Having been featured on GQ, Forbes, and entrepreneur, Ross Jenkins is one of the most successful digital marketers on Upwork, the famous freelancing jobs platform. He’s been able to make more than 1 million dollars by providing his services as a freelancer and as the head of a reputable American Digital Marketing agency: DigitalME. His agency helps businesses and people to become more efficient and profitable through the automation of workflows and through the implementation of proven marketing strategies. Ross Jenkins has managed to take his brand to a completely different level by doing something many business owners and entrepreneurs wouldn’t dare as they consider it too risky: Hiring freelancers to perform core operations for his business.

During this pandemic, there has been a substantial increment in freelancers offering their services across the internet in great part due to the mobility restrictions and also because of the economic issues that made thousands of businesses go bankrupt. Many of these freelancers are very top professionals with years of experience working for big companies. This means there’s a great opportunity for businesses to get high-quality talent for a lower investment. And, as Ross explains. “There are unquantified benefits in hiring freelancers vs hiring employees: First. you’ll save many expenses related to contractual and tax obligations which will make your business much more solvent. Second, you get the chance to know highly-valuable people that can perform your business jobs better than a regular employee.” 

According to Ross, that fact doesn’t underestimate or demerit the labor of traditional employees, but “it is true that you can get to know very professional and experienced people in a faster way by hiring freelancers. This is, in great part, thanks to the freelance platforms available that make it much easier to get in touch with highly-experienced people.”

And Ross knows very well about this: He’s a top-rated freelancer on Upwork, one of the top freelancer job platforms in the world with more than 140 thousand active clients. Ross’s numbers are impressive since he has managed to earn more than 1 million dollars and that is just on the platform as he also offers his marketing services through his agency website. Ross’s success as a freelancer and Entrepreneur has earned him recognition from prestigious magazines and websites such as GQ, Forbes, Yahoo, and Entrepreneur.

That’s why Ross sees in Freelancers a great potential for overcoming the collateral damages of the pandemic. According to Ross, freelancers also represent a great opportunity for businesses to become more efficient in their services since freelancers tend to be more goal-focused and they possess much more experience for specialized jobs. For example, “if a business requires to complete a certain task related to marketing, like for example creating a Facebook campaign, hiring a freelancer who is more specialized on the subject will make it much easier and less expensive than hiring let’s say a full-time digital marketer employee centered on a more general approach”.

Ross explains that following this method, small businesses and businesses with low financial support can save expenses and start making their business profitable during the first years which are the most difficult. “As all Entrepreneurs should know, the first years of starting a business are the most crucial and the most difficult. You need to prospect with a brand that is totally unknown to people, without previous clients, and with a website that is not well ranked.” Ross recommends freelancers as a way to overcome this. “Hiring freelancers to perform certain tasks that can help with your brand engagement and awareness. For example, there are freelancers that can help you with your social media campaigns and your content creation on-demand, meaning that you could hire their services on a temporary basis depending on your short-term goals”.

If you want to know more about Ross Jenkins, you can follow him on his social media: @rjoensk on Twitter, and Ross Jenkins on LinkedIn. Ross also shares his experiences and expertise by providing valuable resources for freelancers through his website, and through a mentoring program in which freelancers can learn how to become successful freelancers on Upwork. You can also look for his digital marketing services on Upwork and on his agency website DigitalME.cc.

The post Ross Jenkins and How Freelancing Can Get Your Business to Major Leagues appeared first on The Influencer Age.

Liran Mizrahi is one of Israel’s top social media marketing minds, helping brands find success in the space. Liran is an Instagram expert with over 12 years of experience of active involvement in account management and Instagram marketing.

Like most of us, Liran Mizrahi opened her Instagram account as a simple photo sharing account. However, it wasn’t long before he started getting more interested and began connecting with people and collaborating with them on the site.

So we asked Mr. Mizrahi to suggest us 3 tips to growth your Instagram business page.

Elaborate your strategy on Instagram

Start with some research. Try Instagram as a private individual before using it for your business. Find out which companies are the best on Instagram and how other brands in your industry, including your competitors, are doing – you’ll get useful data and inspiration for your business.

Once you’re familiar with the app, start crafting your strategy on Instagram to reflect your company’s social media marketing plan. The goals you set for your Instagram strategy should all be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant (to the end goal of your business) and timed. But go beyond vanity metrics like number of likes and followers! on Instagram, it’s important to maintain regular posting, being careful not to overwhelm followers with posts.

Most brands publish one to three posts per day. As for the time of day to post them, it will depend on the audience they are aimed at. Both factors, time of day and frequency, can be determined with simple tests: try publishing posts at different intervals and at different times of the day and see which get the best results. Don’t forget to keep in mind where your followers are and what time zone they are in, among other things. Also you always have Analytics tools at your disposal (we assume you have a business profile), and Hootsuite can also give you a lot of insight into the habits of your audience.

At this point you can draw up the editorial calendar, which could simply be an excel file that indicates what content to publish, who will publish the posts and when.

Building your brand on Instagram

Not sure what to post on your Instagram account? Choosing the themes and topics of your posts is very important: Instagram is all about visual impact so it’s important that your brand has a consistent and recognizable identity.

First of all, choose the style to use: select a filter or a set of filters to be used on most of your photos (consider that almost no one now uses the native ones, but most users rely on editing apps or presets).Using always the same style, you define an image recognizable by your followers.

You can also explore your followers’ accounts: find out what they’re sharing and try to identify underlying trends, then pick up on them in the content you publish. Or you can share user-generated content (UGC), which is your followers’ photos directly (by asking first and giving them proper credit, of course). Using user-generated content and images from everyday life makes posts less intrusive and less sales-driven, shortening the distance and making your brand values more real.

Finally, the use of brand-related hashtags. This doesn’t mean simply using your company name as a hashtag, but finding hashtags that represent the brand on Instagram, encouraging followers to share photos that can be traced back to that image.

Follow other users

Finally, to kick off your business Instagram account, start following a few users. Choose the top influencers in your industry, customers and engaging users. Find out which hashtags are the most important in your field and gain visibility by commenting on photos and following users who are participating in conversations about them. So…interact! Don’t wait for likes and followers to fall from the sky, go find them! But don’t rely on the now obsolete and hated techniques of #follow4follow (resulting in unfollow) or lik4like. Most importantly: don’t buy followers!

Rather, add the link to Instagram on your social profiles and websites, for cross-promotion. You can also post a few messages asking your followers on other social to follow you on Instagram as well. Start experimenting, in short. The days when the algorithm played in favor of organic reach are sadly over, but there are plenty of ways to grow in a genuine way.

Finally, make plans to dedicate budget to Instagram Ads. Today, it’s almost impossible to get visibility for your content if you don’t rely on Instagram advertising!

The post 3 Tips to Grow your Instagram Business Page – with Liran Mizrahi appeared first on The Influencer Age.

Influencer marketing has taken the world by storm in the past couple of years. Whether it be for an energy drink, a teeth whitening kit or even a self care product. We now have the ability to reach huge audiences instantaneously, in almost every niche imaginable. Not to mention the foundation of strong relationships with their audiences already in place — the potential of influencer marketing is truly uncapped.

Having entered the world of business at the start of 2019, I was quickly exposed to the power of influencer marketing. When I was approached by two Melbourne-based entrepreneurs to run their current business, so they could focus their time and energy towards a new venture, I snapped up the opportunity in a heartbeat. In just a matter of months, I was witnessing the birth of one of the biggest brands on social media in 2019.

What most would consider an incredibly risky venture, there were certainly some very stressful times in the early stages. With all their cash flow and savings being pumped into the business, it didn’t take long before money became very tight. But as the saying goes, “The lights always darkest before the dawn”.

With an elaborate influencer marketing campaign set up and underway, it wasn’t long until things took a huge turn for the better. I arrived in the office one morning greeted with elation after they’d scored 70 sales overnight from one of their influencers. The momentum had begun.

It wasn’t long until they were selling hundreds, even thousands of their products per day. Within 5 months of making their first sale, they hit the 7-figure sales mark. Having witnessed it all since day one, there was a lot I was able to learn from the experience.

How did a brand doing no paid ads, do 7 figures in sales in 6 months? Well… you already know the answer — influencer marketing. With the trend of influencer marketing becoming utilized more than ever in 2019, it begs the question: why does it work so well?

Despite being through a mobile phone, social media can feel incredibly intimate. When you follow your favorite influencers and keep up with their daily lives through their posts and stories, it can feel so real and as if they are speaking directly to you.

Influencer marketing has been shown to increase brand awareness, increase engagements, attract new audiences, and even inspire loyalty. We all know the power of human interaction and connection, and how much emotion drives our behaviors. Consumer psychology has been revolutionized through influencer marketing and it’s no surprise when someone you’ve grown to trust says “OMG this is the best product ever, you have to try it” and then you well… buy it.

In order for someone to do business with you, they have to know, like, and trust you.  Without trust, you won’t make a sale. Influencer marketing is all about leveraging the relationships influencers have with their audience. Would you be more inclined to buy something from someone you’ve (virtually) interacted with daily, or some stranger on a TV commercial? I’ll let you think about that..

Another reason why influencer marketing works is that most influencers create high-quality content. Rather than blow through your marketing budget trying to create an awesome promo video, let the influencer do all the work (or lack thereof) for you. With social media taking over how we market and advertise products, TV & radio advertising is becoming a thing of the past.

Using relationships and emotion to drive customers to your business is crucial if you’re looking to grow your brand in 2020. If you aren’t investing in influencer marketing for your business, you’re leaving a lot of money on the table.

Instagram @lewis_schenk

The post The Power Of Influencer Marketing appeared first on The Influencer Age.

Chubbs Wilson is the new face of online marketing. Chubbs Wilson has taken over the marketing scene helping Fortune 500 companies, and even influencers build a strong online presence and strong digital footprint.  Chubbs Wilson being connected with celebrities and huge agencies from past business relationships like running adverts to sale concerts has taken that energy and transmute it to great marketing. Recently Chubbs Wilson has brought huge celebrities with his connection with managers and booking agents to be a part of social media campaigns with agencies such as Go Give Aways. Chubbs Wilson has helped the agency book celebrities such as Funny Mike, Hennessy Carolina, and even Funny Marco for a growth campaign with Cardi B.

Chubbs Wilson is the connector for if you want to gain brand awareness. Chubbs Wilson finds out what celebrities are dominating the internet, what niche audience your brand would stand out the most to, and what celebrity’s audience would your brand perform best with.  Chubbs Wilson has made a living just connecting dots. Chubbs is the hugest networker I have met as Chubbs is very comical, energetic it is easy for him to make friends and business partners easily.  Chubbs Wilson has helped many companies increase sales as he understands the culture and has love for many different aesthetics and knows what the people want.

Chubbs got his foot in the door with most of these connections as he used to be a celebrity videographer, and photographer and still might take outstanding photos till this day to help a brand with their image.  When I spoke to Chubbs, he told me this and it stuck with me “If you have a computer and a phone there is no reason you shouldn’t be successful in today’s age you can reach important people with a click of a button of a LinkedIn message alone.”  Chubbs has used the internet since 2012 to gain wealth and success  Chubbs Wilson used to do software development for automation companies, and even cybersecurity companies so he is brilliant when it comes to how to do things on a laptop.

Outside of marketing Chubbs Wilson is a philanthropist and a Christian at heart and sometimes helps and volunteers at orphanages and feeds the homeless in the metro Atlanta area. Chubbs is working on helping build opportunities for people in need and supplying them with knowledge and opportunities that anyone with a cell phone can take advantage of. I can’t wait to see what Chubbs Wilson will have upcoming.

The post Chubbs Wilson Is The New Face Of Online Marketing appeared first on The Influencer Age.