As the founder and CEO of RiteKit, if you are a customer or free user of our marketing automation solutions and/or commercial solutions by API, I thank you for making my dream come true.
I spent my youth, twenties and thirties completely lost as to what I should be doing in life. I always yearned to make a positive impact on people: either, like a medical doctor, a giant impact on a small number of people, or by saving people time by automating time-consumptive tasks, a tiny impact on millions of people. The latter is working out. I saw software saving people time, and hungered to go from being a SaaS product reviewer (my blog) to earning a place in the core strategy team of a SaaS (software as a service, or software that people/organizations pay for based on time, and always get the latest version of) company. Disposing of my blog was one of the most liberating things I've ever done. Move to the maker/provider side of software development, and you no longer have any inclination to master the minutiae of the latest smartphone let alone an app.
I was a power user of something that promised to get eyes on a blog, Triberr, but in seeing a team of two guys from New Jersey bootstrap and develop something from the void into something relied on and loved by tens of thousands of bloggers, I found what I wanted: a startup. With no background in web development, I spent three years trying to get a job in a startup, but when you have no track record or particular talent in programming or design, simply bringing the soft skills of business acumen and team-building to the table, I found this impossible.
For my foot in the door, I did my second unpaid internship from age 43, working on community development and user experience of Ideaswatch, and this made all the difference. I got to work with Michal Hudeček, learned that he could change the text on the "like" button to "watch this" in one function and it would be changed thoughout the site, and kept learning from there. He's the best teacher I've ever had. After months of coming up with what I could do for Ideaswatch and doing all I could myself, I suggested that we might revive a project that he or I had started and shelved, hopefully something that might prove to be financially sustainable. We picked up my heinously-buggy TagBag project and rebirthed it with Michal's design as RiteTag.
I had attempted to work remotely with a number of people, finding that most people spread themselves too thin, attempting to work on too many projects at once; Michal's one-day turn-around time on the initial wireframes for a better TagBag UI (to be renamed as RiteTag) told me that I was working with a fast-mover, and this was something to match:
I hate working for people, love working with them, and so, my take...
]]>Whether you need to automatically populate user profiles with company logos for your customers in medical data software, financial transaction apps or company data sites, you will want to choose your company logo API first on success rate. Let's start there.
*Success rate tested on this sample of 100 logos: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bAUw_6OErxAkFyWq94TWoXUkAuMd_6oXl7dnLV14Y90/edit?usp=sharing
For those in need of the most reliable, versatile and white-label* solution, we dug deep on what they provide, the costs, and everything that matters to developers.We tested the top four company logo API alternatives on 100 logos. I’ll discuss the value of each of the eleven factors we have compared leading company logo APIs on.
*White-label: no attribution needed.
Companies and organizations are born every day, and there are a great many of them. You need a solution that is not limited to an existing finite dataset.
We’ve found that no company logos return a logo in every case; it’s a matter of rate of success rate when determining reliability. RiteKit Company Logo leads by far at 91%, thanks to many smart heuristics mentioned below.
Each company logo API uses their own logo to rule out false positives and provide what is, in fact, an organization’s logo. Some are so poor at this they actually deliver a favicon or social profile avatar rather than the org/company’s logo. They might be cheap or free, but this is not quality.
RiteKit doesn’t naively assume that every profile image on social media is a logo. If it detects a photo, it keeps looking harder for an actual logo.
You will need company logos to look right within your web pages and app screens, and even as you iterate your UI appearance. The only way to assure that you achieve this is to use logos with a transparent background. However, very few logos actually come with a transparent background. Only RiteKit can automatically make the background transparent right on the fly.
Typically, you will cache logos you get from an API so that you need not make redundant calls. You will want both the full size logo and the square logo, since banners, profile and company web pages on your site, etc. may have the space for the full logo, but generally, for your mobile app and mini profiles or profile “card,” nearly all design layouts will work best with the square logo.
Most modern websites use SVG logos instead of PNG as they look crips on any resolution. SVG support is crucial for the API success rate. It is however technologically much more difficult to do correctly. Only RiteKit and BrandFetch are able to handle SVGs.
What to do for consistency throughout your site and mobile app screens when the company or organization does not, in fact, have a logo on their domain? Only...
]]>We've added lots to the RiteTag app, and the experience is the same for both Android and iOS. The big news is for everyone who is an owner or manager of Facebook pages, since each of them has an Instagram Business Account connected to it. Below is the how-to for getting your hashtags for Instagram Business Account posts, I'll also give you a fast process for getting hashtags for your Instagram Personal Account post captions and photos as well as for commenting on anyone's Instagram account - of any type.
There is no perfect hashtag to use on all posts in Instagram. In fact, if you use the same hashtag on too many posts, or even if you use the same groups of hashtags, as are typically provided by most hashtag apps, you risk being shadow-banned (your posts will not appear in Explore Pages in Instagram; you wont get followed as much as you would, if this happens).
At the very least, by not using the tool that generates hashtags specifically for your photos and captions, you miss out on most of the potential positive affects that can be garnered by always posting with a different blend of real-time engagement tested hashtags. The solution is easy, both for Instagram Business Accounts and also for Instagram Personal Accounts. Either way, you need the RiteTag (https://ritetag.com/) Mobile app. It is part of RiteTag Pro (as of this posting, currently just $49/year), which not only includes the mobile app (iOS and Android), but also the browser extension (Chrome, Firefox and Safari), and also full RiteTag site features.
Get RiteTag Android or RiteTag iOS
RiteTag now generates hashtags for your photos and captions - and you don't even need to open the app to get them!
Once you install the RiteTag mobile, you don’t even need to open the app to have iut working for you. Just install the app, let RiteTag deliver hashtags by notification after you upload photos to Instagram. This works whether you post natively in Instagram and also if you use third-party apps or desktop Instagram scheduling solutions. Due to Instagram API limitations, the notifications feature works only with Instagram Business Accounts, but can handle multiple Instagram Business Accounts.
The steps:
Install RiteTag app for iOS or Android
Guest post by Apoorva Srikkanth / Viraltag
By now it’s an established fact: social media marketing is an important component of any marketing strategy. Over 95% of online adults are more likely to follow your brand via social networking, and close to 50% of the world’s population is on some kind of social media. What better platform to target your audience than a channel that gives you access to half the world’s population?
Step one is choosing the right platform for your business, based on where your target audience is most active. Once you’ve done that, you need to be constantly posting to engage with your customers, and create brand awareness. This is where tools like Viraltag kick in. They help you automate posting to your social media channels, so you can put your social media marketing needs on autopilot!
In this blog post we’re going to go over how you can use one feature to get discovered far and wide on social platforms like Instagram, Twitter and more - Using Hashtags. Hashtags let you tap into an audience that goes beyond your follower base. You can increase your brand’s visibility by participating in topics that are trending, and your content has a better chance of getting discovered when users follow that particular hashtag.
One tool that makes it super easy for you to optimize using hashtags is RiteTag. It gives you hashtag suggestions, based on real time hashtag engagement. Using this, while scheduling content to your social media channels with Viraltag, makes sure your post is tailored for maximum reach and engagement.
Create a free 14-day trial account on Viraltag (No CC information required) and connect your social media profiles under the Accounts section.
Click on the + button to open the Scheduler, where you can compose your post.
Upload your image, and add in a caption to go along with it in the Description box.
Once you’ve installed the RiteTag browser extension (Chrome, Firefox or Safari) from the RiteTag homepage, you can get instant hashtag recommendations within Viraltag’s scheduling window. There are 2 ways to do this: Right clicking on the image: Click on ‘Get Hashtag recommendations’ in the drop down that shows up when you right click the image.
An array of Hashtag Suggestions show up, color coded to show you what type of hashtags work well.
Here’s what each color represents:
Use this key to decide and select which hashtags you want to use, and click on Copy.
Paste it onto the description box, and here’s what it looks like:
Highlighting text: Highlighting a part of text and right clicking brings up the same drop-down window. Click on Get Hashtag Suggestions, and pick the ones you feel will work best:
Finally, once you’re happy with how your post looks, you can either click on ‘Schedule’ to schedule them to your social media channels at a particular date and time:
Or click on...
It's worse in Facebook, but let's just look at Twitter, and a better way to look at what we can get back from social.
If it's any consolation, when you look at the engagement you get in social or just Twitter, directly, look at my main Twitter account: https://twitter.com/osakasaul
This time, see https://twitter.com/osakasaul/with_replies
Very, very few likes, replies or retweets, right? It hurts. It hurts me more than it does you! Consider what I do for a living, as founder and CEO of RiteKit; I sure should show that I know what I'm doing with Twitter and social media marketing overall, right?
Ah, but, using this and several other Twitter accounts I've developed over the years, and since I (and you) can make and add unlimited social profiles in RiteKit, here is what I get from Twitter - just not within Twitter's native engagement:
Let's remember that a Tweet with a URL in it has an inherent CTA (call-to-action; what you are asking your audience to do). It is not to like, retweet or reply. It is asking that they click the link.
We put a powerful vehicle in gear when we come to the understanding that most people will simply see your advertisement, when they click that rite.link. We need to make this count. We need to find the thing(s) for which awareness and familiarity are of value. Better yet if they click the button in the advertisement, but really, we have to find things, either for our own projects, products, services - or those we could be getting eyes on for others (read: those who would pay for this), and use social and our Rite.ly ads to get this exposure.
See the screenshot above: roughly 1.4 million times people have seen our stuff through Rite.ly Link Ads. Most don't click through, start a trial, get confused, get a little help... No, they just get that "I've seen this somewhere" feeling when they later search for a hashtag generator or consummate social media marketing suite, then sign up, and due to the awareness and familiarity, they decide to pay for something from us.
I thus ask you to think deep on what your Link Ads should be getting exposure for.
I hope this helps and doesn't come off as too preachy. Chat to us on our site if you need a hand with the RiteKit Package or any of our products.
]]>The below image falls outside the range of acceptable proportions for Instagram:
Not a problem, I just write the post text, drag in the image, add a RiteTag Hashtag Set (see the process below in the animation):
Be sure to search the main RiteKit Package help page for how you will use the RiteKit Package to not only save time, but to replace Buffer, Snip.ly, MeetEdgar and be your comprehensive solution for social media marketing.
Auto-resizing of videos for all social networks, which will auto-play wherever possible:
Auto-resizing of images and publishing to social networks from RiteForge and the RiteKit Package:
Here's using the RiteForge browser extension to auto-create a text image from highlighted text, share this image and the page's featured image to social networks - and the images are auto-resized for each social network:
Images can be up to 100 MB filesize RiteForge automatically adjusts the filesize and dimensions for social media puiblishing, and without cropping your images.
Video limits:
Twitter - 140 seconds Instagram- 60 seconds Facebook - 20 minutes LinkedIn - 10 minutes
The RiteKit Package, for desktop and mobile publishing of auto-resized images and videos to Instagram and everywhere that earns you business, offers these advantages:
In your RiteForge Publishing Dashboard, choose a social profile queue on the left and then the new Analytics tab:
Choose the metric that matters most to you - and get posts to quick-reshare based on engagement, link clicks and more! Identify easily the Instagram Business Profile Posts, Tweets, LinkedIn Company Page Posts and Facebook Page Posts that got you the best results in the last 30 days and set them up to reshare to any of the social profiles you have connected in RiteForge.
Here's the help page on using RiteForge Analytics to identify and reshare your top-performing social posts.
]]>Sent post analytics are available for all sent posts over the last 30 days, not just those you sent from RiteKit. Thus, you can use RiteForge Analytics to surface successful posts, polish with Rite.ly advertising, etc. - even from before you started using RiteKit or RiteForge, if it was very recently!
Identify easily the Tweets, LinkedIn Company Page Posts and Facebook Page Posts that got you the best results in the last 30 days and set them up to reshare to any of the social profiles you have connected in RiteForge.
Chose the metric that matters most, whether that be in engagement, shares, impressions or in clicks on Rite.ly URLs in your Tweets (e.g. Tweets that compelled the most people to click the Rite.ly URL and then see your advertisement). The metrics vary somewhat for Facebook and LinkedIn; there is less data available on your published posts for these social networks.
For Twitter Accounts
Repeat this process for each Twitter account you already have set up for RiteForge publishing as well as any other Twitter accounts you wish to add.
For LinkedIn Company Pages and Facebook Pages In your RiteKit Dashboard, hit the + beside Pages in the LinkedIn and Facebook sections.
While events are virtual rather than in person, we need to re-assess what we spend on them. I am referring to tickets for “attendance” and especially sponsorship.
In lieu of any reply to a few Tweets I replied to in Twitter, and without a reply from The Next Web, to whom I posed similar questions, I will use data from Twitter on 100% of the Tweets that included a recent virtual event’s hashtag for the 30 days from before, during and after The Next Web’s annual conference as evidence that discussions that emanate from virtual events are far below what they were when events were live.
**My suspicion is that much of the value that attendees place on such events are in the networking opportunities, and when events are virtual, much of this value is lost.
To support my premise, I reference the public RiteTag Hashtag Reports for #TNW2019 and #TNW2020. The Next Web held their 14th annual conference in Amsterdam from May 9 through May 10 2019. The Report for #TNW2019 includes all Tweets and Retweets containing the event hashtag from April 15 through May 14, 2019. The report for the October 1 through 2, 2020 #TNW2020 contains the same data for the same period: from 23 days before the events began until five days following the events.
Inspect and use the data downloads from the interactive RiteTag Hashtag Reports for #TNW2019 and #TNW2020 free of cost and with no login required.
Below is the identical data from Twitter on #TNW2020
The same data from Twitter on #TNW2020 shows less than one quarter the number of Twitter accounts that used the respective hashtags, yielding a similar proportional drop in Tweets containing the hashtags and an even sharper disparity in engagement (Retweets, likes and replies to these Tweets).
The most damning evidence is in Exposure (Tweet impressions within Twitter): The 2019 event’s Tweets were seen by nearly 24 people for every one who saw a #TNW2020 Tweet.
What’s more, we see that while the volume of Tweets containing the event hashtags peaked while the events were happening, there were very few Tweets in the weeks leading up to TNW2020 in stark contrast to the buzz prior to TNW2019 for the identical periods:
If you are considering sponsoring an event, are you comparing sponsor costs with years when the same events were done live? You might want to share this article with those who are still asking sponsors to pay for a virtual sponsorship anywhere near what they were asked to pay when attendees met face to face.
Event organizers talk brand awareness and lead generation, I would ask to see exactly how they are motivating attendees to visit virtual booths and schedule one-on-one meetings. How are they prompting a continuation of discussions from live or recorded keynote speeches or workshops? Do they have data...
]]>Get the RiteKit Package: all four RiteKit tools, everything you need to do what you need to do, and advertise, and do it through free, organic social media (not social network ads).
Make two RiteLy Link Ads: a. one that sells the discounted early registration or some offer to attract event/conference attendees b. and one to lure sponsors. Don’t forget to replace our logo with your own logo in each advertisement.
With the RiteKit Package and the large tier of RiteLy included in it, in addition to event marketing, you can get registrations, crowdsource answers, and you can sell just about anything that can be purchased over the internet.
Here are the 1.3 million brand exposures I, myself, got for RiteKit, in the last year, marketing many things:
Enhance: it does six minutes of social post crafting in 2 seconds and also bakes your advertisements onto the RiteLy short link so when people click links in your social posts and emails, they see your advertisement on top of the web page you recommended.
You'll see many ways to save time with the Auto-hashtag, Extract image / Create Image/GIF Template options, Shorten link (with or without Link Ad) and Append options. You will soon rely on your default Enhance Preset, (https://ritekit.com/enhance/)so check what we start you with, set your default Link Ad, and save.
Automatically import content and...
]]>Guess what: you really don't need to have a blog, blog regularly, make and edit tons of Youtube videos. There's heaps of great content already out there that's right for your target audience or market. Just curate and advertise to those that click links in your social posts. It's what we do.
With the RIteKit Package, you import content from your own sources - as well as anyone's Youtube, Twitter, Pinterest, Twich, Instagram, and in all, 14 sources. Then, auto-generate social posts with auto-hashtagging, auto-emojis, attribution that tags authors of content in Twitter - and your URLs get your advertisement seen by those that click your URLs.
With the RiteKit Package, for strategy, you can do as we do in social: build your audience by sharing the content of others - including top influencer's stuff - while soft-selling with your text, image and video advertisements that our seen by those that click your links.
Generous tiers of all products so you wont need to upgrade further. If purchased individually from RiteKit, total cost: $97.08/month. If purchased as Buffer+Snip.ly+MeetEdgar: $263/month. Rite.ly goes far beyond Sniply Business ($149) with Snapchat/Tiktok/Instagram and video ads. RiteBoost's Bulk Creator automation dashboard powers generation of quality social posts from 14 types of sources of content, far more than Meetedgar. Unlimited seats (users) - add unlimited users by adding their social profiles (100% of desktop use, including browser extensions for all products; the main user gets all of the mobile apps. Sub users would need to pay individually for RiteTag mobile if needed.)
And it's $65/month, not $263/month, for everything. Even less when you pay yearly.
The RiteKit Package is the best choice for organizations and businesses in need of a complete solution for social media content curation, post generation, social advertising* and publishing.
*Without paying for promoted posts or ads. You will advertise with your free, organic social posts. Everywhere you can share a link (URL), you will get your brand and offers seen.
Note that for links shortened with Rite.ly, Facebook and LinkedIn will not accept them. This is beyond our control; FB and LinkedIn are now blocking all short links created of full URLs. So, if using RiteForge, RiteBoost for scheduling posts, we suggest that you do not shorten links for posts you schedule to LinkedIn or Facebook. If just using Rite.ly, even with custom subdomain, please...
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