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The future of the beleaguered Boeing 737 Max 8 is once again in jeopardy. The airplane manufacturer announced today it will halt production of the plane that has crashed twice since 2018. The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday night that the manufacturer was deciding whether to suspend or curb production of the plane that’s been…
After reaching roughly 800 million active users within a year and a half of its 2018 launch, TikTok has become one of the fastest-growing social media apps of the last decade
Like any trendy social platform with a huge global audience, influencers and brands are flocking to TikTok.
As a marketer who’s considering TikTok opportunities, you might be wondering if you should start an account for your brand, or if you should leverage influencers who joined early on and already know how to create engaging content for its young audience.
Even if you know what TikTok is and the basics of how to use it, the social platform is still very new. Because of this, there aren’t many rules, norms, or solid best practices for using the app just yet. In fact, much of the content on it is still fairly experimental and creative. At this point, rather than asking, “What is TikTok?”, you might be wondering, “What makes an account successful there?”
When it comes to learning about what makes content on a new social media platform successful, the best thing to do is look at the tactics of its most popular accounts. Researching what the best of the best are doing on an app like TikTok can also inspire your own ideas for great content.
To help you learn about what makes the top TikTok users so successful, we’ve put together a rundown of the ten most-followed individuals on TikTok, as well as a list of brands with a million followers or more.
By reading up on TikTok’s most followed accounts below, you’ll learn about what it takes to create engaging content on the platform and possibly get inspired to create your own TikTok videos.
First, we’ll dive into the platform’s top branded accounts. However, if you’d prefer to learn about TikTok’s most followed users, who are mainly social media influencers, you can click here or scroll down to see that list.
Because brands are relatively new to TikTok, you’ll notice that they haven’t nearly reached the high follower numbers as influencers. Also, because business accounts are exactly the same as individual accounts, there’s no specific list to confirm the platform’s highest-ranking companies. However, here are some of the brands that have already surpassed 1 million followers on TikTok
Combined Followers: 88 million+
TikTok’s main account, which has 35.5 million followers, is the most followed on the app. The next most-followed brand accounts are TikTok India, with 29 million followers, and LiveTV which has 23.7 million followers and presents videos from Musical.ly — the lip-syncing app that TikTok took over in 2017.
TikTok and TikTok India both follow a similar strategy of highlighting features on the app, company news, and the inner workings of the TikTok office. Meanwhile, LiveTV curates and reposts engaging lip-syncing videos from the discontinued app Musical.ly.
Since you’ve already seen a number of great lip-syncing videos in this post, I’ll zone in on TikTok’s flagship @TikTok account, which highlights the brand itself.
While it’s not surprising the TikTok has the top follower count on its own app, what is interesting is how the account is used. Rather than curating and reposting popular content made by users, as Instagram does on its Instagram account, TikTok makes its own content to educate viewers about the app and brand. This is a really great marketing strategy because it allows people to see the creative and unique inner workings of TikTok.
In this example, TikTok presents mini-interviews of its U.S. office’s diverse employees and leadership. The video also demonstrates that TikTok embraces female leaders:
TikTok also highlights some of its most interesting brand and influencer accounts. For example, in the video below, TikTok promotes the NFL’s new TikTok channel by showing employees talking about football:
In another video, TikTok has two of its popular influencers compete in a trivia game called #FinishTheTikTok where each player sees the beginning of their opponent’s TikTok posts and has to explain how it ends.
Regardless of which platform you market your brand on, one of the best strategies for developing an audience and awareness is to show off the things that make your company unique. TikTok nails this strategy by continuously coming up with ways to highlight its brand, employees, and prominent influencers to remind viewers why the app is so successful.
Followers: 20.4 million
Flighthouse is a media and entertainment company founded by a 20-year old CEO named Jacob Pace. The company produces music, videos, and other content for YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Spotify and other platforms that are popular with Gen-Z and millennials.
On its TikTok channel, Flighthouse hosts mini-shows that feature social influencers and celebrities discussing online trends or playing trivia games.
Here’s an example where Baby Ariel, an influencer noted on the list above, is asked to identify celebrities by their baby picture:
Many of Flighthouse’s mini-shows are segmented into multiple TikTok posts with captions that signify whether a viewer is watching parts one, two, or three of the episode. This could be a great strategy. If viewers are algorithmically sent to any of these videos, they might go to the Flighthouse account if they want to watch the other parts of the show for more context.
Here’s a look at one of the multi-part Flighthouse shows where a band called AJR attempts to draw pictures that symbolize their song titles:
This channel has leveraged and thrived on influencer marketing. Even if viewers aren’t familiar with what Flighthouse does as a content creation company, they might still follow the account once they realize it regularly publishes videos that show their favorite TikTok celebrities or influencers.
Like some of the influencers on this list, Flighthouse also posts at a high frequency with regular content posted throughout the week and its mini-shows that span multiple TikTok posts.
Because of its content, frequency, and trendy-ness, Flighthouse has quickly become the most-followed media company on the platform, aside from TikTok itself. Flighthouse’s account is a good example of how a brand can learn about the interests of a social platform’s audience and make content that caters to them.
Followers: 5.7 million
While some brands are waiting and watching other companies on TikTok before launching a strategy, the NBA embraces it by dedicating seven full-time employees to creating content for the platform.
Unlike its Instagram channel, which focuses purely on basketball games and highlights, the NBA’s TikTok posts show a lighter side of the organization. For example, they’ll often post videos of players working out dramatically to music, dancing on the court, or adventures of team mascots.
Here’s one example that shows a highlight reel of a gorilla mascot doing tricks and slam dunks:
While you might expect the NBA to focus seriously on stats and games, it uses the app’s musical features to lighten up the branding and make its athletes look more relatable. While the videos still promote basketball, they also fit in well with other funny or musical posts on TikTok feeds.
When a brand or company shows off a more personal side, audiences might start to relate to it a bit more. Even if a viewer isn’t a basketball fan, they might still consider following NBA players or rooting for certain teams if they saw a funny or motivational video about them.
In other business settings, making a brand feel more personal can have the same effect. For example, if you post TikTok videos of employees dancing, viewers might think your company has a pleasant and happy staff. This might make viewers think their experience with your company will be fun, helpful, or positive in other ways.
Followers: 4.7 million
Nickelodeon, a children’s television channel that’s created award-winning shows for decades, uses its TikTok to stay in touch with its young audiences, while also posting nostalgic clips of older shows that might be well-known to its older or adult audiences.
On the account, you can find funny clips from its newest shows, as well as mini-music videos with visuals from old shows with new music of soundbite overlays.
Here’s an example where Nickelodeon posts a scene from Spongebob Squarepants with a musical overlay of the Billie Eilish song, “Bad Guy:”
In the example above, Nickelodeon reminds nostalgic or older fans of Spongebob while allowing mixing in a new, trendy Eilish song to make it enjoyable for all age groups.
Like TikTok, Nickelodeon also gives viewers a look behind the scenes by showing funny skits filmed within the channel’s offices. For example, in this skit, an employee recreates a sushi Halloween costume from the early 2000s show ICarly:
While you might think that younger people might get bored with office-based videos, this channel demonstrates how behind-the-scenes footage can still be engaging to all ages. With these videos, Nickelodeon shows that its content is fun because its made by fun, lighthearted employees.
Followers: 3.1 million
The TikTok account of energy drink Red Bull leans into its slogan — “Gives you wings” — by showing extreme sports videos of notable athletes doing in-air stunts. For example, Red Bull might show snowboarders, BMX bikers, or other athletes going over jumps or doing tricks in the air. The idea is to show how people who drink Red Bull are flying because the beverage “gives them wings.”
Here’s an example where Red Bull shows BMX athlete, Carson Storch, doing tricks on a racecourse.
While Red Bull isn’t marketing its product outright, it’s come up with a way to link it’s metaphorical “Gives you wings” slogan to entertaining videos that TikTok viewers will watch or engage with. Red Bull’s TikTok demonstrates how a company can get creative on a new social network while still having a deeper strategy that relates to its brand.
Followers: 1.6 million
Radio Disney’s TikTok highlights musicians that are commonly played on the Radio Disney app and in Disney content. Like Flighthouse, this channel also heavily embraces influencer marketing by posting videos of popular musicians singing or performing in the Radio Disney Studios.
If you’re wondering which social network your brand should be on next, take a note from Radio Disney and build a presence on platforms that are already a great fit for your brand or target audience. Because Radio Disney’s audience ranges from children around five years old to people in their late tweens, the brand is a natural fit for TikTok, which is both highly musical and has a heavy tween and Gen-Z audiences.
Followers: 1.2 million
Since launching its account in September 2019, the NFL has quickly surpassed one million TikTok followers. The account posts a mix of serious and funny game highlight videos with musical overlays.
In one of the NFL’s more traditional videos, it highlights a ball that was passed an excessive amount of times during a complicated play:
Occasionally, the account will also post funny or lighthearted behind the scenes videos that intertwine TikTok’s musical overlays. For example, one recent post featured a football team doing the Cha Cha Slide during practice.
Like the NBA, the NFL uses its TikTok to promote its league while also making football players more relatable with lighthearted behind-the-scenes videos that show another side of the competitive sporting industry.
Although these companies are all experimenting with a new platform and trying to leverage TikTok’s features and trends, they still seem to stay true to their brand. While Red Bull’s account is a visual metaphor for its slogan, Radio Disney highlights some of its best musicians. Although social media platforms have evolved, overall brand strategies have stayed quite consistent. These brands are all ultimately showing off characteristics of their companies that make them stand out from the competitors.
Another brand strategy commonly used on the platform is showing off behind-the-scenes or lighthearted content about the brand itself. For example, while TikTok highlights what’s happening in its U.S. office, the NBA shows funny videos of its players practicing. This adds a sense of depth to the brand that makes viewers identify with and trust it more.
Aside from the brands listed above, a number of others with under a million followers are still testing out unique strategies on the platform. To learn more about some of the most creative brands we’ve seen on TikTok, check out this post.
As mentioned in the NBA example, you can earn trust, a sense of relatability, and potentially new fans by showing off your brand’s most human qualities in funny or behind-the-scenes videos. This social media strategy could be beneficial to any company that might struggle to relate to its audience or possible new followers.
Followers; 34.6 million
Loren Gray is a 17-year old singer and influencer who’s also gained millions of followers on YouTube and Instagram. While the content she produces on those platforms often shows her performing, reviewing products, or vlogging, her TikTok is mainly used for lip-syncing purposes.
She’s grown her following by regularly posting videos with the hottest soundbites on TikTok, while also participating in various hashtag challenges. She also occasionally includes other TikTok influencers in her videos or responds to popular duets.
In the post below, she celebrates National Avocado Day with a #GuacDance Challenge video. The #GuacDance Challenge, launched by Chipotle, encourages TikTok users to dance to “The Guacamole Song“ while eating guacamole on camera:
While Gray uses her other platforms to share news about her career, she embraces TikTok’s overall platform by paying attention to and participating in the hottest trends on the app. Her account is a great example of how you can gain a following simply by experimenting with and leveraging all the unique features of the social media platform you’re on.
Aside from using the TikTok app’s features and trends to their fullest, Gray also posts at a high frequency by adding TikTok videos often more than once a day. On a fast-paced app like TikTok, more videos gives you more chances of getting seen in the feeds of new audiences and followers.
Followers: 29.8 million
Baby Ariel, whose real name is Ariel Martin, is a 19-year old singer and actress who’s known primarily for her TikTok videos. Like Loren Gray, Baby Ariel is also a social media personality with large followings on Instagram and YouTube.
Baby Ariel publishes a few different types of videos on her TikTok account multiple times per week. Some are comedic, while others are like mini-vlogs where she talks about her life. Here’s an example of a funny post where she struggles to do her makeup as well as TikTok and YouTube’s beauty influencers:
While many influencers use TikTok just stick to promoting video-based content or creating funny skits, Baby Ariel uniquely tries to do is make her overall account more interactive. For example, she’ll occasionally post a vlog-styled video and ask her audience to respond to a question she’s asked in the comments.
In this video, she invites her audience to pick songs or soundbites that she’ll make her next TikTok videos to:
Baby Ariel’s strategy feels very personal. By posting vlogs and funny content regularly, she gives fans a look into her daily life. Additionally, by talking to her audiences directly and allowing viewers to sway certain aspects of her videos, like the music, she makes her overall content feel more interactive and fan-driven. When viewers see an influencer or entertainer interacting with fans, the influencer might seem more trustworthy or like someone who cares about their followers.
Followers: 25.3 million
While many of the influencers you’ll see on this list are singers or actors, Zach King — a 29-year old YouTuber and a former Vine personality — specializes in optical illusions, puzzles, and magic tricks. Most of his TikTok videos show viewers puzzles or ask them to stare at “magical” images.
In the video below, King stacks a bunch of Rubik’s Cubes and asks viewers to count how many cubes are in the pile. He then magically pulls out an extra cube that wasn’t visible in the pile:
Zach King’s success on TikTok is a great example of how someone can leverage the platform to show off unique talents rather than their ability to dance or lip-sync to music. King’s TikTok also demonstrates how you can still engage with your audience in unique ways even when you don’t communicate directly with them on the platform.
Followers: 23 million
Kristen Hancher is a social media personality and YouTuber who made news when she re-enacted famous photos of Kylie Jenner on her Instagram. Since then, she’s become a TikTok personality who mostly uses the app to post videos of her lip-syncing to all sorts of songs. Here’s one example:
The only time Hancher broke away from lip-syncing was when she aired an abridged vlog post about why she re-enacted Kylie Jenner’s photos on Instagram. Because the TikTok video is horizontal and shows up vertically when embedded, here’s the YouTube version:
Like Loren Gray, Hancher’s learned the art of catering social content to the channel she’s on, rather than trying to post the same content on each channel. On TikTok, she’s embraced the apps musical features, but on other social platforms, like YouTube, she’s taken on more personal strategies like vlogging.
Followers: 22.8 million
Riyaz Alfreen is a model and social media personality from India who’s built a major fan base on TikTok. Like most of the influencers on this list, much of his content can be split into the categories of lip-syncing or mini-music videos. Here’s one example:
What’s unique about Alfreen is that all of his videos are in the Indian language. This goes to show how big TikTok’s Indian and Asian audiences really are. While many of the influencers on this list are from the US, only 26 million members of TikTok’s user base are actually American. So it actually isn’t surprising that many prominent TikTok influencers are international.
Followers: 21.8 million
While many influencers on this list tend to film basic lip-syncing videos, Gil Croes’ videos seem more theatrical and leverage many of TikTok’s editing features. Croes also edits and adds his own music or sound effects to his videos. This makes his content feel more unique than other videos on the platform which strive to conform to trendy songs or soundbites.
Here’s an example of a well-edited post where Croes and his brother Jay, featured lower on this list, wear multiple goofy Halloween costumes. The music was also uploaded and edited by Croes himself:
Like other influencers on this list, Croes also participates in challenges and responds to TikTok trends in his videos. For example, he recently posted another Halloween-themed video where he and his brother suddenly turned into ghouls while dancing to the song, “Absolutely Anything” by CGS.
To give background on the “Absolutely Anything” video seen above, the trend encourages dulled up people to dance to the lyrics, “I used to be so beautiful, now look at me.” Then, when the bass drops, the video cuts to a less attractive or odd-looking version of themselves. In Croes’s case, he and his brother go from wearing dapper suits to becoming spooky Halloween characters.
Croes is a great example of an influencer who puts a great deal of effort and thought into his video’s storylines, costumes, editing, and special effects. While he leverages all of the unique features that TikTok has to offer, he also embraces TikTok influencers like his own brother to cross-promote and gain followers from multiple fanbases.
Followers: 21.1 million
Jacob Sartorius is a YouTuber and Vine alum who regularly uses TikTok to post vlog-style videos, comedic skits, and the app’s usual lip-syncing or music videos.
When it comes to Sartorius’ vlog-style videos, he often posts content that’s reminiscent of his old Vine videos. These videos are usually short, sweet, and center around one or two key jokes. Here’s an example where he talks about healthy dieting:
In some of his videos, Sartorius talks directly to his audience when updating them about his life or career. In the example below, he tells his fans that he’s going to be posting more YouTube videos and promotes his channel by showing clips of what viewers might see there:
Sometimes, social media platforms can change drastically, get deactivated, or completely rebrand. In that scenario, successful influencers will be able tactical enough to pivot smoothly on to other platforms where their content strategies will still work. When Vine was discontinued and TikTok was unveiled shortly after, Sartorius adopted the new platform early and took his short-form content strategy there.
Because of his success on TikTok, Sartorius is a great example of an agile and adaptive influencer who can quickly identify his audience and where his content will do well naturally.
Followers: 19.9 million
Jannat Zubair Rahmani, whose stage name is just Jannat Zubair, is an Indian actress who regularly posts mini-music videos on her TikTok. Similarly to Riyaz Alfreen, noted above, her channel is completely in the Indian language.
One thing Zubair does well on TikTok is including influencers in her videos. For example, in the TikTok below she lip-syncs in fancy clothing with Indian fashion influencer Faisal Shaikh.
Occasionally, Zubair also posts funny or behind-the-scenes style videos that breaks the music video mold on her channel. For example, here’s a video skit where one of her friends falls down the stairs behind her:
Zubair is a great example of a user who leverages influencers. By including and tagging others with high followings in her videos, she enables her followers and the influencer’s fans to watch her videos. This allows Zubair’s audience to learn more about the other influencer, while the other influencer’s audience learns more about her.
Furthermore, Zubair also does a great job of showing off behind-the-scenes content. This allows her to seem more relatable and human to followers who might just think of her professional work. This relatability might make her content even more engaging to people who want to learn more about her.
Followers: 19.4 million
Jiff is a Pomeranian whose owner runs his TikTok and Instagram channels. On his TikTok, you’ll regularly find lighthearted and adorable videos of him doing fun activities to music or funny soundbites.
Here’s one example where Jiff rides a mini-skateboard:
Even though he’s a dog, Jiff is regularly seen promoting products in his videos. In this cute TikTok, he’s dressed in a Halloween costume to promote a holiday-themed burrito deal from Chipotle.
This account shows that TikTok influencers don’t necessarily need to be famous or even human to get a massive amount of followers. What’s more important here is the dog’s entertainment factor and the owner’s strategy of using sponsorships and influencer marketing to make the dog more well-known to new audiences.
Followers: 18.6 million
Awez Darbar is an Indian dancer, choreographer and social media personality who regularly uses his TikTok to show off his dancing skills via mini-music videos.
When he posts mini-music videos, he often includes other TikTok influencers or famous Indian performers as dance partners. For example, in the video below, he dances with his sister, Anam Dabar, who has nearly 6 million TikTok followers.
Aside from choreography Darbar also goes slightly off brand and creatively embraces the oddities of TikTok’s platform by posting funny skits to silly soundbites. Here’s an example:
Although Darbar is a choreographer, he’s seamlessly used TikTok as a creative outlet for comedic skits and other content that might be slightly off-brand. Through this strategy, he’s also been able to embrace some of the apps key editing and soundbite features.
Darbar is a great example of an influencer who’s identified and created content that works on the TikTok platform. For example, he’s realized that funny skits and choreography videos are a natural fit for the platform and provide solid opportunities for pulling in other influencers.
Followers: 18.3 million
Jay Croes is a social media personality and the brother of Gil Croes, noted above. Like his brother’s TikTok account, Croes posts well-edited videos with solid mini-storylines. Here’s an example of a skit he posted that highlights the odd things teachers say to students:
Jay and his brother, Gil, have a solid strategy of working together to produce videos that cross-promote both of their channels. Here’s an example of a mini-music video that features his brother and another TikTok influencer named Clap:
Croes also creates sponsored content. Here’s an example where he posts a skit about being sick and taking Mucinex so he won’t miss Halloween:
Jay Croes and Gil Croes have both taken a number of traditional social media influencer strategies and adapted them to TikTok. For example, Jay and his brother both put a great deal of effort into producing high-quality videos, leveraging influencers, and embracing sponsored content.
While brands might take longer to join and master TikTok, its top influencers aren’t afraid to dive in and embrace every weird trend that pops up on the platform. And, although influencers are moving towards networks like TikTok and Instagram, their core strategies haven’t changed.
Like YouTube and other more traditional platforms, you can still find influencers talking about their lives, creating skits or videos to entertain their audiences, and leveraging other influencers or sponsors to grow their following.
If you’re considering sponsoring a TikTok influencers content, you’ll want to look for someone who has a solid track record with “hearts,” the platform’s version of a “Like” as well as comments. These metrics show that their videos are engaging and gaining discussion.
Additionally, you can also look for influencers that try to make their content feel interactive. For example, if you see a TikTok influencer starting hashtag challenges or making attempts to interact with their fanbase, such as Baby Ariel, this might show that they’re experienced in creatively engaging with audiences specific to the platform.
One thing is true on TikTok. The companies and individuals who express themselves while staying true to their professional or personal brand will succeed on the app. If you’re considering your own personal or business-oriented account, remember to have fun. Videos that show off your or your brand’s identity will be much more engaging than marketing content with obvious promotional language.
To learn more about the quick growth of TikTok, check out this post. If you’re struggling to figure out how to use the app, don’t worry. This detailed how-to guide will walk you through setting up an account and posting your first video.
Want to learn more about branded content? Or just want to see some more odd-ball videos? Check out this rundown of our favorite brands on TikTok.
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You
all know SEO is a long-term game… at least when it comes to Google.
And yes, who doesn’t want to be at the top of Google for some of the most competitive terms? But the reality is, we don’t all have the budget or time.
So
then, what should you do?
Well, what if I told you there were simple ways to get more organic traffic and, best of all, you don’t have to do one bit of SEO?
Seriously.
So,
what is it? And how can you get more organic traffic?
Well,
this story will help explain it…
When
I first started my journey as an SEO, I got really good at one thing.
Getting
rankings!
Now to be fair, this was back in 2003 when it wasn’t that hard to rank on Google (or any other search engine for that matter).
Stuff some keywords into your page, your meta tags, and build some spammy rich anchor text links and you were good to go.
You
could literally see results in less than a month.
SEO wasn’t too complicated back then. So much so, that I even started an SEO agency and created a handful of sites.
I was starting to rank my sites at the top of Google but they didn’t make a dollar. Literally, not a single dollar.
In fact, I was actually losing money on them because I had to pay for the domain registration expenses and hosting.
So, one day I decided that I was tired of losing money and I was going to do something about it. I took the keywords that I was ranking for and started to type them into Google to see who was paying for ads for those terms.
I hit up each of those sites and tried to get a hold of the owner or the person in charge of marketing.
I asked them how much they were paying for ads and offered them the same exact traffic for a much lower price. I was able to do this because I already had sites that ranked for those keywords.
In other words, I offered to rent out my website for a monthly fee that was a fraction of what they were paying for paid ads.
Next thing you know I was collecting 5 figures in monthly checks and my “renters” were ecstatic because they were generating sales at a fraction of the costs compared to what they were spending on paid ads.
Well, it’s simple. Back in the day, I used to rent out my websites… the whole site.
These
days I’ve learned how to monetize my own site, so I don’t rent them out.
But you know what, most of the sites that rank on Google are content-based sites. Over 56% of a website’s organic traffic is typically going to their blog or articles.
So why not rent a page on someone else’s site? From there, modify that page a bit to promote your products or services?
I
know this sounds crazy, but it works. I have one person that just reaches out
to site owners asking if we can rent out a page on their site. We do this for
all industries and verticals… and when I look at how much we are spending
versus how much income we are generating, it’s crazy.
Here are the stats for the last month:
Rental
fees: $24,592
Outreach costs: $3,000
Legal
costs: $580
Copywriting
and monetization costs: $1,500
Total
monthly cost: $29,672
Now
guess what my monthly income was?
It
was $79,283.58.
Not
too bad.
Now
your cost on this model won’t be as high as mine because you can do your own
outreach, monetize the page you are renting on your own, and you probably don’t
need a lawyer.
And don’t be afraid of how much I am spending in rental fees as you can get away with spending $0 in the first 30 days as I will show you exactly what to do.
Remember, it’s also not what you are spending, it’s about profit and what you are making. If it won’t cost you any money in the first 30 days and you can generate income, your risk is little to none.
Here
are the exact steps you need to follow:
If
you already know the terms you want to rank for, great, you can skip this step.
If you don’t, I want you to head to Ubersuggest and type in a few of your competitors’ URLs.
Head
over to the top pages report and look at their top pages.
Now
click on “view all” under the estimated visits column to see a list of
keywords that each page ranks for.
I want you to create a list of all of the keywords that contain a high search volume and have a high CPC. Keywords with a high CPC usually mean that they convert well.
Keywords
with a low CPC usually mean they don’t convert as well.
When
you are making a list of keywords, you’ll need to make sure that you have a
product or service that is related to each keyword. If you don’t then you won’t
be able to monetize the traffic.
It’s
time to do some Google searches.
Look
for all of the pages that rank in the top 10 for the term you ideally want to
rank for.
Don’t
waste your time with page 2.
What
I want you to look for is:
Typically, through their contact page, they should have their email addresses or phone number listed. If they have a contact form, you can get in touch that way as well.
If
you can’t find their details, you can do a whois
lookup to see if you can find their phone number.
What’ll
you want to do is get them on the phone. DO NOT MAKE YOUR PITCH OVER EMAIL.
It
just doesn’t work well over email.
If
you can’t find their phone number, email them with a message that goes
something like this…
Subject: [their website name]
Hey [insert first name],
Do you have time for a quick call this week?
We’ve been researching your business and we would like to potentially make you an offer.
Let me know what works for you.
Cheers,
[insert your name]
[insert your company]
[insert your phone number]
You
want to keep the email short as I have found that it tends to generate more
calls.
Once you get them on the phone, you can tell them a little bit about yourself. Once you do that, tell them that you noticed they have a page or multiple pages on their website that interest you.
Point
out the URL and tell them how you are interested in giving them money each
month to rent out the page and you wouldn’t change much of it… but you need
some more information before you can make your offer.
At this point, you’ll want to find out how much traffic that page generates and the keywords it ranks for. They should have an idea by just looking at their Google Analytics (you’ll find most of these sites don’t use Google Search Console).
Once
you have that, let them know that you will get in touch with them in the next
few days after you run some numbers.
Go back, try to figure out what each click is worth based on a conservative conversion rate of .5%. In other words, .if 5% of that traffic converted into a customer, what would the traffic be worth to you after all expenses?
You’ll
want to use a conservative number because you can’t modify the page too
heavily or else you may lose rankings.
Once
you have a rough idea of what the page is worth, get back on the phone with
them and say you want to run tests for 30 days to get a more solid number on
what you can pay them as you want to give them a fair offer.
Typically,
most people don’t have an issue because they aren’t making money from the page
in the first place.
If
you are selling a product, the easiest way to monetize is to add links to the
products you are selling.
For
example, if you are selling a kitchen appliance like a toaster, you can add
links from the article to your site.
The easiest way to monetize a blog post is to add links to products or services you are selling.
Don’t delete a lot of the content on the page you are modifying… adding isn’t too much of an issue but when you delete content sometimes you will lose rankings.
As
for a service-based business, linking out to pages on your site where people
can fill out their lead information is great.
Or you can just add lead capturing to the page you are renting out. Kind of like how HubSpot adds lead forms on their site.
I’ve actually found that they convert better than just linking out to your site.
When monetizing the page you are renting, keep in mind that you will need disclaimers to let people know that you are collecting their information for privacy purposes. You also should disclose you are renting out the page and nofollow the links.
Once you are monetizing the page for a bit, you’ll have a rough idea of what it is worth and you can make an offer on what you’ll page.
I recommend doing a 12-month contract in which you can opt-out
with a 30-day notice.
The reason you want a 12-month agreement is that you don’t want to have to keep renegotiating. I also include the 30-day opt-out notice in case they lose their rankings, you can opt-out.
And to clarify on the op-out clause, I have it so only I can opt-out and they are stuck in the agreement for a year.
SEO isn’t the only way you can get more organic traffic.
Being creative, such as renting pages that already rank is an easy solution. Best of all, you can get results instantly and it’s probably cheaper than doing SEO in the long run.
The only issue with this model is that it is really hard to
scale.
If I were you, I would do both. I, of course, do SEO on my own site because it provides a big ROI. And, of course, if you can rent out the pages of everyone else who ranks for the terms you want to rank for, it can provide multiple streams of income from SEO.
The beauty of this is model is that you can take up more than one listing on page 1. In theory, you can take up all 10 if you can convince everyone to let you rent their ranking page.
So, what do you think of the idea? Are you going to try it out?
The post How to Get More Organic Traffic Without Doing Any SEO (Seriously) appeared first on Neil Patel.
If you’ve had trouble picking a niche, this episode is for you. I spoke with Pamela Slim, business coach and author of the best-seller, Escape from Cubicle Nation and her latest book, Body of Work. We talked about how to develop the language to attract the right people and repel the wrong people to your business. If you like what you hear, write a review, subscribe on Apple Podcasts and, one more thing, be sure to sign up for my Quick Tips from Marketing Mentor.
As we pursue strategies to hit quarterly targets, we increase cost and thus devalue ourselves even when we hit the (sometimes unreasonable) goals.
Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.
Instagram Stories was one of the most dynamic social media channels in 2019. So much happened with Stories — from new developments with the product to strong returns on Stories ads and organic reach.
Over 500 million people use Instagram Stories every day.
I’m definitely among that group.
And at Buffer, Stories has been a major focus in 2019 as well. Within the Buffer product, we debuted Stories scheduling to help you plan and manage your Stories content, and we released advanced Stories analytics to help you know what’s working.
Not to mention, we had a ton of Stories podcast episodes in 2019, which you can find in our archives.
So when it comes to picking some of the best Stories campaigns of 2019, we really have a lot of options. And it’s hard to choose.
We’ll run through a list of our favorites. If there are any favorites of yours that we missed, please do let us know by using #bufferpodcast on any social media channel.
Let’s get right to it then.
Some of the best Instagram content is food content. And Stories is no exception! Especially the folks at Tastemade.
Tastemade is a community of food, travel, and design lovers. Their website is chock full of beautiful food videos and shows. They do a great job translating it to their Instagram Stories.
In particular, their “tap fast” format has been so fun to watch.
That’s right. Many of the stories on the @tastemadeuk handle use “tap fast.” These Stories piece together dozens of photos in stop-motion fashion — each photo just a slight movement ahead of the previous. And then you are the one who animates all the images into a moving picture by tapping quickly from one Story to the next.
Collectively, it makes a self-propelled stop-motion video of a biscuit baking or a cooking dunking. It’s awesome.
And it’s good for your Stories stats, too. There’s a ton of incentive to tap all the way through to see how the Story ends up.
Along with food content, music is another big theme for the year. You’ve probably seen your friends and colleagues sharing what they’re listening to on Spotify. You can share your songs straight to Instagram Stories from your Spotify mobile app.
Another way that brands have taken advantage of this is sharing playlists through Instagram Stories.
Brooklinen, for instance, has a great series of playlists. They’ve even branded them with their own name: Brooklinen Beats. Each time Brooklinen shares a a playlist on Stories, they add a swipe up link that sends people to Spotify to listen. Brooklinen debuted a new playlist every week at the start of 2019, and they’ve saved all their playlists to their Stories highlights for people to check out anytime.
Next up, one of the most creative Stories we saw this year came from the furniture brand Burrow.
They basically created a coloring page for their audience to fill in.
Yeah, the set of Stories was called Dream Sofa. Burrow asked its followers to describe their dream sofa — it could be as wild and imaginative as they liked. Then Burrow provided the sofa template. Burrow shared a drawing of a couch — just the outline in black, on a white background. They posted this to the Burrow Stories, along with instructions on how their community could download the picture and add to it. Then people grabbed the template, added their own stickers and colors, and shared to their personal accounts. Burrow was able to re-share the Dream Sofa Stories back to the Burrow account.Talk about great community engagement and incredible user-generated content!
For our next top Instagram Story, we’re going back to the world of food. Cookware brand Potluck had a great campaign based on one of the neatest — albeit underutilized — features of Instagram Stories: custom AR filters.
Potluck created its very own Instagram Stories filter called Yes Chef. The filter adds a chef hat and mustache to any faces in the photo.
Many people in their community ended up using the filter on their photos and tagging Potluck in the Stories. The Potluck team was then able to reshare and collect these photos into their own Stories collection, which remains on their profile in their Stories highlights.
Each time Potluck shares a new Yes Chef pic, they give a shout out and an @mention to the person who originally made the photo, another great way to build community support for the brand.
I thought it was also really neat how Potluck did a Story educating people on where to find the filter. Worked great for getting the word out about it!
Cookware brands really had some awesome Stories this year. Our next pick is from another cookware brand, or rather, from its parent company.
Pattern Brands, which release Equal Parts cookware products this year, had a fantastic series of Stories content that told a really compelling brand story.
(Pattern is the brand featured in our new podcast series that follows the introduction of Pattern, going from nothing to a new product over the course of a few months. You can listen to this series by searching for Breaking Brand wherever you listen to podcasts.)
Pattern’s Instagram Stories campaign is quite simple in concept. They created wallpapers that their audience could download and use as phone backgrounds. We’ll share a couple examples in our show notes. They’re beautiful.
And what’s particularly compelling about how they approached this is that they told a larger story: the backgrounds are watercolors in a soft, calming palette, designed to promote a sense of peace when you’re spending time on your phone. This is right in line with the brand story that Pattern is telling.
Allbirds does a great job of bridging the gap between product promotion and customer service. Allbirds uses some of its Stories to share answers to frequently asked questions about its products.
This strategy is such a wonderful display of customer service and value. Allbirds takes these FAQ Stories and adds them to their Stories Highlights so the FAQ is always visible from their Instagram profile. This gives potential customers the chance to find answers to their questions quickly and easily, right from the profile page, without having to wait any time at all to hear back from an Allbirds person.
Speaking of making great use of Stories highlights, Another Stories campaign we love is the way that brands have built out almost an entire library of content within their Stories.
Take Monica + Andy, for instance. The kidswear brand runs its own podcast, and each podcast episode gets a shoutout on the brand’s Instagram Stories.
What’s particularly great is that each Story shoutout follows a similar template. There’s a photo of the podcast guest plus some nice typography and titles. What Monica + Andy do then is take these Stories and put them all into a Stories Highlights. When you tap on the Highlights, you can thumb through the entire podcast archive, one after the other, and all the images look great and on-brand.
The online design magazine puts together a weekly newsletter to share on their Stories at the end of every week.
It’s a ton of great content, packaged perfectly for Instagram. Each story is its own slide, designed with a unique background and with strong headline copy. You swipe up to go to the Its Nice That website to read more. They’ll share about five to ten articles each week this way — the top content and news from the past few days in a very digestible format.
And then one final Stories trend that we really loved seeing this year was the rise of Instagram Story templates. We referenced this a bit earlier with Burrow’s cool example of the Dream Sofa. 2019 introduced a whole cottage industry of Story templates for brands.
A Story template is simply an image with graphics and text that includes a number of blank spaces for people to fill in their answers. Picture a questionnaire or a mad lib.
The Hopper blog listed a huge number of different options of ways to use these templates, many of which we saw on several brand accounts in 2019.The list includes:
We would all love to say hello to you on social media – especially Twitter!
Thanks for listening! Feel free to connect with our team at Buffer on Twitter, Buffer on Facebook, our Podcast homepage, or with the hashtag #bufferpodcast.
The Science of Social Media is your weekly sandbox for social media stories, insights, experimentation, and inspiration. Every Monday (and sometimes more) we share the most cutting-edge social media marketing tactics from brands and influencers in every industry. If you’re a social media team of one, business owner, marketer, or someone simply interested in social media marketing, you’re sure to find something useful in each and every episode. It’s our hope that you’ll join our 27,000+ weekly iTunes listeners and rock your social media channels as a result!
The Science of Social Media is proudly made by the Buffer team. Feel free to get in touch with us for any thoughts, ideas, or feedback.
If you want to advance your data science skill set, Python can be a valuable tool for SEOs to generate deep data insights to help your brand.
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
Over the summer, AWeber announced that it was the first small business email service provider to support the new AMP for Email technology! Now, we’re excited to share the latest evolution in how we’re making it powerfully-simple for you to use AMP for Email inside AWeber.
AMP stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages. When paired with AWeber, the powerful technology has the ability to completely transform how you connect with your prospects and customers via email.
With AWeber and AMP for Email, your subscribers won’t have to leave the inbox or head to their browser to visit a web page. Instead, they can RSVP to an event, sign up for a newsletter, leave a product review, answer a survey, or view a live package shipping update — all inside your email!
Big news! AWeber has now added one of the most popular AMP for Email features — an image carousel — to our drag-and-drop email editor. The AWeber Image Carousel, powered by AMP for Email, is an interactive element that rotates through multiple slides of images. You can include photos, GIFs, blog posts, or products. As an AWeber customer, all you need to do is click the Carousel element in the tool box and drag it into your email. Then, add up to 6 images.
Previously, if you wanted to include multiple images, you had to stack them one on top of the other, taking up valuable space in your email. The AWeber Image Carousel is compact, interactive, and beautiful. Watch the video below to see how easy it is to use the Carousel inside AWeber.
AMP for Email turns static emails into interactive and dynamic content. By removing layers of friction and allowing people to directly engage with content faster, you’ll reduce the number of steps your audience has to take to respond to an offer or promotion, and ultimately drive more business.
That’s why AWeber is continuously evolving how powerfully-simple it is for you to send AMP for Email-powered messages inside our platform. We want you to see success faster than ever before.
The AWeber Image Carousel, powered by AMP for Email, is just the start. Through AWeber’s API, you can also create other powerfully-engaging interactive and dynamic content using AMP for Email components. (See how we’ve been experimenting with other AMP elements inside AWeber’s own weekly newsletter, FWD: Thinking.) If you send these AMP components through AWeber, they will display in Gmail, Outlook, and Mail.ru messages TODAY!
There are a few simple steps you’ll need to take to get started with using AMP for Email and the Carousel inside AWeber.
You can receive a full rundown on how to use AMP for Email with AWeber. Sign up for our free webinar on January 17.
Questions? Contact our Customer Solutions team, available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, from our Pennsylvania HQ.
This article was updated on December 11, 2019.
The post AWeber Continues to Grow Its Support for AMP for Email! appeared first on Email Marketing Tips.
Over the summer, AWeber announced that it was the first small business email service provider to support the new AMP for Email technology! Now, we’re excited to share the latest evolution in how we’re making it powerfully-simple for you to use AMP for Email inside AWeber.
AMP stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages. When paired with AWeber, the powerful technology has the ability to completely transform how you connect with your prospects and customers via email.
With AWeber and AMP for Email, your subscribers won’t have to leave the inbox or head to their browser to visit a web page. Instead, they can RSVP to an event, sign up for a newsletter, leave a product review, answer a survey, or view a live package shipping update — all inside your email!
Big news! AWeber has now added one of the most popular AMP for Email features — an image carousel — to our drag-and-drop email editor. The AWeber Image Carousel, powered by AMP for Email, is an interactive element that rotates through multiple slides of images. You can include photos, GIFs, blog posts, or products. As an AWeber customer, all you need to do is click the Carousel element in the tool box and drag it into your email. Then, add up to 6 images.
Previously, if you wanted to include multiple images, you had to stack them one on top of the other, taking up valuable space in your email. The AWeber Image Carousel is compact, interactive, and beautiful. Watch the video below to see how easy it is to use the Carousel inside AWeber.
AMP for Email turns static emails into interactive and dynamic content. By removing layers of friction and allowing people to directly engage with content faster, you’ll reduce the number of steps your audience has to take to respond to an offer or promotion, and ultimately drive more business.
That’s why AWeber is continuously evolving how powerfully-simple it is for you to send AMP for Email-powered messages inside our platform. We want you to see success faster than ever before.
The AWeber Image Carousel, powered by AMP for Email, is just the start. Through AWeber’s API, you can also create other powerfully-engaging interactive and dynamic content using AMP for Email components. (See how we’ve been experimenting with other AMP elements inside AWeber’s own weekly newsletter, FWD: Thinking.) If you send these AMP components through AWeber, they will display in Gmail, Outlook, and Mail.ru messages TODAY!
There are a few simple steps you’ll need to take to get started with using AMP for Email and the Carousel inside AWeber.
You can receive a full rundown on how to use AMP for Email with AWeber. Sign up for our free webinar on January 17.
Questions? Contact our Customer Solutions team, available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, from our Pennsylvania HQ.
This article was updated on December 11, 2019.
The post AWeber Continues to Grow Its Support for AMP for Email! appeared first on Email Marketing Tips.
