Small Businesses and Social Media Nowadays

Every business owner today will want to build their own brand. This is why it is crucial to stop and think about the brand in which you are trying to build a foundation and the reason why you have chosen it. There have been many small businesses that have had been successful with their personal brands since they started out contemplating well on how they want their market to recognize them.

It could also be because the business itself eventually became good at their roles through hard work, experimentation or chance. This is the reason why branding and social media go together. Social media will allow you to be in direct contact with your target market and will allow you to build common interests with them and start creating relationships.

Below are several tips on how you can let social media improve the branding for small businesses:

1. Define

First off, you would like to think about a clear idea on who you really want to be known as, what kind of content you would like to show your audience consistently and who you really are. Basing your brand on the things you really have a passion for and if you are serious in being an expert in these fields, you will eventually become a significant player in the social media world.

2. Marketing

You will have to create your own system for marketing. Take some time to learn and plan about the things that consumers have to say about you. Paying attention on the activities of competitors especially on their industry trends and case studies will provide you with very useful information for marketing.

3. Endorsing

The world is mostly run by the recommendations of people, which is why it is a smart choice to start getting an endorsement from a happy customer, an expert within the industry, or a society figure that is well-respected. By doing so, you will have increased credibility including respect gained because of the positive things that significant people are saying about your brand.

4. Be in Association

You can also build the name of your brand by working or associating with other brand names. This is going to improve your visibility within the market and will give you more leverage into newer areas for your brand. Aside from that, it will also help you build a firm foundation in which you will be able to benefit in the future.

5. Partnering

It is going to take quite some time for you to start creating your own content, expanding your business and working with clients. This is why it is a better route to start looking for people who are achieving the same goals as you and that you should start a partnership with them.

6. Be Unique

Many people are going to be interested and attracted in your brand if you are able to provide them with something that is fresh and unique. That is why it is important to learn to acquire an identity that is different from the norm and provide a specific niche for your company.

Image Source: bluefocusmarketing

   

Making Your Blog Interesting to Target Audiences

A lot of people ask how they can keep their blog interesting to their followers and readers over and over again. Whenever a blogger creates a blog for themselves, a lot of them just tend to go deep into the technicalities of how to blog rather than content. Content is very important but instead of focusing on this, most bloggers just dig deep into inserting videos, blog design and creating links. The backbone of every blog is its content and without it, everything will not fall into place as you have planned for your blog.

Even though I have given due importance to how content is critical in keeping readers interested in coming back to your blog, any kind of content will not work out. That is why I have prepared for you tips on how you can start getting the right content into your blog now.

Blog Lingo Should Be Consistently Interesting

One of the common mistakes that people do within blogs is that they start out with a creative voice for it and then go into the more technical and preachy tone as they move onwards. For marketing blogs, this kind of technique is not going to work out very well. Blogs that are focused on businesses will want to have their site tell its visitors what their service or product can do for them instead of jumping into the technicalities right away which can bore them. Keeping a conversational tone is key and making it sound like you are telling each visitor about your product or service as if it is their first time knowing about it.

Bridge the Gap Between You and Your Readers

Avoid alienating the people who reads your blogs. You may be needed to talk a lot of things about how your product or service works and this is important but you do not have to make it sound like you are the leader and the readers are your followers. As much as possible, involve your readers in your blogs through forums and discussions. Encourage them to share their insights and opinions. This is also a great way to know what you should change with your products and services based on their feedback.

Show Readers Your Testimonials

This technique is one of the ways that brings your marketing or business blog into life in the eyes of your readers. Post stories of a person or people who have used your product or service once in a while. You can request your reader to write the story or you can write it for them instead. Anecdotes such as this found in your blog will make it more interesting for future readers.

Become Content Creative

Even if you are good at writing, going over the same topics using the same kind of lingo will eventually make your content uninteresting to readers. Make sure that the content you write are those that are unique compared to other competitor blogs. This can be done by having other writers submit content for your blog through guest posting. Aside from having unique tones and subjects, guest posting will also help you build an ideal blogging community.

Image Source: qualitystockphotos

3 Easy Ways To Keep Your Blog Attractive and Interesting

What to do to garner traffic to your blog?

There are quite a few things that you can apply to your blog in order to give it a much needed interest boost from people. When you started out with your blog, your main concern at first was producing good and unique content for your readers in a regular basis. But as you progress in trying to please your readers by providing them with articles which you think they are interested in, things can get dull as there is not much variety to choose from. However, there are ways on how you can write and publish different kinds of content and formats to make it interesting. Here are a few tips on how you can do just that.

3 Easy Ways You Can Do to Create Attractive Blogs

1. Include Videos in the Blog

Blog owners who want their readers to keep coming back or have them stay in their blogs longer, can make them do so by applying videos for them to watch. You can make videos of yourself discussing the topics that you usually write about in your blog. You can immediately gauge the reaction of your audiences especially if you put a comments section below your video content. Just keep things simple when uploading videos so that you will not give yourself a hard time in putting them up regularly.

2. Interview People

The next thing that you would want to integrate within your blog is to interview industry experts and thought leaders about specific topics. Share the interview that you had with them to your readers as you ask about their thoughts on pressing issues that are related to your industry. As you conduct your interview with a person, try to avoid making it sound scripted as much as possible. Although interviews that are scripted can be produced faster, it will not sound as interesting to watch compared to a free-flowing conversation. Just be natural and avoid being stiff when talking to the person you are interviewing.

3. Spice it Up with Humor

If you have already done the two points given above, then you are almost ready to roll and would want to cap your blog off with an added bonus. Try inserting humorous blog posts that are related to the industry you are blogging about at least once every week. Funny news stories may be the ones that you should look out for and start writing a blog about it. Even though these humor posts that you publish are not focused on thought leadership, they can still be interesting to many readers and can be shared more than your regular posts. This in turn will generate new readers and traffic to your blog.




Image Source: louisesattler

How to Let Internet Marketing Work for You

There are millions of people that go online every day for various reasons. Some of them do it for work, there are those that do it to purchase items while others do it to socialize. A huge amount of individuals search for certain things online and since users are putting in the information that they are looking for in the search engines, we can therefore conclude that Internet marketing is about providing these people with high quality answers. This has also been the new way on how business owners reach their targets in the market.

What exactly are the benefits that Internet marketing has over the traditional method?

Cost Efficient

One of the first benefits that Internet marketing has over the traditional way is that it can be done with less cost. Just imagine the amount of cash you need to invest upon securing a TV commercial. The showing time in which the media companies put up the commercial will also dictate its cost. The same is true for radio commercials. Production processes for both entails the added expenditures, aside from its broadcasting.

When it comes to Internet marketing, things can be done cheaper as transmission and production costs are not high. It is also an effective method as the techniques are targeted to specific users. Companies can even take advantage of the social networks to promote their products and services to targeted audiences.

Fast Feedback

The feedback of the targets will also be received faster by Internet marketers. Potential customers can ask questions and comment to the company. In this way, companies can communicate with their potential and regular customers sooner. Marketers can quickly convince leads in purchasing the products and services that they are promoting.

Viral Referrals

The word of mouth marketing power has a very strong potential in advertising what a company has to offer. It was even mentioned many times before that it is even more effective than launching an advertising campaign. This may be because people would rather follow the recommendations of friends or people who have experience with a company.

With the trend in social media, the power of the word of mouth potential has multiplied as the Internet now allows a single person to reach hundreds of other people at single instant. A single post in Facebook can mean the success of a product or service being promoted as many users online can see it. Chain referrals can be triggered by a single email. That is why people who utilize the marketing power of Internet marketing can really improve the sales of their brands.


Image Source: Bluerisemedia

How to Apply Internet Marketing Techniques in Business

The revolution in marketing nowadays can be seen in the Internet. There are certain internet marketing techniques that are being applied by marketers today which cost almost nothing for companies but can bring in major sales for them.

There was a recent campaign by a person which only cost a few dollars during their time which led to a very large father’s day sale. Using a smart video concept in Youtube, an attractive deal and bulk email campaign to thousands of recipients, they were able to acquire a huge amount of customers afterwards.

Marketing via Bulk Email

Company owners no longer need to spend extra money if they already have a huge number of subscribers in order to reach their audience - coming up with an attractive offer to customers and sending them an email is a better idea. There are systems today which allow people to send email by bulk and even see those users who have opened the mail. Data such as this is useful in order to let people assess whether their mailing efforts are indeed effective.

Marketing via Social Media

Many individuals today are spending their time on social media websites, and companies that are utilizing clever campaigns have the opportunity to reach a huge number of audiences. One example is that of the Center for Disease Control in the United States who had been the buzz of pop culture zombie movie fads. They were able to acquire $3 million worth of airtime in TV by just rebranding their stock of protection material to also cover that of n “Zombie Apocalypse” if ever it happens.

Marketing via Pay per Click

One way in order to get new customers into a company’s subscriber list is by advertising through Pay per Click, which is a means of targeting people by putting advertisement in front of them. This can be more expensive as the process works by deducting money from the company every time a person clicks on their ads. The good thing here is that companies will be acquiring new contacts, thus lowering the cost of re-marketing to these clients in the long run.
An important thing to note in every Pay per Click campaign is that users should be sending out a focused message including a good landing page which will attract the customers based on their current needs. One example is if the advertisement is about an offer that was made by the company, then ensuring the click on the ad will direct people to a page which shows this offer easily so that the chances of engaging these people are increased. Nobody would want to have people visit their home or landing page only to have them look for a very small button which will direct them to the offer page.

Image Source: Internet Marketing Services to Earth   

Comparison of Life Before Social Media and Today

How Social Media Is To People?

People living in this so called “information era” has already embraced the importance of social media to their daily lives. Who would never recognize Facebook or Twitter? Many for sure have browsed over and over again their favorite videos via content communities like that of YouTube or perhaps consulted the Wikipedia for some undefined words or phrases. Social Media this day has become more and more natural.

With all these technologies and more of it to come in the coming years, has anyone ever thought how life was when all these stuffs that we now usually do, did not exist? As for people who have seen the transition of simple living to a more edgy and convenient style that we are today, life before wasn’t that complicated.

What is Life Before Social Media

Before, students and professionals would buy magazines, encyclopedias or newspapers to get the latest news or have the freshest digest for a research project. Today, there are e-magazines that are free to browse and read, the latest news is way fresher than on print and encyclopedias are now turned to Wikipedia.

Before, being connected to someone distant from you would mean mailing letters and handling it to Mr. Postman or a telegram for a faster delivery of message. Today, communication is within reach with Facebook’s chat and video calls and emails.

Before, stardom means auditioning or being scouted from unlikely places. Today, the road to becoming a star is easier with just a minute or an hour upload of recorded singing, acting or dancing videos. Before, sharing pictures would mean sending it via mail to let other see it, today, picture sharing is just a single click away.

Before, expressing thoughts and feelings are sometimes hindered and are forever silenced. Today, anyone can put a shout-out in their status in Facebook, Twitter or any social networking sites.

Before, playing would mean getting outside your house and actually play. Today, playing may be done virtually like that in the World of Warcraft.

How Social Media Help People In Their Lives

The technological era has indeed changed the world for better. Social media has allowed anyone to reach audiences be it big or small. It has made almost everything accessible as it is free to use for the public. It doesn’t require special skills for one to use it; it just needs a little navigation and a bit of orientation for one to utilize it. Social media’s immediacy is only a matter of seconds or minutes. Social media may change, revise or even remove any contents that may be deemed inappropriate or outdated. Social media is an open arena where people get to freely express emotions, ideas, products, buy and sell goods and services.

While it is undeniably true that social media has brought distance closer, more convenience for our daily lives, more edgy and sophisticated. But if you were to choose, which way of living would you prefer? The simpler or the much convenient but complicated?

Image Source By : marsmet546

3 Major Mistakes That People Do On WordPress

As you explore the world of Internet businesses, you will discover a lot of ways on how you can grow and improve the reach of your company to prospect customers. The ability to showcase the services and products of your company through a blog has become a very lucrative tool in promoting a business.

WordPress has warranted special mention as a blogging and website creation platform. This tool is open source (which means free to use) and is also a reliable content management system. With its features, the platform may be the top CMS that can be found in the web today. The website is continuing to become a useful tool for businessmen and entrepreneurs in improving the marketing of their products and services.

But there are some mistakes that people make when utilizing the platform. Even though the platform already provides a lot of opportunities to give businesses a good start in promoting what they have to offer, mistakes will still have negative impacts upon the prospects of the company if the processes are not done correctly.

1.     Utilizing the Wrong Keywords

Just like every website or blogging platform that is available out there, using key words and phrases will play a very important part in marketing. The ability to select the right keywords for every article is an essential step which will lead to good marketing. If not done correctly, it can be very difficult for you to track down if your content is actually driving traffic to your website and if it is being converted to sales.

2.     Having Low Quality or Plagiarized Content

Much effort should be made in order to product good quality and original content for websites. Sometimes it can be tempting for web proprietors to just finish up with content that is of low quality or those that they have lifted off from other sources as a means to save on time. But plagiarism is not allowed by search engines such as Google and Yahoo and they will blacklist and ban websites that practice this. Aside from that, having content of poor quality will lead to the website being rated poorly as well.

3.     Skipping Images

Even the proverb of a picture is worth a thousand words still hold true for company websites. Nowadays, a website is not seen and considered by the majority to be complete if it has not relevant images in it. High quality images can be a plus factor but eventually, it will all fall down on the relevance and significance for it to draw interest from people who visit the site.

You can then use the tips provided in this article for your next WordPress optimization tasks and make sure to note down the mistakes that people have done in order to avoid them. This is a sure way to get higher ranking and traffic if done correctly.

Image Source By : teddy-rised

3 Professional Tips on Social Media for Small Businesses

Are you new in social media marketing but would want to grow your small business by leaps and bounds? A few experts have shared their hottest social media tips which they personally prefer when they are doing their thing. 

Here are the pieces of advice from some of these experts which will help take your small business to the next level!

Showing Them You Are Real

Start using the social website Facebook in order to show your customers, clients and prospects that you are real. Although providing the occasional industry tip, link to a new blog or a new article piece, this is just so common nowadays that almost everyone else is doing it. Instead, why not show them how you are a real person by posting updates on interests that you are passionate about?

If you love to read, share quotes on something that will be insightful to readers. If you love cooking, post pictures of your latest masterpieces. Whichever you choose to show your passion to your followers, try to keep things interesting, different and humorous. It is also important to be original here.

Select One Social Network and Stick to It

Trying to be active on all of the social networks and putting in effort that is half-hearted will not give you the results that you are looking for. That is why it is recommended that you should let your small business pick a social network that will provide them with the highest amount of audience that they can give. Using tools such as the advertising platform of Facebook, LinkedIn’s search and Follower Wonk will let you assess this.

Lead Generate with Facebook

Many ways in order to grow your marketing list are available and one of these is by building an opt-in strategy through your Facebook page. Try to keep it simple by using iFrames in order to create your personalized welcome tab. This tab is where you can do the 2-step process which will be called a “reveal tab”.

The first step is to include a call to action which will encourage prospects to Like the page and become a fan. Once the person becomes a fan and has liked your page, you should offer them a valuable gift in exchange for their email and name. This model will help increase your fan base and will also grow your lead list as well.

Image Source By :  inblurbs

How Partnerships Through Social Media Works

Social media continues to play important roles for the success of every online marketing campaign. Companies that do not promote their business goods and services in social networking websites such as Twitter and Facebook do not have an edge against competitors. This is because they do not get the perks that social media has to offer marketing, but also due to the fact that the business does not have any influence in what other companies or people are saying about them online.

Even though these websites are the top trending social media marketing places to go for, they are not enough anymore unfortunately. One of the ways in order to establish an innovative and successful marketing campaign online is by building relationships with the niche audiences. These audiences though can be targeted easily at social networking websites that are focused in using a specific theme. There are many of these theme-specific networking communities available for gays, women, parents, blacks and even movie lovers.

Since there are a lot of these social networking sites nowadays, this means that a company which does their research thoroughly will find their target customers eventually. Things such as what they are marketing and how they market them will not matter anymore. A lot of people may question about the advantages that social media marketing has to offer but there are just many factors that convince people in the long run.

One of the benefits that social media has to offer is giving a company the visibility they need online. The content of the company will come out in various online platforms which are solely based on how the elements of the partnership are made. Elements such as the development of a profile for the product, customization of homepages, participating in a newsletter or email marketing are some of the aspects that help promote the company.

Another advantage that social media has to offer is that it allows targeted marketing to be engaged in. Once a social networking website has been identified to suit the target audience profile, it will be safe to assume that the members within this online community will more likely respond to the product or brand of the company. The presence of the company profile will not be seen as intrusive by other members of the community as long as proper etiquette is being followed.

Engaging in partnerships through social media is a great way to improve brand management in the future. As the company starts to build their relationship with target customers, they will know that the company is truly interested in learning about them and giving them what they need. For web savvy audiences, it is a big plus for companies to let them know that they understand the ins and outs of digital media.

These partnerships also do not cost a lot. A social networking community may be willing to trade opportunities with the company wherein they will endorse the product while the company promotes the social network in their campaign. The company can save money on advertising if these types of deals are made with the social networking sites.

Deciding on building partnerships through social media is not a bad idea but certain things should be noted before delving in. One thing is that not every social networking site out there is the right choice for companies. It is important that marketers conduct thorough research on the site beforehand, gathering data such as the amount of unique visitors and community members registered. The reputation of the networking site is also important as companies would not want to be affiliated with ones that have a bad image.

Top 5 Advanced Twitter Tips for Small Businesses

                           

Now that you have gotten your small business running and you have already mastered the basics when it comes to social networking, what’s do you need to do next in order to move to the next level? Below are tips which will help improve your marketing mastery when using the social networking website Twitter.

1. Connect with followers. You can make new friends in Twitter by following them. Using a tool such as FollowerWonk will allow users to find people whom they share the same interests, location or related to the competition. Following them and making light conversation is the way to form relationships with people online. It is not advised to sell or talk about the products or services that the company has to offer right away.

2. Tweet scheduling. Checking on Twitter has already been a daily routine for most people nowadays. People usually do this as the first thing in the morning, after they have had their lunch or later on in the afternoon. That is why having tweets scheduled when you know the right time that the audience will be present is an excellent plan. Scheduling in Twitter means that a person simply chooses the times within a day where they will be hanging around for a conversation or using tools such as HootSuite to help in tweeting automatically instead of manually. Whichever technique you prefer to use, it is important to interact with people who are following you during the times when they are waiting to be interacted with.

3. Sharing news topics. If you are subscribed to RSS feeds or blogs, you can share at least one content piece that you have read for the day which has made you analyze or bring out emotions from yourself. For those who are not yet subscribed, feed readers like Google Reader will help people stay updated with their favorite blogs and will always have content that is worthy to be shared with their audience even in the wireless Internet world.

4. Find out about your audience. Knowing who your target audience is in Twitter is very important because it will help you decide on what information or content to share in which they will be interested in. If most of the people in your audiences are already experts in a particular field or industry, tweeting about beginner How Tos or tutorials is something that you do not want to do. You also would not like to go over their heads too far by talking about advanced techniques on a topic that they have just begun learning about. If you take the time in developing a user profile that is ideal for your audience, it will help you share information that will be more relevant to them and will keep them interested in you as well.

5. Start being helpful. During your free time, do some searches in Twitter for problems that people are discussing and which your company can be a solution for. Sharing resources or a relevant link that will help them with their problem is a good idea. If you do not have an answer regarding their problem, you can have their message re-tweeted to see if anyone can help. 

Image URL Source By : inblurbs