Social media is now a part of our daily lives, which means that if you are a smart marketer you are leveraging it for business. However, all too many businesses make mistakes once they enter the social media space. This is mostly a result of not really understanding the medium and not knowing what to do once they get there. It’s easy to sign up for an account but once that’s completed there’s often a “Now what?” kind of fear. Many businesses look to see what other businesses are doing in social media and then develop their own campaign to match. What they don’t realize is that trying to do what the other guys are doing is one of the worst mistakes that they can make.
The right way to use social media for business depends on many factors including target audience and business size. Perhaps the most important factor to consider is the nature of the business. Social media efforts should be in line with the brand image and reputation and all other marketing efforts, both online and offline. There are plenty of social media tactics and tools that can be used for brand pages, but that doesn’t mean that you need to use them all. It’s very likely that not every function of social media is applicable to the needs of your business. Doing it all or doing too much can lead to confusion, distraction, and possibly even frustration of followers.
Some of the popular social media strategies for businesses are to hold contests, promote special deals and coupons, and encourage fan and follower check-ins. For local businesses and B2C businesses, these strategies are great for raising awareness and encouraging social participation and engagement. However, these strategies may not make sense for a company in the B2B services industry. Every social media strategy should be unique.
The key to developing the right social media strategy that works for your business is to do some research and plan ahead, instead of jumping in and figuring it out as you go along. This all starts with deciding who will manage the campaign. Obviously, a small business probably doesn’t have the resources to outsource the work. This isn’t a bad thing. After all, the people already working at the business, especially the business owner, know it best. For a larger corporation, there may be more than one person involved in the social media strategy. If this is the case, they all need to be on the same page from the start.
Social media is a great tool for building a brand and it now has an impact on SEO. However, for all businesses it’s important to remember that a social media page shouldn’t be the end point of interaction. It’s important to get followers to click over to the actual brand website in order for them to take action.
You knows the basics, right? Great content, attractive landing page and a good number of incoming links are necessary for gaining the top search listing in Google search for a particular keyword phrase. The good old way to experiment with your landing page was to promote it with as many links as possible – either natural or paid. You drive traffic through social media promotions, Adwords campaigns and other channels but how do you ensure that your landing pages are going to stand the test of time?
Why Organic Traffic is So Important?
Before going into the finer details, let me clarify why organic traffic is critical and why you should focus on building a natural and expanding link portfolio, rather than target the same landing page over and over again. First and foremost, organic traffic drives the maximum number of conversions, sales and clicks. It was true 10 years ago and this law holds true till this date. Nothing can beat the conversion ratio of the “general user” who clicks the first result in Google search, when compared to the traffic received from Adword ads, banner advertisements, social media campaigns and so on.
And the most amazing part is that it is completely free, but needs a lot of effort and background preparations. Once you reach the top spot, traffic is going to flow in naturally and all you have to worry about it what you want the user to do, rather than how you get them.
Why Build a diverse link portfolio?
A lot of the webmasters I know repeat the same mistake of gaining link popularity of a particular page but wonder why their efforts are not showing results.
No longer anyone can gain a decent exposure on search, by gaining hundreds of links to a single landing page on any domain. Google and other search engines are well versed with such techniques and they can determine whether your link campaign is natural or marketed. It is certainly not deceptive but it is by no means recommended for better exposure.
Instead, you should try to get external links to deeper pages and let the Google juice flow across your entire domain. Different pages that relate to a single context are much more powerful than one page with tons of links.
Example: You want to get targeted traffic on your sales page which is about “Men’s footwear”. Instead of buying tons of links with the anchor text “Men’s footwear”, you should start a blog and talk about different men’s footwear, collections, trending items and so on. A blog gives you exposure in your niche and there is a high chance that other bloggers will pick your stories, link to them, tweet about it and share it.
The result is much more powerful and search engines interpret the following conclusion:
“Okay, this site has a blog and they regularly publish stories about “Men’s footwear”. Interestingly, a lot of other sites frequently link to different pages of the blog, which proves that this particular person isn’t link farming them or paying money for those links. This must be a wonderful resource, otherwise people won’t link so naturally to different pages on the blog”.
Now, when your blog gains a good level of trust, popularity and reach among it’s audience, you know how to hit the hammer when the iron is red hot. Prepare a call to action right below your blog posts and request your readers to check out your sales page – the landing page where you want to drive conversions.
More importantly, the more interesting and useful resource you have on your domain, the more trust you will command. The secret of getting more conversions is Trust, not just links and links and links. Get over it, start a blog and build it as if no one is listening. Your efforts will pay off after a due course of time and the results will be long lasting than before.
This guest post is written by Lior Levin, a marketing consultant who works for a company that provides a to-do list tool for businesses and individuals.
If you know anything about search engine optimization, you know that link building is an essential part of the process. Links help determine value in the eyes of the search engines since they indicate trust. If a website has lots of relevant inbound links coming from quality websites, it will be viewed more favorably (and ranked better) than a site that doesn’t have many inbound links. Of course, the number of inbound links isn’t as important as the type of inbound links since all links aren’t created equal. Link building takes time, so you might as well spend that time wisely and build links that will actually be worth it. So, how do you determine link value?
The first way to determine how valuable a link will be is to use free online tools to research the website that you intend to get a link from. Websites like Compete, Website Grader, and Network Solutions WhoIs will give you an inside look at the website and provide you with information about generated traffic and domain background. If a website receives low traffic, low grades, is hosted in a foreign country, and hasn’t aged more than a year the link won’t hold much value. On the other hand, if the website checks out via all of these sites, that is a link worth going after.
Another way to determine link value is to analyze target audience behavior online. What sites are target customers or clients visiting? Link building isn’t just for the search engines. It’s also for improving online visibility and generating traffic back to your website. Conduct research and analyze the backlinks of competitors in order to find websites that target audience members visit frequently.
A link from a high authority site that generates traffic from target audience members is great, but what’s even better is if there is some kind of potential added value in the link. For example, are you able to establish some kind of relationship with the website owner? Can they provide you with additional link building opportunities down the road like guest blog posts or can the relationship even lead to opportunities beyond linking, like a business partnership or referral? It’s important to think beyond the technical aspect of linking.
Perhaps the easiest way to determine link value is simply to use common sense. Take a look at the website. Does it provide any value? Is it easy to navigate and does it provide a good user experience? Or, does it have multiple spelling and grammar errors and is it loaded with ads? If it doesn’t look like a website that you’d like to spend time visiting, it’s likely that the search engine spiders and prospective target audience members have the same bad impression of the site and the link doesn’t hold much (if any) value.
If you know anything about online marketing and search engine optimization, you understand the importance of content. After all, without content, what is there to optimize and how do potential clients or customers learn anything about you? The content that you produce is what sets you apart from the rest in the online space, which is competitive no matter what industry you are in. One popular method of producing content is to create a business blog and update it regularly. Of course, your blog posts will only be worthwhile if people actually see them. One way to improve your content marketing efforts is to include social share buttons on every blog post. Here are 3 reasons why:
User Experience
Any web property that you operate should have user experience at the top of the priority list. It’s very likely that your target audience members can find the same, or very similar, service or product that you offer elsewhere. Don’t frustrate them with a poor layout or navigation. The same theory applies when it comes to your content. Any interaction with your brand should be easy. A website or blog visitor should never have to think too much because if they find themselves thinking too hard, you’ve lost them. A blog should be easy to navigate and include post categories and archives by date. Including social share buttons also makes it easy for them to share the content with their fans and followers. If these buttons aren’t included, it’s unlikely that someone is going to take the time to open up a new window, sign in to their account, and copy and paste the link. This doesn’t mean that they didn’t find your content “shareable”; it just means that they didn’t feel like spending that extra time to share it.
Improve Brand Visibility and Reach
The ultimate long term goal of any content is for it to rank organically in the search engines for targeted keywords. But this takes time. If you create quality content, don’t you want people to see it immediately? This is why it’s important to have a robust social media presence and a respectable amount of followers. A simple post or tweet will share your fresh new content with the people that care about your brand or industry the most. But you don’t want it to stop there. Hopefully, your content is good enough that they will want to share it with their own fans and followers, which will improve your brand exposure. Including social share buttons increases the likelihood that this will happen.
Social Signals
Social media is no longer just a brand building and communication tool. A social media presence, or lack thereof, now has search engine ranking implications. If a link is shared frequently in social media, the search engines determine that it is a valuable link, which can result in better search engine ranking position. Since including share buttons increases the likelihood of a blog post getting shared, it also increases the likelihood that it will improve your search engine optimization efforts.
If you know anything about online marketing it’s likely that you know what infographics are and may have even seen a few of them while browsing around the web. Infographics are popular because they are considered to be a good source of “link juice”, meaning that people tend to share them frequently which helps to build up a good link portfolio and build brand visibility online. These infographics are so “sharable” because they provide the most important information on a given topic in an easy to understand matter. Instead of writing a blog post, article, or whitepaper that is heavy on numbers, facts, and data, businesses create an infographic that is easy on the eyes and easy to understand.
While it’s true that there are multiple reasons that an infographic is beneficial, not everyone should create one. An infographic supports a strong web presence. If you don’t already have a strong web presence for your brand within your niche, you have more important things to worry about.
An infographic is only effective if people are going to actually see it. If you don’t have a strong online marketing foundation, it’s doubtful that the infographic will be very powerful. In order to get your infographic shared to build your link portfolio and brand online, you need to have a significant number of people to share it with. Are you active in the social media and blogging community? Do you have a respectable number of opt in email newsletter subscribers? If not, how do you expect your infographic to be found? Don’t assume that people will eventually find it somewhere on your website. The goal of an infographic is for it to travel, and if you can’t start the process by sharing it to a significant number of your own followers, there really isn’t a point.
Another thing to consider about infographics is that if you want to do it right, it’s not easy. It takes time to research the topic and organize all of the information in a way that flows smoothly and makes sense to the reader. Once you’ve spent an appropriate amount of time preparing it, it needs to be developed and designed. If you don’t have an in house designer, you need to outsource the work to a professional, which will cost you. If you don’t already have a strong online marketing foundation, your money and time is better used elsewhere.
In order for an infographic to be truly effective, it needs to be accurate, beneficial, and professional looking. It also needs to have the potential to reach a wide audience. If your infographic won’t meet these criteria, don’t bother. Work on everything else first, and then create an infographic that is worthy of your time and resources.
Targeted website traffic is without doubt the holy grail of all online businesses, without it you might as well shut up shop and go home. It doesn’t matter how good your sales copy, your offer, your marketing funnel or your products and services, without visitors of an interested variety you will struggle pure and simple.
So much has been written about the subject of targeted website traffic and increasing the visitor count to your site, an awful lot of it good quality information that if implemented could see you create a six figure online business relatively quickly. The unfortunate thing is that the vast quantities of information available can also hinder many an online business owner, especially those who are new to the whole online marketing game.
So much of the information regarding traffic revolves around the medium in which you should be using to send interested visitors to your website, debates rage far and wide across the internet as to which is more effective, video marketing, article writing, blogging, podcasting, forum posting, pay per click and so on and so forth.
At the end of the day the medium is only as good as the marketing message contained within the content; if you are offering something of value to people they will naturally be inclined to see what it is you are offering as they will want more of the same, good quality information.
The key to targeted website traffic is however what you then do with that content, where do you distribute the content so it is easily accessible to your target market, so they can consume the content and follow the links back to your site.
An example of this using the medium of article marketing would be after creating the article, to submit to your own blog, then to the article directories, online forums within your niche that allow article posting, other sites and blogs within your niche that accept articles, just Google “your niche name” + “submit content” to find such sites along with online newsletters and e-zines.
With the rise of social media you can easily send your content out to your following by posting to Twitter and of course Facebook, another great strategy to get your content seen more widely through Facebook would be to post a link to your article within relevant groups on Facebook.
You could also go one step further and submit your content to offline publications within your niche such as trade journals and industry or niche specific magazines, these publications are always looking for content and will happily review what you have to offer for publication.
The above are just a few ideas to help you get started and think in terms of quality of content as well as quality of distribution. Start to think along the lines of your prospect and where they go online, what sites they visit, what blogs do they read, what social groups do they belong to and which forums do they belong to. This will make the job of driving targeted traffic to your website so much easier.
Targeted website traffic is the key to succeeding online and without doubt the cornerstone of a six figure online business. To receive more free training on how you can learn to build a six figure online business please visit www.robbrightmarketing.com
While there’s no doubt that you almost certainly need some sort of email newsletter to promote a site, blog, product or service online, there’s a great deal of nervousness and hand-wringing as to how it should be done.
The reason is because email newsletters, in the mind of many, border all-too-closely to spam and other unsolicited email. Though email newsletters, if done well, can be a great benefit to the recipient as well as the sender, a poorly-done newsletter can actually damage your reputation and unsell your site or product.
Unfortunately, the difference between a newsletter your subscribers look forward to getting and one they toss in the spam folder is often a minor one. But by simply following these best practices, you can help ensure your newsletter serves as a positive, routine contact for your subscribers and not as a recurring annoyance.
1. Clarity Before Subscription
Far too many newsletter subscription pitches fail to include what is actually in the newsletter. Why should the reader subscribe? What will they be getting? And how often will they be getting it?
Not only are better-informed readers more likely to sign up for your newsletter, but they’re more likely to stay as they know what they are getting into. Compare that to subscribers that are surprised at the volume or content of your newsletter and either unsubscribe immediately or begin to junk your emails.
2. Double Opt-In Only
Every email address on your subscriber list should be obtained through a double opt-in process only. This means that they have requested a subscription on your site (or some other means) and then confirmed that with an email sent to their account.
Email lists that don’t use double opt-in are simply too prone to abuse as anyone can sign up anyone else. This, in turn, puts your newsletters in the hands of those who never really wanted it, turning what should be a legitimate mailing into spam.
Always remember spam is in the eye of the beholder so it’s important to make sure the recipient won’t see it that way.
3. Send at the Best Time
One of the most common ways for your emails to be treated as spam is to have them appear in an inbox filled with other spam letters.
Though there is no single best time to send your newsletters, you typically want to do so when your readers are active on their computer but not too busy.
For example, if you reach out to a business audience, the ideal time might be right after the morning email clean out but before lunch. Likewise, if your audience primarily checks email at home, it might be early evening, shortly after they get home from work.
Understand your audience and learn the best time to send your newsletters to them. You can even further segment this by requesting additional information from your subscribers and then target different readers at different times for maximum benefit.
Making this part of the process is critical to not angering your readers. After all, just because someone is unsubscribing from your newsletter does not mean they won’t purchase your product, read your site or otherwise participate in your community, it just means they no longer want that particular element and and it’s best to not upset them lest they leave completely.
Furthermore, the easier it is to leave, the less likely readers are to mark your newsletters as spam and the less likely they are going to be filtered out for others.
In short, a clear exit helps everyone out.
All in all, there is no reason to be too nervous about newsletter marketing. Though it can be risky if done poorly, if you operate with good faith, make sure people know what they are subscribing to and let them leave when they want, the risk is fairly minor.
While it might mean putting the brakes somewhat on your lists’ growth and being a bit more careful with how you use it, a well-built and well-maintained list is, in the long run, worth far more than one most merely toss into the spam folder.
Best of all, it creates something people look forward to getting and eagerly open, meaning they are a willing audience. That, in turn, is something that almost every advertiser dreams of.
This guest post is written by Lior Levine, a marketing consultant for a web hosting company that provides a list of the top 10 website hosting companies available online. Lior also consults for an international company that provides innovative new cancer treatments.
For some reason there seems to be a misconception out there that content is cheap and that it’s OK to pay $10 for an article to be published online. Are you kidding? Content is the foundation of everything that you do online, particularly of an online marketing strategy. If you think that it’s OK to be a cheapskate when it comes to content, you are very wrong.
Think about it. You don’t need to be a genius to know that the content that you are reading online was thrown together in ten minutes, written by someone that doesn’t speak the language as their first language, or doesn’t have much knowledge of the topic being discussed. Would you take an individual or a business that published this kind of content seriously? Probably not.
Online content should be handled with the same care that offline content is handled. If you were buying a $1000 print ad, would you allow it to be haphazardly thrown together by someone that was paid a minimum rate? Or even worse, by a non-paid intern? Doubt it. So why do businesses think it’s OK when it comes to web content?
Perhaps one explanation is that they simply don’t “get” the medium. They were told once upon a time that in order to build up their search engine visibility they needed to build up their links so they became so focused on quantity over quality and forgot about what truly mattered. They worried so much about keyword density to attract the search engines that they were churning out poor content that didn’t resonate with their target audience.
Another possible explanation is that they got too caught up with the “free” nature of the Internet. It’s “free” to publish a blog post, submit an article, sign up for social media accounts, and upload videos online. So the content should be free (or cheap) too, right? Wrong. While it may be “free” to participate in all of those online branding and link building tactics, it takes time and effort, which usually translates into money.
The bottom line is that online content is an important representation of your brand. Your work should be of good quality at all of your touchpoints. If you want it done right, you need to accept that it costs money. For a good piece of content, you need to be willing to pay $50-$200, and possibly more depending on the nature of the content. It’s worth spending money on a writer that has knowledge or even paying someone to get the knowledge. An in house content writer or contract writer that knows the ins and outs of your business and industry is invaluable.
Businesses that are late to the social media game are realizing that they made a mistake. When marketers started discussing it a few years ago, some business owners simply dismissed it as another fad that wasn’t worth investing time and money in. Now they’re kicking themselves. Knowing that they are late to the game has created a sense of urgency and panic. They want to jump right in without really understanding what it’s all about, figuring that they will learn as they go. Their main focus when first starting out seems to be on getting followers. While followers are certainly important, trying to achieve a quick following isn’t the right strategy. The focus should be on actual engagement. There is no point in having followers that don’t care what you are posting, or even worse, aren’t even real people but dummy accounts that were created just to “Like” things.
When setting social media marketing goals, it’s important to focus on things like:
Traffic
The goal of any internet marketing strategy is to get people to click over and visit your site. While social media pages are great, you don’t have ownership of it. A company website is your hub. If nobody is clicking over to your page from social media, you might want to reevaluate your strategy and include more call to actions in your social media content.
Leads
A social media strategy should result in an increase in website traffic, which should result in more leads. Create different landing and conversion pages so that you know that the lead is coming from social media.
Shares
Pay careful attention to the number of Likes, Re-tweets, +1’s and bookmarks that your content receives. This helps build your link portfolio and can introduce your work to a new audience that might be interested in what you have to say.
Conversations
The number of people that take the time to post on your wall or send you a message on Twitter is an important metric. Whether the message is positive or negative, they are still interacting with your brand. In both cases it gives you an opportunity to respond and thank them for a compliment or respond to a negative comment by apologizing and offering to make good on the situation. Many customer service problems can be handled very quickly in the social media space.
Those are the big things to focus on in social media, but smaller goals along the way are what make the big goals achievable. Make sure to set weekly benchmarks regarding the content that you will be sharing in social media, whether it is sharing an article that you wrote or asking your followers a question and participating in a conversation.
Sometimes it can be difficult trying to get a complex message or theory through to an audience. Although the written word is amazingly powerful, sometimes it can just be easier to use infographics to get your point across. But what is an infographic and how do they work? Here’s an explanation and a few examples of effective infographics.
What Is An Infographic?
Infographics are pictorial representations of information that could also be written in an article. Think along the lines of a graph or pie chart if you will. A pie chart could contain information about what type of food people like to eat on a night out. It could tell you that 40% of people like Indian cuisine, 30% like Chinese cuisine, 20% like American, and 10% like Fish and chips.
While it’s fine to give people that information in writing, a pie chart gives a much better visual representation of the information. Many people take in facts better when they see an actual image instead of words on paper.
So What Types Of Infographics Are There and Which Work Best?
Directional- Directional infographics show people how to get from one point to another. They can be a good way to lead staff members through certain work procedures, and are also very effective in schools, especially used in many science departments.
Often things like arrows, bullet points, balloons, and numbers are used in this kind of infographic to impart the necessary information.
Quantitative- This kind of infographic is used to give statistical information to readers in a quick and effective way. Similar to the pie chart example given earlier you’ll often see pie charts, bar charts, and graphs used to give numerical information in a way that can be easily digested and understood.
Quantitative infographics will also be used in cases where complex information needs to be simplified.
Chronological- These infographics are not unlike their quantitative cousins. They are used to show how things change over a period of time. They’ll normally be used to show things like weight loss/gain, growth of sales and profit, number of crimes, that kind of thing.
These infographics are very effective at showing the relationship between numbers over a certain period of time. They are used very much in business where it’s important to see how a companies strategy is affecting things like profits.
Infographics and Advertising
Infographics are often used in marketing and advertising material as it can help solidify a sales message much more effectively that the written word. The most effective type of infographics will be clean, basic, and concise. The whole point is to simplify a message and not make it harder.
Other factors that become very important in creating a strong infographic are things like color, layout and font. It needs to be easy on the eye, easy to follow, and must grab your readers attention. It’s very important to be very organized in your presentation of information as a reader who ends up confused will probably leave your graphic before they understand the most important points.
As the Internet has grown so has the use of infographics. With so much information out there, and so many other sites competing for eyeballs it has become even more important that ever to stand out, whilst ensuring your readers get the information they need quickly, and in an entertaining way.
With the sudden explosive growth of the Android phones and iPhones, many websites are quickly adapting their information so it’s compatible with customers mobile devices. This means that many infographics are becoming small enough to be used on a mobile phone. Whilst this medium of communicating with clients is proving so effective there’s nothing to suggest the infographic will be going anywhere fast.
This post was sent to us by a blogger named Lior Levin who is a blogger and a marketing consultant to the ma in security and ma in political science programs in the tel aviv university.
