A First Look at New Instagram Business Tools (And What They Mean for Your Business)

Businesses have been using Instagram as a way to build their audience and connect with customers for a while now without too much insight on how their content is performing. But soon, they'll be able to dive way beyond total likes and views.

Instagram has officially announced the launch of its tools for business users, including new business profiles, analytics and the ability to create ads from posts directly within the app.

The Facebook-owned company worked with hundreds of business users to understand what was needed to enhance their Instagram experience, and three key needs became clear-stand out, get insights and find new customers.

Most importantly, they found that businesses want the ability to stand out on Instagram. Secondly, they realised that businesses needed more insights into their post-performance. During their research, a retailer in Austin explained that many analytics are overwhelming and hard to apply to its marketing. And third, businesses want to reach even more customers.

With these insights in mind, the company developed new Instagram Business Tools and we'd love to share what's coming with you.

Let's jump in!

Business profiles

Business profiles are a free feature for accounts wanting to be recognized as a business on Instagram. As noted previously, brands with a business profile can choose how they want their customers to get in touch with them: call, text or email with a tap of the contact button as well as get directions.

Business profiles will only be open to those who already have a Facebook Page for their business. Instagram's Global Head of Business and Brand Development, James Quarles explained the reasoning behind this decision to TechCrunch: “In doing that, it gives us the payment credentials, as well as if they want to prepopulate some of the information like their street address, the phone number, and the website.”

The 'Contact' button will appear next to the Following button in the profile information section of the page. Upon clicking the button, users will have the option to get in touch with the business or get directions to their location.

The 'Location' tag will be displayed underneath the current website link on a business page and when tapped, will open up a map showing the business location and enable users to get directions from their current location.

Insights

Insights on Instagram give businesses actionable information about who their followers are and which posts resonate better than others-all from within the mobile app. By learning more about the behavior and demographics of your audience, Instagram believe you can create more relevant and timely content.

Insights will feature metrics like top posts, reach, impressions and engagement around posts, as well as more data on your followers like their gender, age, and location. Here's a look at how the Insights will be displayed on iOS, as reported on Later.com:

Instagram business users will be able to identify where their followers are from, even going as deep as the city they're in. This will be incredibly valuable for marketers, especially when it comes to figuring out when to post content to their profiles to maximise reach and engagement. The new Insights will also show you the most popular times of day your followers are using Instagram.

Later also report that you'll able to view the top posts sorted by Impressions for both a 7 day and a 30 day period. This will help business users to work out an engagement rate based on how many people have seen their post and how many decided to engage with it.

Here's a quick video showing Instagram's new Insights in action:

Promote

The ability to promote lets you turn well-performing posts into ads right within the Instagram app-helping you connect with even more customers.

To run an ad, you'll be able to simply pick a post you've already shared on Instagram and add a button encouraging people to take action. You can select a target audience or allow Instagram to suggest targeting for you. After that, your post will be promoted as an ad for any length of time you choose.

The new ads functionality is designed to let business get started with ads in just a few taps. Speaking to AdWeek, Jim Squires, director of market operations at Instagram, said: “The way I envision this is there are a lot of businesses on the platform that may be new to advertising, or not advertising yet, and this is a straightforward, easy way to start advertising on the platform.”

The simplicity of this tool means that businesses may not have the flexibility and targeting options available using tools like Facebook's Ads Manager or Power Editor. Though, as TechCrunch reports, advertisers will be able to define and save custom audiences based on data from Facebook users' profiles such as gender, age and location and interests.

Over to you

Instagram business tools are just some of the ways Instagram say they hope to make growing a business on much easier. Business profiles, insights and the ability to promote will be rolling out in the US, Australia and New Zealand in the coming months, and will be available in all regions globally by the end of the year.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on these new features and how they may make your Instagram experience smoother. Feel free to leave a comment and I'd be excited to jump in and join the conversation.

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Airbnb's new site lets neighbors complain about noisy guests

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Airbnb is making moves to show it can be a good corporate citizen. Instead of just showing how it can build up market share in cities around the world, it's building an experience. But it recognizes that not everything will go the right way in a community, which is why today it launched a site dedicated to hearing complaints from neighbors.

Those that suspect an Airbnb property is near them and in which the tenants are behaving badly will now have a dedicated place to inform the company. The submissions can by done anonymously or you can have your information passed along to provide feedback to the host. Issues that you can complain about include noise, personal safety, common spaces, or other general concerns.

While Airbnb has no fantasies about the perfect behaviors of its hosts and guests, it does admit that it wants to “help our community members be good neighbors in the places our hosts call home.” The company claimed that “complaints and issues are incredibly rare.”

The launch of this portal comes as the company moves forward with its new marketing campaign that encourages you to “live there” in that guests shouldn't just stop in a city for a split second and leave, but actually take it all in like a local. And as such it means to be a good community member. But sometimes things can get out of hand and in order to avoid local governments and its citizens from putting forth potential regulations, such as what Airbnb faced in San Francisco with Proposition F, it has to show that it's taking the needs of non-guests and non-hosts very seriously.

What Airbnb is providing now is an easier way for neighbors to file complaints about listings in their neighborhood and gain some transparency into whatever investigation transpires. Now there's a central place for you to get your voice heard instead of having to tweet madly at the company or even emailing with the hopes that it'll be seen and catalogued.

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6 Simple Tricks To Make More Money From Your Blog

Are you getting traffic to your blog, but still struggling to make a good income?

Blogging is a great career option but only if you do it the right way. Of course, everything starts with providing great content to your readers and steadily growing your traffic. Once you have decent traffic to your blog and a loyal audience, it's time to focus on the revenue.

You may have heard a lot of people say that your blog revenue is directly proportional to the traffic coming in, but that's not really true. It's all about executing the money-making ideas in the right way.

So here are six marketing tips to make more money from your blog:

1. Place your ads better

Placing ads on your website is not enough, you have to place ads where your readers are more likely to click on them.

Before placing an advertisement, ask yourself why the readers are here and where exactly you should place the ads so that they don't hamper the user experience and yet, are starkly visible.

Here are a few ideas for ad placement for a better click-through-rate:

• Sidebar banner


• Above a blog post title


• Right below the post title


• Between different sections of your post


• At the end of your post, above the author bio

But, of course, every website is different, and that is why I would recommend checking your website's heat map which could tell you where exactly your users tend to click more, and that is where you should place the majority of your ads.

I also recommend checking Google's ad placement policies at regular intervals so you can stay on top of any changes. Also, it's in Google's best interests to make sure the user experience isn't affected, so you won't have to worry about bothering your readers either if you follow their guidelines.

Here is an image that depicts the best places to put ads, the darker the orange the better the placement;

Image Source: Shout Me Loud

2. Go beyond AdSense

Yes, Google AdSense generates the most intuitive ads for your readers, since Google already knows what the readers have been searching and surfing. But, with a minimum payout threshold of $100 and a difficult approval process, it doesn't hurt to look at some other options as well.

Here a few ad platforms you should definitely consider (all of them work alongside AdSense):

Infolinks

With in-text and in-frame ads, Infolinks can monetize your blog in a completely different way. Getting approval on Infolinks is extremely easy and there is a minimum payout of $50 through PayPal.

BuySellAds

This is one of the premier ad platforms which gets you direct advertisements from clients and takes a 25% commission charge. With a minimum payout of $20, the only downside to BuySellAds is that it's not that easy to get approved.

Viglink

What Viglink does is, it monetizes your outbound links. It turns your ordinary links into affiliate links, so when a reader clicks on your link and buys something, you get a commission through it. This brings the power of affiliate marketing to natural link building.

3. Explore native languages

With so many languages in the world, why should you only focus on English? Google AdSense now supports over 35 languages, and this gives you no reason to ignore native languages.

While English might be one of the most popular languages on the internet, there is an array of readers looking for blogs in their regional languages and you can be the first few to exploit that market.

I launched my blog's Hindi version, ShoutMeHindi, back in June 2015 and I've been getting great feedback ever since.

You don't need to make it exclusively in your local language – you can mix and match English terms, as people tend to be familiar with the digital marketing terminology in English.

4. Collaborate with brands for sponsored posts and reviews

This is the quickest way to earn some good cash, but at the same time, you have to be very cautious about it.

Sponsored posts are where you talk about a product in general, or you try to incorporate something associated with the product naturally into your content. Sponsored reviews are when the company pays you to write reviews about their products.

Sponsored posts should only be done when you can talk about products or brands that your readers would be interested in. I don't need to tell you that when you attempt blatant advertising, readers' trust evaporates.

Now, sponsored reviews are a very sensitive ground. You might be getting paid by the company, but you don't have to completely sell the product. It's important to be unbiased and write your honest thoughts about the products.

Test the product extensively, and then list down all the pros and cons. Be sure to let the company know beforehand that you would be writing an honest review.

To connect with brands, you can create a media kit explaining what advertisers can expect from sponsored posts and reviews and how much you would be charging them.

Suggested networks;

• Famebit (Popular among Youtubers but not limited to it)


• Tapinfluence


• Fango.me


• Blogmint (Popular brand to get sponsored posts for blogs & social media channels.)

5. Implement affiliate programs

Affiliate marketing, in a nutshell, is where you refer your readers a product and when they buy it through your recommendation, you get a commission out of it.

Our very own Jeff described affiliate marketing as one of the top ways to make money by blogging in 2016. Every affiliate program has a different commission rate and minimum payout. But the reason why it's so popular among bloggers is because you only have to set it up once and you can get paid from all your posts, whether they are old or new.

Even the traffic doesn't matter so much, because it all depends upon the readers buying products through your recommendation.

There are many different kinds of affiliate programs available, and you can select the ones that relate the most to your blog niche.

6. Write an impressive Ebook

One of the best ways to get revenue from your blog is by developing premium content for your readers. Creating ebooks are cheap, and they also make you a niche expert, which can drive in more business later.

You can also build up your subscriber list with an ebook by providing the book – or the first few chapters, depending on your inclination and the worth of the information – free of charge for every subscriber.

But, there is a burning question plaguing every blogger who creates an ebook – should you sell it on your blog or Amazon?

Well, the answer is not as simple as you would want it to be. To make the right decision, you should definitely check out this post by Jeff.

Your turn

Now that you have some amazing tips for how to make more money from your blog, it's your turn to implement them. Remember that what might not work for some, might work for you. You need to be patient, monitor your analytics and keep a track of all the revenue being generated by every method.

What are the techniques you currently use to increase blog revenue? Please share in the comments.

Guest Author: Harsh Agrawal, a blog scientist and CEO of ShoutDreams Media, started blogging in 2008 and since then has written numerous posts on Blogging, SEO, Social media, Technology, Affiliate Marketing and more. He has also partnered with various international companies, helping them promote their online businesses. His blog ShoutMeLoud has more than 832K subscribers and receives 1 million Pageviews per month.

The post 6 Simple Tricks To Make More Money From Your Blog appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.

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Reddit CEO Steve Huffman: 'We know your dark secrets. We know everything.'

I had a chance to interview Reddit CEO Steve Huffman at our conference last week, which was interesting and a lot of fun. And when I asked Steve about monetization, or simply 'making money' he replied with what I thought was just a funny statement: We know all of your interests. Not only just your interests you are willing to declare publicly on Facebook – we know your dark secrets, we know everything… The community at Reddit was a bit more critical, and surprised, and the video of the interview quickly reached the #1 spot on the Reddit homepage and collected…

This story continues at The Next Web

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Twitter investors were sharply divided over Jack Dorsey's stock plan

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While Twitter's shareholders approved CEO Jack Dorsey's plan to give his stock to employees last week, an unusually large number of investors voted against the plan hinting at the continued divisions over the company's leadership.

Twitter revealed the vote totals from its annual shareholders meeting in a document filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange commission on Friday. While there were four items on which shareholders were asked to vote on this past Wednesday, the most notable on the list was a plan Dorsey announced last fall when he returned to the company as CEO.

At the time, Dorsey said he would return 6.8 million shares to the Twitter stock employee pool to be given out over time to employees old and new. It was gesture intended to show the deep faith Dorsey had in the future of Twitter at a time when many on Wall Street were questioning its future and there was large turnover in the executive ranks.

Turns out, it wasn't a slam dunk with investors.

According to the filing, 223,121,744 shares of stock were voted in favor of the proposal, while 123,907,045 shares voted to “withhold” their approval. Another 1,847,614 shares abstained from voting, and there 202,867,909 shares held by brokers who were not authorized by the shareholders to vote on any proxy matters.

Approval of the plan required the affirmative votes of a majority of the votes cast. The abstentions were counted as a vote against, while the non-votes were not counted.

While it wasn't exactly a nail-biter, the level of opposition was clearly high. In general, it's highly unusual for corporate shareholders to buck the recommendations of a company's board or executive team on any proxy vote.

Compare those results on the stock issue, for instance, on another proxy matter: The appointment of the company's accounting firm. There were 544 million shares voted in favor, and only 4.5 million voted against. That lopsided vote total is more typical of proxy matters.

Twitter signaled that some shareholders were restless about Dorsey's proposal in a previous filing on May 20. The company said it had agreed to change the terms of the plan to prohibit the price of the options from being repriced, something that could affect the value and also trigger some potential tax issues.

“We appreciate the stockholder feedback we have received on our proposal to approve the Twitter, Inc. 2016 Equity Incentive Plan at our 2016 Annual Meeting of Stockholders,” the company said in a filing. “Based on discussions with our stockholders, we have committed to amend the 2016 Plan after the Annual Meeting to prohibit the repricing of stock options, including through an option exchange program or cash buyout, without the consent of Twitter's stockholders. We recognize the importance of protecting the value of your investment in Twitter and we also endeavor to be responsive to stockholder feedback on our compensation programs.”

That apparently was enough to win the necessary approval this past week. Still, the fact that Dorsey was working so hard until the final minutes to sway votes shows that investors are not ready to give him the benefit of the doubt.

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Twitter has paid security researchers over $300,000 in 2 years

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As services like Twitter have become critical infrastructure for people to communicate and share ideas, maintaining security and uptime is essential. But these companies can't do it themselves and some have turned to bug bounty programs to solicit the help from the public. For Twitter, it has found its program to be “an invaluable resource for finding and fixing security vulnerabilities.”

The company announced today that in the past two years, it has not only received 5,171 bug submissions from 1,662 researchers, but also paid a total of $322,420 in rewards. From this payout, the average amount was $835 and the highest was $12,040. In honor of its history, Twitter pays in multiples of 140. It was noted that last year, a single researcher received more than $54,000 in rewards for reporting vulnerabilities.

Started in 2014, Twitter enlisted the help of HackerOne to manage its bug bounty program. The minimum payout is $140 and the company is looking for any possible vulnerabilities relating with remote code execution, authentication issues, cross site scripting, cross site request forgery, and more. And it's not just with Twitter's core service, but also with Vine, Periscope, Fabric, MoPub, ZeroPush, and its mobile apps.

Above: Chart displaying the trend of bug bounty submissions and payouts by Twitter from 2014-2015.

Image Credit: Twitter

Twitter's bug bounty program isn't unique as other companies like Facebook and Google also offer ways for researchers to inform them of vulnerabilities. However, Twitter's payout isn't exactly the most that one can receive. In January, Google revealed that it had paid security researchers over $6 million over the past six years - in 2015, more than 300 different researchers received over $2 million after finding 750 bugs.

Facebook shared that it has paid out more than $3 million since it started its bug bounty program in 2011, with $1.3 million given out in 2014 to just 321 researchers worldwide. The average amount received was $1,788.

While there's a difference in payouts among these three companies, the likely reason is because Facebook and Google are more diverse in their services and have hundreds of millions of more users than Twitter that there's a greater chance of having a vulnerability be exposed.

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New Twitter Update Coming Soon: How Marketers Will be Able to Maximize All 140 Characters

What was once a rumor that Twitter would update its 140 character count guidelines is now official in the social media sphere:

In the coming months, we're introducing new ways for you to express even more with a Tweet: https://t.co/l1sWRvXWqr http://pic.twitter.com/zzhWpRcABs

- Twitter (@twitter) May 24, 2016

Twitter announced Tuesday morning that within the next few months, usernames, quoted tweets, photos, and other media attachments will no longer count against the tweet's 140-character limit.

Twitter co-founder and chief executive Jack Dorsey told the BBC that “It doesn't make sense to anyone. People have had to work around it. That just looks ugly, and it's confusing.”

This big, new Twitter update will surely change the way people use Twitter personally and how social media marketers use Twitter for business.

Now that it's imminent, let's jump into what the newest Twitter update will mean moving forward and how marketers can maximize those 140 characters for your business or brand.

We've come a long way over the past 10 years! What began as a simple 140-character text message has evolved into a medium that allows people and businesses to express themselves with everything from photos and videos to polls to animated GIFs.

just setting up my twttr

- Jack (@jack) March 21, 2006

So what exactly will be featured in this newest Twitter update?

Media Attachments in Tweets

How many times have you written what feels like the perfect Twitter update and the second you add the obligatory animated gif of a puppy doing adorable puppy things, the character count falls to -1? If you're anything like me, it happens nearly every single time.

Twitter's recent announcement details that when your tweet includes attachments like photos, GIFs, videos, polls, or Quote Tweets, that media will no longer count as characters within your tweet!

Every single character in a tweet is super important, especially when you only have 140 characters to work with. Being able to add highly engaging media attachments in tweets without having to sacrifice any characters at all means that we'll soon be able to use the full 140 characters to craft the best updates that we possibly can, with more context than ever – this feels like a massive win for social media marketers everywhere!

@Replies on Twitter

When replying to a tweet, @names will no longer count toward the 140-character count. For now, we want to emphasize the word 'replying' here since we know that those will definitely be free characters. However, when it comes to the initial @name tweet, there are some conflicting reports on how Twitter will be counting those characters – most seem to believe that those will indeed count against your allotted 140 characters.

For marketers, this will make having conversations on Twitter so much easier, especially when replying to several people at once. It's not uncommon for a Twitter conversation to pick up so many usernames that it makes having an actual conversation nearly impossible (Hello, Twitter canoe!). This change in @replies will allow marketers to continue that conversation without sacrificing the quality of the tweet due to a rapidly shrinking character count.

Goodbye to .@replies

Twitter is aiming to simplify the rules around tweets that start with a username. Currently, if you want to broadcast a tweet to all of your followers that starts with a @username, beginning the message with a period is the common practice. Without the initial period, only people who follow both you and the person you're tweeting at will be able to see the message in their feed.

With this change, all new Tweets that begin with a username will now reach all of your followers. This means that you'll be able to drop that first period at the start of the tweet and have it reach all of your followers, despite it being directed at a single user. Bonus tip: you can use that extra character to add a happy face emoji to your tweet

The Pirate Bay cofounder on Facebook: 'From a democracy standpoint, Mark Zuckerberg is a dictator'

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The Pirate Bay cofounder Peter Sunde is not a fan of Facebook's online domination. Specifically, he argues CEO and cofounder Mark Zuckerberg has too much power.

“People in the tech industry have a lot of responsibilities but they never really discuss these things … Facebook is the biggest nation in the world and we have a dictator, if you look at it from a democracy standpoint, Mark Zuckerberg is a dictator. I did not elect him. He sets the rules,” Sunde told CNBC. “And really you can't opt out of Facebook. I'm not on Facebook but there are a lot of drawbacks in my offline world. No party invitations, no updates from my friends, people stop talking to you, because you're not on Facebook. So it has real life implications.”

The latest numbers from Facebook show the social network has 1.65 billion monthly active users. This is more people than in all of China, the most populous country on the planet with some 1.38 billion people.

While it's certainly true that none of these users voted for Mark Zuckerberg to be CEO of Facebook, the reality is he does not make every decision at the social network. Like any major tech giant, the company has teams for every little functionality, and they set the rules.

But Sunde wasn't done there. He also referenced the time when German Chancellor Angela Merkel confronted Zuckerberg at a United Nations meeting about anti-immigration posts on Facebook.

“That's kind of what it comes to. We send major leaders of Europe to ask him to stop interfering with our local culture,” Sunde told CNBC. “How did we end up in a situation like this? If politicians were a little bit more hard-core and actually believe in this they would be able to fix it. If we say Facebook doesn't agree with our rules in our country we are going to stop Facebook in our country. We censor a lot of things, why not censor Facebook?”

The obvious problem with this line of thinking is that censoring Facebook would not stop “anti-immigration posts” on the Internet. If you block hate speech or any sort of commentary in one place, it will simply move to another platform.

At the end of the day, Facebook provides multiple services that users value. The only way to truly diminish its power is to offer something better. Given that the company makes the larger majority of its money from advertising, it will continue to grow as long as its users continue choosing its services.

Speaking of ads by the way, Sunde is hoping to disrupt the Internet's dependence on the revenue source. In March 2010, along with Linus Olsson, he cofounded Flattr, a content-funding tool that lets people donate real money to show their appreciation for what they consume online.

The next step was revealed just last month: Flattr Plus, aa partnership with Adblock Plus to make the process automatic. If successful, the project could indirectly impact Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook's bottom line.

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The 7 Best Ways to Fight Banner Blindness

A few days ago I received a call from a friend of mine, a marketing manager at an e-commerce company.

It's a story I've heard all too often these days: He'd purchased banner ad space - unfortunately, the results didn't meet his expectations.

To say the least, he was very frustrated. He needed to get the word out about his company and their products. But the networks he was using weren't delivering.

Frankly, he didn't know what to do.

The problem he was facing is called banner blindness.

After our conversation ended, I thought to myself, is banner blindness killing the ad industry? And perhaps more importantly, what can we do to beat banner blindness?

After some thought… I felt compelled to share my thoughts with you.

The ad industry isn't going anywhere. On the contrary, it's more effective than ever thanks to online advertising. And in this blog post, I'm going to share with you how to beat banner blindness.

But first, what is it?

What is banner blindness?

Banner blindness happens when people ignore banner ads.

Think of yourself for a second. You probably saw a few banners today. Do you recall any of them or their offers?

Many studies have shown that online users ignore banner ads and the messages they contain. In fact, only 14% of consumers remember the last ad they saw and the company or product it promoted. Even with today's sophisticated targeting technology, relevance remains a key challenge – only 2.8% of online browsers think ads are relevant.

To sum up the research: Banner blindness especially affects savvy online users, who look for something specific on a website and ignore banner ads as unimportant. Over the years, people have become conditioned to ignore traditional banner ads and have stopped noticing them almost completely.

It's true, banner blindness exists and it's one of the advertising industry's biggest challenges.

Marketers and publishers need to take note and take the necessary steps to improve the ecosystem.

So how do you fight banner blindness?

Here are the 7 best ways to beat banner blindness, and increase your traffic and cash flow.

1. Check your ad placement

People disregard the routine, the usual, the cliché. And that's even more true when it comes to advertising.

So try to place your ads in unconventional places, including:

• Above the fold where it'll get more visibility. (This is at the top of the page)


• In the text or right after it. Most people start reading a page at the top and give it more attention.


• Within your blog - for example, between the posts in your blog.

Remember, your ad can be beautiful, interactive, surprising. To improve your click-through-rate (CTR), experiment as much as you can with elements that attract attention like social media buttons and video.

Pro Tip: Google Adwords allows you to test your ads performance. Also, try native advertising leader Infolinks – who conducted a banner blindness study and developed anti-banner blindness ads. For example, Infolinks' InFold ads appear in a unique, above-the-fold location.

Try Infolinks today

2. Use relevant content

As an advertiser, you should understand your audience's needs and be able to offer a relevant solution.

Avoid being irrelevant and ignored:

• Don't deliver ads without first identifying what your visitors want.


• Use relevant content, including the keywords that reflect the interests of your primary audience.


• Choose the right ad network so you're linking your audience to publishers who are relevant to your audience and your specific focus.


• Use cookies to create relevant personal ads – which will help your site identify people who've previously visited your site.

If you make sure your site offer ads that are targeted, useful, relevant and delightful, then your visitors will respond more positively.

Pro Tip: Amazon reports that contextual links within blog posts work best. Taboola and Outbrain are good platforms to test this out on.

3. Try non-standard sizes, colors, and ad formats

Seeing the same thing over and over again gets boring – and can decrease the performance of your ads.

• When creating ad space, choose non-traditional and memorable locations to improve user recall. Non-standard formats and designs will also help you avoid being overlooked.


• Create your banner as a part of the page, not as an outer ad.


• Use unusual colors and brand personality, extraordinary ideas, animated banner ads and even 3D design. In addition, applying motion effects could also be a method of increasing interaction.

Pro Tip: Make sure your banner ads have a compelling story and an emotional hook to get people's attention. Try Canva or Infolinks.

4. Optimize for mobile

Nowadays, in order to keep up with today's younger, smartphone audience; you need to have a mobile and social presence. When you do, consider:

• Using video for your mobile banner ads


• Activating your Facebook campaigns


• Including a 'Call Now' button in your ads

Note: A key benefit of online advertising is that you can easily track the effectiveness of your banner ads, including how many people are seeing it, how many people click on it, and much more.

Pro Tip: Make sure your site is mobile-friendly. You can test your site to see what you need to do to make your site look as good as possible on smaller screens. You'll be glad you did!

To make sure people can view your content on the small screen of a smartphone, it's especially important to decrease clutter by serving fewer ads. Publishers who reduce clutter on their pages will attract advertisers who will pay more for premium, uncluttered space.

5. Participate in affiliate programs

Affiliate programs allow you to partner with other companies who share the same audience. By showing your ads on an affiliated publisher's site, you can easily combat banner blindness.

Pro Tip: Infolinks' publisher referral program is one of the most beneficial programs in the industry today. It pays 10% out of the referred publishers' revenue during the first 12 months of your referral!

6. Follow your passion

To attract and keep an engaged audience, you'll want to publish content that people love. In my experience, the best way to do this is to create content about something you're passionate about. Whether it's nature, biking or technology – you can write blogs about it, share photos of it and build a strong community around it.

Find what you really love and transform your site by featuring that passion!

Pro tip: Many terrific blogs create a community of loyal followers by linking to other, related sites. Do you link your site to sites that you admire? Also, give your visitors relevant links within your blogs. For instance, the Infolinks' blog offers the best form of native advertising, giving your audience information that interests them – and you can make money, too!

Try Infolinks today

7. Experiment

Last – but definitely not least – if you're not getting the performance you want, experiment.

Consider each of the previous six recommendations – ad placement, relevant content, non-standard design elements, optimizing for mobile, affiliate programs and following your passion.

How can you transform the content you already have, including your site design and content calendar, to reinvigorate your visitors?

Pro tip: To re-energize your site and overcome banner blindness, consider experimenting with your site design.

If you're using WordPress, there are lots of custom templates you can choose from. When you do, see if you can come up with unexpected content like an interview, a gallery of photos from a trip, something totally different.

Remember, when you put your imagination to work, you can create amazing experiences for your followers.

A final word

What does it all add up to? More money for you!

Let's be honest: Banners are ads.

And they are a useful way for advertisers and publishers to spread the word about their site.

When ads are well thought out and provide the right information, they give your site visitors valuable information about products and services they may not be aware of.

To overcome banner blindness, create better ads. How? By concentrating on what your visitors are interested in. It's about their needs, not yours!

With the right ad network, placing compelling ads in the right locations will increase your traffic and your cash flow.

There are a lot of companies that can help you beat banner blindness. For many bloggers and site owners, you've probably tried many solutions. I've used them all too. Today, I'm here to highly recommend Infolinks. See why now

Plus, Infolinks is regularly introducing new features – including the recently announced AdShop. AdShop is a self-service advertising platform that allows you to advertise globally. Now, you can reach high-quality, targeted users with your ads, and only pay entry-level prices. Sign up to AdShop by Infolinks now

Do you have additional ways to beat banner blindness? Share your story below.

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The 7 Best Ways to Fight Banner Blindness

Slack passes 3 million daily active users, 930K paid seats

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Slack announced that its team communication app is seeing continued growth, with more than 3 million (weekday) daily active users. This is up 1 million from just six months ago. What's more, the company now has 930,000 paid seats which is also a 31 percent increase from February when it reported 675,000 paid seats.

Alongside this news, Slack has also hired former Salesforce senior vice president for commercial sales in the Asia Pacific region Robert Frati as its vice president of sales, which is noteworthy since the company claims 77 of the Fortune 100 companies use its product.

The addition of someone skilled in dealing with corporations could be perceived as a major push to bring the communication app into more businesses beyond just startups and other collaborative environments. And as Frati has specialized in the Asia Pacific region, perhaps also establish more partnerships with companies in that part of the world?

Slack has been on a growth spurt over the past few months, adding more than 1 million daily active users practically every six months just within the last year. In June, the company counted 1 million DAU and then doubled it in December before hitting the 3 million mark today. It also shared that more than 2 million users are connected to Slack's communication app “simultaneously” meaning that at any given moment, most of its users are all interfacing with each other on the platform.

While a reason for the increased usage hasn't been officially released, it could be because of the new integrations and developer platform Slack has created, easier integrations with third-party apps, the spotlight on bots, or perhaps those funny commercials that the company is airing.

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Facebook's Windows 10 app will soon let you broadcast live video from your desktop

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Windows 10 users will soon be able to broadcast live on Facebook right from their PCs. The social networking company has begun rolling out the Facebook Live feature for its universal Windows 10 app. This marks the first time Facebook's livestreaming technology has become available on the desktop.

Spotted by WinBeta, the Facebook Live feature does exactly what people have been doing on mobile: broadcasting live from their tablets or PCs. Its inclusion perhaps isn't that surprising as the promise of a universal Windows 10 app is that it can work across many devices, so if you have livestreaming in one app, it'll work on other gadgets and computers with the operating system installed.

Since its release in August, creating broadcasts in Facebook Live was only possible on the company's mobile apps. Now you'll be able to do that right from the desktop. And while this is a first for Facebook, it follows along a pattern started at the F8 conference when chief executive Mark Zuckerberg introduced an API that enables developers to integrate their products and services within Facebook Live. Some current partners include Mevo from Tastemade, Vidpresso, DJI Robotics, and Cape.

At March's Build conference, Microsoft executive vice president for Windows and Devices group Terry Myerson announced Facebook was investing more in universal Windows 10 apps, such as launching not only its core service, but also Instagram and Messenger. Adding livestreaming is an icing on the cake.

There's no word about whether Facebook Live on the desktop will extend to Macs or Chrome OS in the near future, but it's something we shouldn't put past Facebook.

AI. Messaging. Bots. Arm yourself for the next paradigm shift at MobileBeat 2016. July 12-13 at The Village in San Francisco. Reserve your place here.

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Twitch now has its own tool for making clips from game livestreams

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Streamers will now have an easier time showing off their greatest moments.

Twitch is introducing Clips today, which will enable users to easily create and share 30 second snippets from their recorded broadcasts. Twitch has more than 100 million viewers a month (easily making it the leader in the game-streaming market), and over 1.7 million people have used the site broadcast. New features like this can help the streaming site continue to grow.

Previoulsy, users would have to use editing software outside of Twitch, like Adobe Premier or Final Cut Pro, to create clips. Other streaming sites, like Forge, already enable users to share small highlights of their gameplay. Forge, however, has its own video capture tool that works with its site and clip-maker. Twitch still requires players to use outside recorders like Xsplit. Footage from a program like Xsplit is then broadcast live on Twitch, and those broadcasts then become saved on the site as recordings. You view those recordings to make clips.

Above: Making a clip in Twitch.

Image Credit: Twitch

“Our community loves connecting with each other, which is why the product teams have been focusing on a lot of cool social features, such as Friends, Channel Feed, Whispers, and Party Chat,” said Noreen McInnis, the product marketing manager at Twitch, in a press release sent to GamesBeat. “Clips now joins the list as an easy-to-use tool that lets community members share their favorite broadcast moments, whether it be an incredible play, a hilarious sound byte, or a jump scare reaction. If it happens on Twitch, you can Clip it.”

To use the new feature, you'll just have to click a button when playing a video. Twitch will then create a clip using the 25 seconds before and 5 seconds after the current spot. All clips will link back to the original broadcast they were taken from, and they'll also featured the Twitch ID of whoever captured the video.

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