheets
• Inspect bugs and track them as they get fixed
• Google Apps and GitHub integration

Pricing:

Free	Express	Premium	Enterprise
$0	$25	$50	$80

Allthings

A great alternative to Basecamp, Glasscube, and Zoho is AllThings. The platform lets you manage your plans, projects, tasks, lists, and meetings under a single roof. You can view project status in many ways and stack, filter, categorize, group and search for tasks and files in Dashboard. Stay up-to-minute using the apps for mobile and tablets, along with the desktop version. Perfect for Startup to Intermediate businesses.

Features of Allthings:

• Free to try, no CC Required
• Task Management
• Work/Resource Planning
• Customizable and Real-Time Alerting
• SaaS Platform
• To-do Lists
• Create Shareable Lists
• No Contracts, Easy and Affordable
• Group collaboration feature
• And more..

Milanote

Milanote is a tool for organizing creative projects into beautiful visual boards. By design, it feels a lot like working on the wall in a creative studio – visual, tactile, and sometimes a bit messy – Milanote is a great fit for designers who work in teams remotely.

Key Features of Milanote:

• Write notes & to-do lists, upload images & files and save things you find on the web
• Organize visually using the flexible drag and drop interface.
• Boards by default are a private place to think, but with a single click you can create a shared workspace for collaboration with your team
• Milanote is filled with hundreds of built-in templates to help you get started with a variety of different projects, from creating a mood board to writing that perfect creative brief.

Pricing:

Basic	Pro
Free (no time limit)	$9.99per user/mo

On The Move..

As you can see from the above list, there is a myriad solution for Task and Project Management. Whether you are looking for dashboard functionality, group collab, search features, category listing, to-do lists, and more, all these solutions are more or less present in every Software. Don’t be confused, based on your budget and feature requirements, select any three platforms from the list above and…

• Google for Product Reviews for the selected Platform. Reading user opinions on these platforms will let you narrow down to the one perfect solution that will best fit your business.
• Try using the Free/Freemium Models to test out the features of the platforms that you have selected. This will give you an understanding of how it’s really like to use the platform. The UI of a certain feature rich platform might be confusing for you, so stick to the one which is easy to follow and understand.
• Once you select a platform, test it out with your team for a few weeks, and don’t be afraid to move onto a better option, if you face problems along the way. After all, the idea of having a Project Management Dashboard is to solve problems and get work done, not to be a problem in itself.

Looking to create your own Digital Marketing Team? Why don’t you join us in our Project Management Dashboard, as we would love to be your Digital Marketing Partner? For any questions, feel free to reach out to us on our Official Facebook Page, and to know more about Digital Marketing Partnership Perks, visit the following page.

Have a good day!

As Digital Marketing continues to grow, so does the quality and the presentation of content. Visual marketing will entirely dominate 2017 as people tend to look for visually appealing content rather than reading a plain block of texts.

So, in order to engage people, we must take care of visual elements in the content we provide. And the first step towards spicing up your content starts with adding relevant images because – “A picture is worth a thousand words.”

You might have noticed the featured image of this post before even reading the headline. We, bloggers, use featured image in the context of the topic of the article and to make the article attract the attention of a casual surfer. This in return makes a marked difference in how the content we provide is consumed by the masses.

When dealing with images online, always ensure that you read the Terms of Service and Licensing rules of the websites before collecting them for your own purpose.

I will not discuss the licensing part as this post is solely dedicated to websites that provide royalty free images. These are my personal favorite sources for image aggregation.

So, without further ado and in no particular order here they are:

Pixabay  

A Creative-Common Zero site that offers over 500,000 images that you can incorporate into your personal and professional use for free. They offer great resources such as Images, vectors, illustrations. As they have no commercial use of restrictions, you can download, change and use them in any way you want.

Freepik

Freepik has a huge database of royalty-free images licensed under Creative Common CC0. So, whenever I’m in a rush to download relevant images for my article, the Freepik comes to my rescue. You just need to put the term in the search box, and Freepik will show you all relevant results, which you can download in a different size. Apart from images, you get vectors, icons, illusions, templates, and a lot more under this platform.

Unsplash

Unsplash offers a vast array of free images in high quality for free. All images are licensed under Creative Common CC0 that simply means that you can download, edit and use for personal and professional purpose without asking for permission of giving credits. They offer quality images snapped from different angles that make images simply breathtaking.

Gratisography

Gratisography is owned by the photographer Ryan McGuire. The images that you find on the site are photographed by Ryan himself and are free from copyright restrictions. You can find pictures categorized into animals, nature, objects, people, urban and whimsical. All pictures are of high-resolution you can use for your personal or commercial projects.

Well, you can take a look at his quirky panache by looking at this snap!

IM Free

IM Free offers a vast assortment of free pictures from around the globe. Their collection includes web templates, people, business, icons, technology, health, food & drinks, sports & fitness, education fashion, beauty, inspiration, black& white, and a lot more. Its button-maker feature makes it unique to stand out from other sites. You can easily create and design a button and implement it in your web pages. Just copy the CSS code at the end of the process and paste it into your page.

Picography

Picography is one of my favorite websites to search and download free images for websites. All photos are licensed under Creative Common CC0. It has an amazing collection of pictures including premium ones where you can purchase brand new collections every month at $15 per month or 120 per year. If you are a photographer, you can submit your photos and showcase your portfolio on Picography as it provides an open platform and if they approve, they will showcase your name and a portfolio link.

Negative Space

Negative Space keeps its users updated with the new stocks of images every week, and all of them are royalty and attribution free. You can sort out free images by their category (including abstract, architecture, street, work, landscapes, etc.), color, and copy space position.

Freestock

Freestock offers really high-resolution image that you can use in the form you want to. All images are released under creative common cc0. You might need to reduce the size of an image before use because every image is uploaded in its original size.

MM Stock

MM Stock is an array of high-resolution images by Jeffrey Betts. You will mostly find pictures of flowers as Jeffrey is fond of these beauties as they full of colors and life. I like to view images in a grid layout, but you can use it as it is.

SkitterPhoto

SkitterPhoto offers a wide collection of free royalty-free images ranging from flora and fauna, landscapes, urban, low light, and a lot more. All of them are licensed under Creative Common CC0. The images can be used for any purpose of your choice. Pictures are authentic and are owned by SkitterPhoto itself. Attribution is not necessary, but they appreciate it if you do. They also provide an open platform to submit your photo to showcase your talent in photography. For more information, please visit the website.

Stockvault

If you are looking for a people picture with a white background for your business, then look no further. Stockvault provides over 40,000 stock images including amazing textures, 3D renders, constructions, people, object seasonal and much more. No login detail is required to download their resources, which is a plus point of this site. You can also upload photos and share with the community over 90,000 designers and photographers and can make money by sharing your pictures. I admit it’s a well-designed platform for photo junkies.

Lock and Stock Photos

Free Stock Photos. Use in Any Way, Anywhere, Anytime.

This is what the site claims. It was a venture started by AJ Montpetit. With a huge stash of free stock images, this website releases images under Creative Common CC0 where no attribution is required. (Credit is always appreciated if given J). Images are categorized into animals, people, sculpture, city life, family, boats, coffee and so on.

Kaboompics

Kaboompics offers a wide variety of high-quality royalty-free photos that can be used for the purpose of your choice.  They provide images of abstract, fashion, architecture, nature, food and drinks. You can search an image by typing keywords, tags or categories.

Pexels

Pexels offers high-definition free stock photos under the CC0 license. They provide a wide variety of images to choose from and allow us to use them commercially. Their upload section lets you submit your own photographs if you have a passion for photography. Pexels also offers a range of video clips mostly based on animals for fun. You can download and share them with your friends anytime.

Life of Pix

Life of Pix offers a huge collection of copyright-free stock-free images of high resolution. They keep their site updated with new pictures every week. You can discover a fine collection of images under the features section. Life of Pix also nominates its photographers as the Photographer of the Week and highlights the top 10 photographies on its website and social networks.

StockSnap

StockSnap offers mesmerizing photos of high resolution. You can sort the images by date, trending, no. of views, no, of downloads and the all-time favorites. It also provides an easy-to-use Graphic Editor – Snappa to modify images according to your choice but the editor has no free plans except for 7 days of a free trial. StockSnap keeps adding hundreds of photos on a daily basis, and all photos are free from copyright restriction.

TookaPicStock

This site offers both free and premium stock photos. It has a huge collection of photos that you can filter by free photos, and the free ones are released under CC0, i.e., no attribution is required but is appreciated if given.

Splitshire

Splitshire is created by Web Designer Nanescu to give life to the photographs that may go into oblivion without any use. It offers an assortment of stock-free photos and free videos released under CC0. The photos are categorized into abstract, cinemograph, automotive, technology, wedding, interiors. Still, life, mock-up bokeh, and a lot more. The website has over 2.000,000 downloads, and over 6,000,000 page views and also been live on Huffington, CNN posts as well as reputed magazines and covers.

Freeimages

Formerly known as Stock.XCHNG, Freeimages has now over 400,000 free stock images contributed by thousands of photographers. Since the site was acquired by Getty Images in 2014 and thus renamed Freeimages and the former URL redirects to the new URL. You can browse by keywords, tags, free photos, and premium photos and also upload a photo if you want.

Imagebase

Photographer David Niblack’s created this site for easy to browse and download free stock photos. It offers absolutely free photos for commercial, education, or personal use. It also offers instant image preview, so you can quickly take a look at the thumbnails before browsing individual pages and downloading them. They keep adding new photos every week to their stash.

Wrapping Up!

Let me give you a quick recap.

I want to reiterate one thing about stock photographs, whether you pay or not, whether attribution is required or not, I would like to suggest if you attribute the site or author or photographer from where you are taking images. And if you have any doubt regarding licensing terms of any particular photo, contact the site immediately. (You don’t want to take down the image that gets traction to your content.)

There is a pool of other websites that provide free stock photos — but these 20 are my picks.

What are your favorite websites for finding free stock photos?

Discuss them in the comments below!

It goes without saying that, if you want to unveil and grow a business, you will have to put a few words on the page, (probably more than a few). Writing a Business Plan is perhaps the most essential, albeit the most difficult task you need to get done, once you are pretty serious that you are going to own a business.

I will discuss it elaborately later on, but Business Plans, to put it briefly and simplistically, require strategy and vision. It is your only chance to make a strong start in the already competitive market. Write a Business Plan that banks cannot resist! Write a Business Plan that makes your friendly neighborhood rivals shake in the boots (okay, maybe at least consider you as the new shark in the waters!).

Now on a more serious note, the question arises as to how am I going to write that one BP that is going to change my life as well as the future of my business?

Well, to be completely honest, you cannot wake up one fine morning and write yourself a perfect little Business Plan that gets you everything you wish for, it does not work that way. It needs patience, forethought, and more importantly a lot of confidence in yourself.

So, I will start with the ‘building confidence’ thing and then move on to the “biz talk”.

LOSING THE “I CAN’T WRITE” ANXIETY

Do you have that dreadful “I am not a writer” syndrome? Do you feel like you know all the right words, but those are always in your head and you cannot translate those onto paper? Do you get major anxiety before writing down your thoughts? Congratulations! You have come to the right place.

• If you are someone, perpetually stuck in a Writers’ Block, the first thing you need to believe is that anyone can write! Yes, I get that your writing will not hold a candle to that of Plath or Hemingway, but nobody expects you to be an actual great writer when you write a Business Plan. Tell yourself over and over, “I am absolutely capable of writing this myself” until you believe it!

• Like I previously said, nobody expects you to be a great writer, so don’t fret too much about the perfect words. In fact, do not wait for the perfect words. Start somewhere. As they say, writing is like cleaning a messy room, you start from a small corner and eventually, you get the whole room cleaned.

• Start with writing disjointed notes, you can always revise later. Use short, smart, personal language. Speaking from experience, once you have completed your first draft, it gives you a lot of confidence which helps you churn out an impressive final product.

• Most importantly, as you sit down to write a pitch deck, make sure you have done research to the core that helps you to convey exactly what you want to. (And then, get off the internet and begin writing!)

Now, another compelling question for you must be, “What exactly is a Business Plan and what do I write in it?” Well, hold on, that is what I am going to talk about here.

 

WHAT IS A BUSINESS PLAN?

Like I previously hinted at, a Business Plan is a written portrayal of the present status of your business, your aspiration for your business’s future, a document that helps you to get your thoughts organized, sets your business goals, and tells you how you plan to achieve it, and why you need support from some other people, and how and how much. Business plans differ in size and scope depending on the type of businesses involved as well as the operating history of the small business.

Business plans are innately planned. You start today, with certain capitals and skills, from POINT A. You want to get to POINT B, a point in the near future when your business will have a different set of capitals and skills along with increased exposure and maximum equity. Your plan shows how you aspire to reach from POINT A to POINT B.

 

CHOOSING THE AUDIENCE

Before you even commence writing a business plan, you should choose who it will be targeted at. Business plans are of two types, externally focused and internally focused. When I assert “externally focused”, I mean it should entice advertisers, investors, money-lenders, and maybe collaborators, people outside of your company.

And when I say “internally focused”, that means it should aim at the people inside the company (e.g. Employees or Managers), people who must understand and share your vision and aspiration. Understanding the target audience of your business plan will help you keep the plan relevant and efficient.

 

KNOWING THE MARKET AND USING BUSINESS ANALYSIS

By analyzing your business by different methods, you discover various internal and external aspects, which might have been overlooked. PEST, SWOT, and STEEPLE are some of the analyses, that will help you to understand and find the missing link in the market. A thorough competitive analysis narrows down your research and helps you understand the market you want to tap in. It also gives you a measure of the scalability of your business and the market share of your products.

The Tech field is viciously competitive, as you already know, and you have to be specific and unique about what you are actually selling and how are you solving a “need” for your market.

 

WRITING AN EXECUTIVE START-UP SUMMARY

• Within the overall outline of the business plan, the executive summary will follow the title page. The summary should tell the reader in brief about what you are going to elaborately say later on in the plan.

• Talk about your total start-up expense (including legal costs, website and logo design, stationery and related expenses).

• Include the approximated numbers for a total start up funding, total funding required, total assets, total capital and liabilities, and total planned investment.

 

COMPANY OVERVIEW

You can add a company overview to the summary or you can keep it separate. For a company overview, you write a short description of your company, a review of your company’s legal structure and ownership (Are you a sole proprietor? Or are you in partnership?), a brief history of the company if it is an existing company and a summary of the business location.

 

BEING REALISTIC, GOAL-ORIENTED AND KNOWING YOUR WEAKNESS AND STRENGTH

A good business plan depends on realism.

You don’t get points for ideas that can’t be implemented. For example, a brilliantly written and excellently researched business plan for a product that cannot be produced in reality is not a good business plan.

It is disheartening for your workers, and you want to make sure your employees do not lose faith in you. The plan which requires millions of dollars of investment, but does not have an efficient management team that can actually achieve that investment, ultimately becomes a joke.

Ask yourself, as you evaluate a business plan: how will I know later on if we followed the plan? How will I track the results over a predetermined time frame and compare them against the plan? Let me tell you this, if you fail to give manifestation to what you promised, you will lose both external and internal commitments.

Engage with your audience.

Maybe, write a short, personal anecdote about why you decided to launch this particular business, what you expect from your employees and how you plan to treat them and manage the business; what you expect from the investors and how you plan to serve them, or how you plan to serve the consumers.

You have to be extremely convinced about your goal that you want to reach, make no mistake.

• Know your strength and weakness, and be frank and honest about it. Focus on your strength, talk about the quality and efficiency of yourself and your employees, and don’t be shy about your weakness, which for most tech-based business start ups, is the fund (or the lack thereof).
• Include your plans for tasks, deadlines, dates, forecasts, budgets, and metrics.

Here are few resources that can help you to get started with your Business Plan and fine tune the existing one:

• Small Business Plan Template
• Writing a Business Plan
• Mistakes to Avoid While Writing Business Plan
• How to Build Billion Dollar Business Plan

 

Ending Notes

At the end, I will say that you better accept the fact that all businesses have competition. The more attractive you make your business plan, the closer you are to success. Make baby steps, and try not to get disheartened even when you face rejections. Make one small victory your stone number one and build on it. Good luck for the adventures in 2017!

 

Running a marketing campaign is not what it used to be in the early years. Earlier, starting a campaign meant planning, spending the money and then praying that your strategy hit a home-run.

Marketing has forever been a game of analytics, and with the advancement in technology in the recent years, it is easier than ever to measure the output of your digital campaigns in real time. This factor also makes survival tough for the unorganized.

The aim of this free checklist is to help you connect all your various channels for Marketing, so that your prospects do not feel left out during the lead nurturing life cycle.

By following the steps mentioned in the Extreme Checklist for Digital Marketing in 2017, you will be able to:

1. Stay on top of key industry trends and make changes to your brand strategy in advance, to be better prepared for the future.
2. Connect your Digital Efforts, so that your Online, Search and Social Presence work together to enhance the return on your marketing spend.
3. Be in a better position to review the results of your marketing, and make critical changes that will increase the value of your customer acquisition process.

For ease, I have broken this checklist into five parts namely, Web Design, SEO, Analytics, Content Marketing and Social Media Marketing.

So, without further ado, let’s move onto the first section of your checklist, i.e., Web Design.

 Web Design

Color Scheme

Does your website have a consistent and attractive color scheme?

Are you using the right color combinations for your website?

Never go overboard with colors, unless your business calls for it. If you are using more than 5 colors on your site, then use it wisely. Take help of web Designer and maintain color consistency in your site.

After all, you don’t want to end up with a site looking like an art of a 2-year-old.

My recommendation is never use more than 5 colors. 3 colored website is a standard practice in the industry.

Typography

Is your website readable on every platform?

Choose the right fonts. If people have difficulty in reading your content, they will leave your website immediately.

Marketers these days are paying more attention to their site’s typography. Why?

Read Here: The Effect of Typography on User Experience & Conversions

Social Button Integration

Have you integrated social sharing buttons into your posts?

Perks of having social sharing buttons is that, if your readers like the post that they are reading, they can immediately share with their friends on social channels. If you are using a WordPress website, this can easily be achieved with a plugin. Always give your viewers the quick and easy option to share your articles.

Free Opt-In Form

A free opt-in form asks a visitor’s name and email id in exchange of free resources. Install this feature on your site to build credibility towards prospects, by giving them value in return for their contact information.

Optimize for Mobile

A detailed insight by ComScore shows how people are accessing the internet through smartphones, as opposed to desktops. So, I am sure that you don’t want to have a website that is not accessible via mobiles. A mobile friendly site increases the usability of your website for smartphone users.

Is your website responsive? How does your website look on mobiles and tablets?

Takeaway: Consider using responsive themes or implementing mobile-first CSS to make your site user-friendly. Review your website using Google Mobile Site Checker.

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Analytics

Website Traffic Insights

Website traffic is directly correlated to the success of your marketing campaign. Review your website’s top performing pages and analyze the traffic. Understand how many visitors come to your site, how many of them are unique and what elements have helped you capture leads or convert visitors the most.

After all this scheming, you will be able to understand, which traffic sources are most beneficial for your business.

Did you review your website performance?

Takeaway: Use these  Top SEO Tools to review your website performance.

Watch Over Competitors’ Websites

Run an audit of your competitor’s website. Keeping an eye on your opponent’s activity will give you a clear picture of what is pushing them on top. You can take a hint from them and implement certain things from their strategy for your business. This will keep you on the edge, and you won’t miss out any chance of being ahead of your competitors.

Review competitor strategy to understand how they fare against your website?

Takeaway: Use tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs or SEO SiteCheckup for auditing your competitors’ websites.

Perform Full Website Checkup

Monitor your websites broken links, loading speed, cross- browser compatibility and navigation. Fix problems, if you find any. Make your navigation smooth for visitors as well as for Search Engine Spiders.

Does your website have broken links? Remember to check broken links, plagiarism, loading speed and browser compatibility for your website.

Takeaway:  Use tools like HubSpot Website Grader or Woorank to find out issues and fix them.

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Search Engine Optimization

Okay, so your website has top of the line design, great content and images. But, what if I tell you these don’t matter if your SEO is not in place.

It doesn’t matter how beautiful your site looks if prospects can’t find your website. All your effort will be go down-the-drain, if you don’t optimize your content for Search Engine. It is extremely crucial to optimize each page of your site if you want to attract more traffic.

Check your website for the following On-page SEO Factors:

• Title Tags – Are you using focus keywords in your page titles?
• Meta Descriptions – Do all your web pages contain meta descriptions?
• Content with Buyer Intent Keywords – Include Buyer Intent Keywords in your main landing pages.
• Header Tags – Have you followed the six-heading tag format to give your page some structure? (i.e. <h1> to <h6>)
• Image ALT Tags – Use Image ALT Tags for SEO purpose.
• URL Structure – Make sure your URL is short and related to the page and includes keywords.
• Sitemaps – Use sitemap to allow users to navigate around your site quickly when at the bottom of the page.
• Navigation – Make your navigation easy and smooth, so that Search Engine bots can crawl smoothly.

Have you optimized your site for Search Engines?

Recommended: Read about creating a proper navigation structure for your website here.

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Content Marketing

Does your content attract enough traction for your brand?

Content is the King! You need to publish fresh content for both visitors and Search Engine Bots. Publish 4-5 blog posts a month, between 1000-2000 words. Make sure, your content is free from grammatical mistakes and spelling errors and should include eloquent CTA’s.

Have you put the important information in the first two paragraphs of your content?

Consider Reading: Here’s Why You Need to Focus On Content Marketing In 2017?

Headline and Titles

 Do the headings on your web pages describe what the content below is about?

Research has shown that 8 out of 10 people only read the headline. Make sure, your headlines include keywords and have an engaging tone to attract an audience.

Publish Content for Prospects

Optimize your content for your visitors, not just bots. Don’t just stuff keywords for Search Engine Robots, but provide value to the readers. If visitors can’t make head or tail out of what you publish, it is better to not publish at all.

Check if you are producing consistent and valuable content for readers?

Read – Why should you focus on making your content better for the coming year?

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Social Media Marketing

Does your website produce shareable content?

Address the pain of the target audience, help them solve problems, and answer questions being asked about your brand.

Don’t forget to use target keywords in your social media posts.

Review your brand’s Social Media Profiles to find areas for improvement?

Facebook

Update the profile image and cover image of your Facebook page.

Promote content and offers of the page to increase the traffic of your site.

Invest in paid advertisement and run a campaign to create awareness about your brand.

Run contests and quizzes to attract people to your page and use a referral chain for registration to the contest. Do not hesitate to spend few $$$ in organizing giveaways. People love getting pampered by gifts. You can do this occasionally at special events.

Try posting different types of content like images, videos, gifs, blog posts, offers, etc.

Twitter

Post at least 3-5 tweets a day. These may also include retweet’s from influencers and blog posts including CTA’s.

Monitor mentions and thanks to them.

Add images and #hashtags to your tweets to get found.

Pro Tip: Use automated software like Twittercounter, Tweepi, IFTTT to automate your tweets and manage your Twitter Profile.

LinkedIn

Update your company profile. Circulate articles and job openings.

Take part in discussions.

Upload relevant content weekly.

Promote your services and post valuable information.

Encourage your employees to establish an online reputation and expand their networks.

Google Plus

Follow new people or companies to be on the trend.

Circulate your blog posts, share other content, and promote your services and events.

YouTube

Find new videos to share on your page.

Publish one video weekly. Try to make whiteboard presentations, DIYs, tutorials, etc. to engage the audience.

Subscribe to new channels of your industry monthly.

Circulate your videos to different channels. Try replying to comments under your videos.

Wrapping Up!

There is no shortcut to success. If you want to make your mark in 2017, then this checklist should help you reach your core objectives.

But, before you begin, you should take the time to evaluate your progress in 2016. What strategies worked for you this year, which channels performed better, which sources contributed to most of your qualified traffic etc.

You can use these metrics along with our Checklist to understand what you need to do to nail your marketing and get ahead of your competition in 2017. And if you face any problems along the way, I am just a nudge away. Shoot me your queries in the comments section below, or get in touch via our Official Facebook Page.

If you found this Checklist helpful, do not forget to share it with people in your connection who will benefit from it.

And before you leave, here is the Free Link to The Digital Marketing Checklist for 2017!

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You’ve probably heard the saying, “Content marketing can take the marketing game to a whole new level.”

But can you tell, why?

Let’s start from the beginning..

As you can see, content marketing is there since ages.. It’s of no surprise – Content has been there to help marketers let their messages reach their audience.

Content is the base of any marketing strategy that brands not only imply to drive leads, but also to increase their overall bottom line by building credibility amongst the audience.

While it’s true that brands and their content has to flow in the same direction but, most of the marketers don’t know why. Before we get into this, let’s take a look at what content marketing really is, now, since it has come a long way from the start.

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is a marketing strategy of producing and allocating valuable, relevant and reliable content to attract and acquire a potential audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer deeds.

It’s about developing and leveraging relationships with people of influence within a particular industry to help spread your brand message or to help build on the same foundation as content marketing. It’s no wonder content marketing is seen a truly effective form of marketing.

Let me break it down for you!

Content Marketing Growth In The Industry

Without a doubt, content marketing, once done properly, can produce striking results for your business.

“51% of B2B buyers depend more on content to research and make B2B buying decisions than they did a year ago.” – says DemandGen Report.

Content builds trust among the buyers by helping them understand your brand’s psychology and ethics before making a purchase decision.

According to research done by DemandGen, “47% of buyers viewed 3-5 pieces of content before engaging with a sales representative.”

As they say, use your words wisely and carefully to get noticed. Those 3-5 pieces of content should have enough convincing power to make the customers understand the value your brand can bring to the table.

Here’s what our Industry Experts have to say about content in 2017.

Synopsis of the Video – “In this video, Content Marketing Gurus are sharing some insights on how it is going to take a turn in 2017.”

According to a report by Curata – “75% of marketers are increasing investment in content marketing.”

Still need more reasons to focus on Content in 2017?

Keep Reading.. 

Content Marketing Demand In The Industry

“94% of the marketing professionals surveyed said it is critical that content marketing be part of a company’s business strategy.” – says PR Newswire.

Content marketing can be time taking process for B2B marketers but, it’s an enduring approach to get remarkable results and to refine your brand’s discernibly online. It also helps you cherish a longer relationship with your clients.

According to a report by Pagefair, “Approx. 200 million internet users have installed ad-blocking software globally.”

So, if you are among one of those Ad-savvies, probably thinking of getting quick returns on paid advertisements, sorry to say this but you won’t be able to survive for too long, especially when the marketing techniques are taking twists and turns in 2017.

Period.

To thrive your business in future in all aspects, you have to stick to content marketing to the core, and there is no way around it. Because today’s people are looking for information before they can rely on your services.

If they leave your website having a feeling that this company understands me, you can be assured that you are on the right track of Content Marketing. Make your content consistent that can engage with the audience. You’ll definitely succeed if will be able to achieve this milestone.

5 Brands That Made it Big With Content Marketing

Content marketing is getting a bigger picture because you don’t sell anything directly. People who are coming to your website don’t experience that irritating selling tone rather than that; they leave your site with the exact information what they have been looking for.

ADP

ADP is a leading solution provider of human resource management to businesses. The company leveraged their expertise to create white papers, which have proven to be highly valuable to their customers. They provide whitepapers on human capital management to their customers.

Key takeaway: If you’re thinking, White papers don’t have any impact on marketing, then you are wrong my friend.  It might be overlooked in the industry, but not dead. If your customers prefer more whitepapers then, you won’t mind creating a huge number of this resource for your customers.

Cisco

Cisco is an IT solution provider that sells networking hardware and high-technology telecommunication equipment. The company came to know the power of content marketing when they launched a new product on social media and promoted it.

Key takeaway: With the evolving world, Social media has become a center of attraction of billion people, and it is obvious to draw attention from this platform, once done properly. Promote your products through social media with right strategies for a successful campaign.

DemandBase

DemandBase is an account based marketing technology provider that leverages the expertise in serving B2B brands by using white papers, SlideShare, infographics, and webinars for new leads for their campaigns. And, it generated over $1million through content marketing.

Key takeaway: To get the remarkable results in ROI, you need to develop a content strategy for your audience over a period.

Cox Media Group

Cox Media Group is one of the largest integrated publishing, broadcasting and digital media companies in the world. Though having maximum exposure on television, Cox Media Group has generated new technique of “Success Kit” online that provides a solution to SMBs through eBooks and videos and got more than 2000 leads through 5000 downloads.

Key Takeaway: You’ll surely get more leads by creating an informational content for your audience. This might take some time to get started, but it will be worth it for a longer run.

Toshiba

Toshiba is a Japanese conglomerate corporation that provides products and services including IT and communication equipment.

In 2011, Toshiba created a “Smart Community” endorse awareness of its renewable energy solutions. They invested in a massive SEO campaign to boost their rankings. Their campaign generated over 160,000 followers on LinkedIn worldwide.

Key takeaway: Investing in SEO to push your services on top of SERRPs is a great strategy for content marketing to get maximum traction.

 What worked for them may or may not work for your business, but they are surefire inspirations to get you started with your Content Marketing efforts in the coming year.

Mistakes To Avoid In Content Marketing

If you are doing it wrong, then better not do it at all.

1. Your Content Sucks

Still writing for the search engines? Merely stuffing keywords and writing for the bots is not going to cut it anymore. You need to have content that is well received by your audience. At the end of the day, poor content doesn’t achieve anything.

2. Your Content is Useless

Now, you might be saying that your content is really high quality, but consider again. If your content doesn’t help solve a problem or answer a question, then it will not get any recognition from your audience.

3. Your Content is Promotional

No one ever came to your blog or gallery to read 2 pages worth of features about your product and how you are the “Best + ________ + Company in + Area.”  The focus of your content should be to educate your readers and give them information. In most cases, you should never even mention about your product or service until the end of the content.  There is nothing better than being able to teach your reader to solve a problem.

4. You Are Not an Authority on Your Subject

Well, there is no point in trying to be someone who you are not. If you are not good at something, it is always a good idea to have an expert do the task for you. If you do not have complete knowledge about your field, then your audience is going to apprehend you. And once they know that you are not a guru, they are going to stop coming back. One of the biggest mistake businesses make is it have rookie bloggers or cheap artists create their content. This is actually worse than not making an effort at all.

5. You Are Not Mixing Your Content Marketing Efforts With SEO

Far too many businesses, see SEO as an avoidable expense for their business. But, they are totally wrong. Enterprise Grade SEO is and should be the foundation of your online marketing efforts. One, because it helps reduce the overall cost of consumer acquisition in the long run, and Two, because SEO helps spread your business in a completely new market, the Search Engines. I am a content marketer and an SEO consultant, so I know how these two fields are equally dependent on each other to be most effective.

Best Places To Find Content Creators

Content development can be a very resource-intensive task unless money is no bar, hiring designers, writers, coders, developers, animators, etc. in-house can seem to be a massive burden on small businesses and startups. If you are starting out, it’s always better to hire freelancers on a contract basis to get your work done for you. There is no dearth of freelancers on the internet. Here is a list of places where you can get artists and content developers at exceptionally affordable rates:

• Fiverr
• FiverUp
• GigBucks
• Zeerk
• SEOClerks
• Roundshelf

These are some of my goto places for exceptionally good content at exclusive rates. Disclaimer: Use these services at your own risk, because not all sellers on these platforms are delivering good work. So be sure to check out reviews, a number of sales, reply time, orders in progress, etc., before you try any of the services listed on these platforms.

What’s Going to Work and What’s Not Going to Work in 2017

Coming onto our takeaway from this post. Many things come to our mind when we think of consumable content, be it whitepapers, blogs, videos, podcasts, infographics and more. But there are two factors that can impact your bottom line when you start out content marketing:

1. What used to work a year back, may not be a great option today. Maybe you have better alternatives.
2. What works for someone else, may not necessarily work for you: A brand might be leveraging Pinterest, by creating more infographics and images for their consumers, but what if your consumers are on YouTube? So, it would be a wise decision to create videos for your brand, instead of Infographics. You get the idea, right??!?

So, keeping these two factors in mind, let’s look at the best practices for 2017:

• Live Streaming Increasing in Popularity:

Recorded videos will never go out of fashion, but the recent trends in 2015-2016 show that live streaming is now the most easily consumable content available to viewers. The rise of applications like YouTube Live, Facebook Live and Snapchat, make it all the easier to host live product tours, launch events, tutorials, briefing and another form of content.

• Virtual Reality Will Set the Stage:

With companies like The Outdoor Clothing Company and The North Face embracing VR Technology to showcase their clothes and athletes, we know that VR is already being accepted. Though this feature will not be available to small and mid-sized businesses anytime soon, due to the cost, we are sure to see all big companies taking advantage of it. You too should keep this in mind, if you can afford this technology.

• Native Advertising to replace Push Advertising:

AD Blockers and the genuine hate for banner advertisements is making it difficult for companies to take advantage of Pop-ups, Pop-under, Banner and Exit Intent advertisements. This does not mean that banner ads are dead, but consumers are evolving and so is advertising.

• Storytelling Will Be the Most Important Form of Marketing:

Consumers are tired of reading advertisement copies and bland content. They want more. Good Storytelling is and will continue to be the source of prime brand inspiration for consumers. Storytelling doesn’t only refer to case studies, but a lot more. Brand’s need to think outside the box to promote themselves in a manner which is better accepted. So simply blogging for the sake of blogging or updating social networks is not going to cut it, you need to find better ways to engage with your audience.

• Email Newsletters Are Not Dead:

Nor will they be, anytime We have been discussing the death of email for the past few years, but with the rise of open-rates in 2016, it feels that we are having been making a premature decision. Again, sending out emails for the sake of sending them is not going to work, needless to say, it never did. You need to write your emails in a way that each one connects with a previous, letting your audience keep waiting for more.

How You Can Make the Most of What’s Going to Work!

Now since you know how top brands are leveraging content marketing, mistakes beginners tend to make and places where you can get affordable content developers and also what is working in 2017, you have all the right ingredients for the recipe.

Remember, the food can only be as good as the cook, so you need to make the most of these pointers that I have mentioned in the post. Give it a try. When doing business, there are bound to be cliffhangers and risks, so don’t be afraid to take an attempt and fail. After all, with failure comes perfection.

I believe that 2017 should be a real fruitful year for businesses that are thinking of stepping into the online marketing scene because a lot of evolving technology is setting the stage. And with this evolving technology, there is an advantage of starting out early and being head to head with the big fishes.

If you want to take advantage of the Online Marketing Scene in 2017, you should be planning ahead to spend in Search Engine Optimization, Email Marketing, Story Telling via Blog and Newsletters, and of course Virtual Reality showcasing, if it fits your brand strategy.

With that said, I will close this overly long post because I am sure you are left with more than one idea tingling in your head. Moving to you: If you were to bet your money on that one marketing strategy in 2017. What would it be?

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.