Unless you are an incredibly well-connected Solopreneur who is making a killing and maybe even turning business away, social media will play a role in your branding and marketing strategies. Each platform has its cohort of devoted users and will be a good fit for some businesses, but maybe less so for others.
The platforms are free of charge, aside from the time it costs to keep your content up-to-date. No matter how responsive to social media marketing your venture is, time will not allow most Solopreneurs and business owners to maintain a presence on all platforms, unless social media management is outsourced. If the ROI positively impacts sales revenues, then the investment will be worthwhile. Let's take a look at Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. Facebook
The most popular social media platform has 2.19 billion users (Statista, 1Q 2018) around the world. There are somewhat more female users than male and the bulk of the age demographic is 18-44 years. Forbes Magazine data indicates that 47% of Americans report that Facebook is their primary influencer when it comes to making purchases.
Facebook often delivers excellent ROI for B2C enterprises (somewhat less for B2B). In-store events and promotions, speaking engagements, your workshops and other events can be announced to Facebook Friends. Content provided in text, photos, or video can be uploaded. You can create groups and build communities, or post a customer survey. Share behind-the-scenes information about your business and what it takes to do what you do and in the process, you'll engage customers, strengthen your brand and build relationships.
Does that sound like too much work and too much sharing? Then create a Fan Page and limit your presence to basic info and a good call to action. Be aware that your presentation of text, photos and other content should be relaxed and welcoming, to create a personal feel (but remember that business is the context).
Instagram
You'll find 1 billion users (Statista, June 2018) from around the world and 80% are outside of the U.S. 95 million posts are shared daily, with many accessed on a mobile device. Approximately 59% of U.S. users are 18-29 years. As of 1Q 2018, there are 300 million daily Instagram Stories users and 30% of users have purchased a product.
Visual storytelling, behind-the-scenes photo montages, social selling, brand awareness, engaging with customers and creating relationships are good uses of Instagram. If you are in public relations or special event/conference planning, then you will find worthwhile B2B use, otherwise it's B2C as far as I can tell.
Photo sharing, brief video trailers and concise text postings that include a hashtag # to better distribute your content are ideal content. Add a link to your profile bio. Decide if you want a public or members-only account. Links cannot be shared.
LinkedIn
Considered the gold standard B2B social media platform, LinkedIn has 500 million members globally (Statista, January 2018). Business ventures large and small, Solopreneurs, corporate and nonprofit leaders, physicians and dentists, any employee who harbors professional aspirations and most college students maintain a profile page. Recruiters use LinkedIn to identify potential candidates for job openings. LinkedIn ProFinder helps Solpreneurs find project work.
LinkedIn is an excellent platform on which to build a community of professional colleagues through your connections and share with them your professional story, successes, highlights and other updates that support your personal brand. My B2B blog posts to my LinkedIn page and my connections receive notice of its arrival. Your connections will also share their stories and there is great opportunity to be in touch and nurture relationships.
Professional portfolios, videos, white papers, newsletters, blogs, infographics, SlideShare presentations and podcasts can be featured on your profile page to add depth to your brand story. Links to articles or studies that might interest your connections can be posted. Recommendations and endorsements let others verify your professional bona fides and you can return the favor.
In the Groups section, you'll engage with colleagues within your industry, or with alumni of your school. Topics of interest are explored through posted questions and group members can respond and in the process get to know one another and possibly, forge relationships that lead to doing business.
Thanks for reading,
Kim
Kim L. Clark is an external strategy and marketing consultant who brings agile skills to the for-profit and not-for-profit organization leaders with whom she works. Ensure that your organization is positioned to achieve mission-critical goals when you contact Kim http://polishedprofessionalsboston.com.
In this digital age, the importance of data to a business/website should never be underestimated. In fact, without proper tracking of website traffic, a business is literally lost, especially when it comes to how to optimize the website and make full use of it.
Whether your website is run in the form of a personal blog, news portal, business or corporate page, ecommerce store, Google Analytics is considered an essential tool for every website. The more you use this highly powerful Google tool, the bigger advantage you have.
Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic. You can create goals and conversion tracking to get the most of your analytics information and use it to improve your website's content, user experience and optimization for better online sales.
Out of so many features in Google Analytics, I think the ability to identify the Source / Medium to your website is one of the best website tools. Based on the data shown, you can find out if your marketing efforts have been paid off or not. This can provide a solid reference for your next decision making in enhancing your website performance.
Google Data Studio
Trust me, for beginners, you might be overwhelmed by all the amount of data shown in Google Analytics. To be frank, sometimes you just need a simple report with chart, graph or pie to summarize the performance of your website.
Here is a free tool from Google called Google Data Studio, which gives you everything you need to turn your analytics data into informative, easy-to-understand reports through data visualization.
Analytics has always been a challenge for digital marketing, however, Google Data Studio allows you to create customizable data visualization and report. Besides, you can even share with your clients - a huge plus especially if you are working in a big group.
Quick tip: You can check out Google Data Studio Gallery to duplicate their samples and modify to your website use. After that you will be able to change and edit the metric according to your needs. Quite amazing, right?
Google Search Console
Previously known as Google Webmaster Tools, now rebranded to Google Search Console, this free web service is designed for webmasters. It allows you to check the indexing status and optimize the visibility of your websites.
This free tool is a MUST for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The power to track your site's search performance is the most precious data to understand what the audiences want for your site.
Once the website is tracked by Google, you'll be able to view your organic search results right alongside the performance statistics for the organic search queries. This information helps you better understand how paid text ads and organic search results work together. If you analyse deeply enough, you will find many opportunities like identify relevant search queries that have low organic traffic volume and target these keywords in Google AdWords. This will increase your overall traffic, tailored to the objective of your website.
Google My Business
Are you operating a brick and mortar business? If you are, this free tools from Google is one of the most local SEO strategies to strengthen your website. Google My Business is a powerful tool for businesses and organizations to manage their online presence across Google, like Google Search and Google Maps.
As smartphone penetration in Malaysia approaching 100% by 2018, the majority of Malaysians are using smartphones for navigation, searching for instant answers or browsing social media platforms. Your business and brand need to be found online with the correct information.
Make sure all the listed information is correct, up-to-date and reflect your business. Remember, those info will appear when people search for your office or physical store via Waze or Google Map. We often see some of the business hasn't updated their address, phone number and business hours to the latest. Wish to gain my traffic to your website?
You should try the new the features from Google My Business called "Posts". The published content will display your image and short description with call-to-action link to your intended URL. For example, blog post "Should I hide or even remove client inquiry on my Facebook?" will appear at the bottom of our business info.
Google Keyword Planner
Building a website without keyword research is exhausting and time wasting in long-term. In order to reach the right customers with the right keywords, you should use Google Keyword Planner to discover relevant keywords. Inserting those keywords into your website will ensure your content remains relevant.
*To access Keyword Planner, you need to sign in to your Google AdWords account at http://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner. Create the account is free of charge and fast.
Yes, it's completely free, you can find new keyword ideas that are relevant to your product, service and target customers. Keyword planner will show you the search volume data in historical statistics which is one of the most important key factors for your website.
Furthermore, the data from keywords ideas is a useful tool for SEO to your website. Analyse the information and turn it to your next content marketing strategy. Based on the search terms data, you should have plenty of ideas what should can be inserted to your text to make it more relevant to your audience.
Google Tag Manager
This free tool helps you update tags and code snippets on your website and mobile app quickly and easily. You can insert JavaScript and HTML tags used for tracking and analytics on websites in Tag Manager without touching the back end of the website.
Many websites do not deploy tracking function or have unreliable data collection because of messy codes injection. To solve this, we highly recommend using Google Tag Manager to consolidate and manage all your tracking codes or scripts.
The best example of using this tool is to use Facebook Ads. While more and more businesses are spending on Facebook Ads, most of them do not install Facebook Pixel into their website for conversion tracking, optimization and remarketing purposes.
Facebook Ads is already integrated with Google Tag Manager for smooth and easy installation. All you need to do just click and follow the instructions given without any need for complicated coding.
Test My Site from Think With Google
In order to rank well in mobile Google Search, your website should have fast loading speed and a mobile-optimized website. Use the Test My Site tool from Think with Google to check your website score on mobile performance. After a few minutes, you will receive recommendations on improving website performance across all devices.
Nobody wants to wait for slow websites or browse non-mobile friendly websites. The suggested time is 3 seconds from Google, which means if your site doesn't load completely within 3 seconds, most people will most probably go elsewhere.
Just insert your email address and you will obtain the detailed analysis about your website. The content of the report is simple, but provides valuable insight into how Google ranks your website speed.
The report will become a crucial reference to your webmaster or web developer to further optimize the website. If you need even more in depth report about how Google renders and indexes your website, you should use the PageSpeed Insight tool.
Google PageSpeed Insight
If you have web developers or web designers that really want to understand the factors to increase your website speed, give PageSpeed Insights Tool a try and check your score on your website's speed and optimization.
The latest version now shows the data from your First Contentful Point (FCP), the measurement when a user sees a visual response from the page. DOM Content Loaded (DCL), as well as the measurement when HTML document has been loaded and parsed.
PageSpeed Insights is handy in providing insight on how Google indexes your website differently for desktop and mobile versions.
Here are some website speed optimization tips from PageSpeed:
Avoid landing page redirects
Eliminate render-blocking JavaScript and CSS in above-the-fold contents
Enable compression
Leverage browser caching
Minify CSS
Minify HTML
MInify JavaScript
Optimize images
Prioritize visible content
Reduce server response time
Google Trend
Wish to see the latest trends and data from Google? You can search anything via Google Trends and even narrow down to specific country or category. This tool is useful to identify latest trends or viral news in your location.
Ideally, once you identified a trend, you can craft new blog posts, new promotions or ideas that reflect the said trend.
Don't forget that you also can view the interest traffic of search terms using Google Trends.
With this, you can spot the best time to launch specific campaign. This is helpful for seasonal campaign or annual promotion because you can discover the best timing for your ad hoc digital marketing campaigns.
Google Alert
If you want to be aware of a particular topic and all the related information that bubbles up in the news, you can have them all automatically delivered to you with Google Alert and get notified every time when your keywords or phrases have new updates.
Google Alert is good for simple keyword monitoring, with updated on every mention of those keywords being sent to your email inbox for almost real time notification. Of course, you can choose the frequency at which you'll receive them - once per day, once per week or even get them as they just happen.
A useful tip when creating the Google Alert is to avoid using generic keywords but create alerts that are more unique to your website. The more precise the keywords, the more relevant are your alerts. For that, you should utilize the search filters wherever possible, such as languages, region or sources.
Summary
So, that's it, above are the 10 must-have free Google tools to improve the performance of your website. Make full use of all tools from analysis, research or monitoring to achieve the objective of your site.
What are your favourite tools from Google? Do you know any other Google tools that we should cover? Let us know in the comments below!
Original post if from https://www.exabytes.digital/blog/10-must-free-google-tools-websites-2018. Feel free to contact me anytime. Hope you learn something new from my list to improve your website.
Many business don't do the marketing the right way, especially when it comes to social media marketing. What you need to keep in mind is that your social media campaigns have to be effective and affordable. If done the right way, they can help you grow your business. Targeting the wrong audience is not a good idea. Let's talk about 5 do's of effective social marketing.
1. Learn to use the power of social media
On the Internet, you can find a lot of information about marketing. You can find free courses as well as paid ones. Understanding these things is not difficult as long as you want to educate yourself.
So, it's important that your take your time to find out how these marketing campaigns work. Although basics are the same, businesses have to customize these strategies so as to grab the eyes of their potential customers or clients.
2. Listen to your prospective customers
How can you find out what your customers want from you? There is only way. You need to listen to them. Aside from this, it's important that you make use of social media platforms to extend your customer service, as more and more customers present their feedback and opinion on websites, such as Facebook and Twitter.
By listening to your clients or customers, you can avail a lot of opportunities too. For instance, you can read up on the key influences to find out how you can improve your products or services.
3. Make use of automation tools
It's not a good idea to opt for spammy automation. Instead, you should use the smart automation. Blasting out a lot of promotional offers all the time is not a good idea. This may prove counterproductive and your followers may lose interest in your offers. What you need to do is make use of social media to get in touch with your customers and offer useful information. By doing so, you can build a loyal audience that can become your customers.
4. Engage with your audience
You don't just need to keep updating your social media pages, it won't work. What you need to do is keep in touch with your audience and keep them engaged. What matters is their satisfaction.
If you engage your audience, you can find out more about the problems that they are facing. Then, you can work harder to resolve those issues and make those customers satisfied.
5. Work on just two platforms first
It may not be possible for you to stay active on all of the social media sites. If you are just starting out, make sure you choose one or two platforms and focus all your efforts on them. Most of your customers will be active on two big platforms, such as social media and Twitter.
So, these are 5 do's of social marketing. If done well, they can help you run effective social media campaigns to grow your customers and clients to expand your business.
Tips for Creating an Effective & Efficient Website Homepage
1. The top categories of your website should be visible. Make sure that they stand out.
2. Include sub categories, which are relevant to the top categories on your website.
3. Your message and/or motto should be informative, engaging and memorable.
4. Users should know what your website is about on the Homepage.
5. Create content, which is unique & contains valuable information.
"My rule of thumb is build a site for a user, not a spider."
Dave Naylor.
Important Elements that you Should Consider While Planning your Website:
Your website is your gateway to reaching customers and gaining a loyal audience. There are two really important elements, which should be checked before the development and designing of a website. For starters, your website should be user friendly. Visitors and users should be able to navigate throughout your website with ease. Secondly, always keep in mind that your website will be essential in the way people will find your services and/or products.
The most important page on a website is the Homepage, as this will be the first page that visitors and users usually stumble upon during searches on different search engines. If your website's Homepage is designed in a user friendly fashion - it is more than likely that users and/or visitors will navigate through other pages of your website.
Navigation layout and/or design is paramount to the success of your website, as users are often put off by web pages that aren't user friendly. Arrange categories in a way, that will make it simple for users and for customers to browse through. Also, make sure that your website loads promptly, as slow loading website can be detrimental to your website.
Use Friendly SEO Urls:
On websites, create pages that are clear and that describe each topic, product or service. SEO friendly websites go hand in hand with the development and design of the website. Be sure to utilize SEO friendly urls.
• An unfriendly URL is a URL with irrelevant characters. Avoid using characters that do not pertain to the page's topic. An example of an unfriendly and irrelevant URL would contain characters that do not include the brand name or subject of the web page. Unfriendly urls, can also, contain characters such as:!,#,% and other symbols and/or letters, that do not pertain to your web page. Do not use these formats.
• An SEO friendly URL, typically has the topic or name of the page within the URL.
Keep these tips in mind when creating the different pages of your website. Friendly urls will attract more visitors and users, as these pages won't appear suspicious.
The Importance of Website Pages' Titles:
The title used for each page on a website is of utter importance for your website's success. Keeping it simple and clear usually is the best route to go. Titles on different pages of a website should contain a keyword, which you know users are searching for on different search engines.
The titles of pages on a website will appear on the website URL, as well, as in search engines. Titles should describe the content of the page. It is recommended for each document to contain a title tag.
Content for Websites - Use Unique and Relevant Keywords:
Before creating and adding content to your website, be certain that you've done thorough research on what your targeted audience and customers are looking for. For instance, you can utilize Buzzsumo to analyze the content that's being used on an array of topics and/or competitors. Find out about the latest trends and about topics that are being shared - this way you can stay ahead of your competition.
The Importance of Heading Tags:
Use H1, H2 and up to H6 headings for heading tags on content. Such will show Google, which texts are more important and what the topic is about. The heading tags will help rank your website.
Why Internal and External Links are Important for SEO:
INTERNAL LINKS -
Internal links are links that are found within your website. Internal links will help your users and visitors to navigate through relevant pages and topics faster. Adding hyperlinks to the content on your website will re-direct users to other pages on your website. Google follows such links to be able to track the associations of links to and from the website content.
EXTERNAL LINKS -
External links are links, which are found on other websites that will re-direct users back to your website and website pages. External links can also, be found on your website, which re-direct users and visitors to other websites. Google will follow these links, as these links can have an immense impact on your domain's rank.
For example, a link from Forbes magazine that links back to your website, can generate a significant amount of traffic, which will increase your page's visibility and authority. However, stay away from unethical SEO practices and shortcuts - such as - suspicious link building. Google will penalize your website if you are caught utilizing unethical SEO practices.
It is advised for you to use Ahrefs to analyze back links on blogs and competitors. Ahrefs will identify the amount of back links that website content has generated, social shares, organic keywords, organic traffic and lists of paid keywords.
Clear Calls to Action:
Call to actions are buttons or links that inform and persuade users and visitors to click on these buttons and/or links to do something else. Some examples of call to actions include:
• Contact Us
• Call Us
• Subscribe to My Email
• Buy Now
• View Details
All the above calls to actions will persuade users to take the next step.
Call to actions alert users in taking actions quicker. Furthermore, call to actions - also, helps with user-engagement and conversion rates.
What you can expect when you implement the above tips:
Implement all the tips that we have mentioned when developing or revising your website and surely, your website will be successful and fruitful. Cater and engage with your audience in all possible ways and you will notice an increase on the traffic of your website.
Implement the tips mentioned above when developing your website. If you do - surely, your website will be successful! Cater & engage with your targeted audience in all ways possible. You will see an increase on the traffic of your website before you know it!
Learn more about Digital Marketing when you visit: http://www.mysticwebdesigns.com's blog page, which has continuous updates on marketing trends.
We all know that website or blog traffic is the only key to generating life changing kind of money online. And one of the preferred methods among super successful affiliate marketers is commenting because you can reach millions of visitors, you just need to look in the right places.
You will have access to 5 sites within the online marketing niche later in this article. Combined, they have over 150 MILLION Visitors per Month! But you also need to know how to do your own research because that will enable you to reach these kind of sites in Any Niche.
You need to know whether the particular site is in fact indexed in Google. You need to know the page rank and both the quantity and quality of visitors to that site. Visitor origin is extremely important, next to a product in demand (On Your Blog).
In another Blog Post I demonstrate a certain research method that will show you just How to "Look In the Right Places". You need to research the sites you wish to comment on, and by using the simple tools as demonstrated above, I was able to come across sites with as much as 85.3 MILLION visitors per month.
But get this, they all allow comments and most even allow you to share your website and blog URL. Be careful though because the more professional the site, the less tolerance they will have to unprofessional conduct. This includes desperate sales pitches and a flood of random affiliate links, you only EVER share a URL to your own blog or website in any comments you make.
Most professional sites will provide you with one of 2 most used commenting options;
An On-Site Contact Form - That will allow you to share your URL by providing an option to do so, these forms normally require your name, email, URL and of course your comment.
Comments Feed Plugin - This is when you leave a comment by having to log into a particular social profile or Gravatar account to do so. And as these commenting options do not allow a special window for your URL, you DO NOT share any URL in these comments.
Within context however, you may want to suggest a certain idea and have other people respond to your comment. Should that discussion lead to an increased interest and request to view your site, then you share the link to your personal blog or website.
When You Comment - You always stay on topic, and blend with the discussion at hand. That can only be done by actually reading the particular post you wish to comment on. Don't just barge in with a desperate sales pitch or offer, it mirrors desperation. Keep your comments as professional as possible, and you will never have to write another sales pitch.
Professional commenting (And Actually Getting results) is a time consuming exercise and must never be done hastily. Apart from researching the sites you wish to comment and even guest post on, you also want to read other comments. Find what a particular audience is looking for so that you may be able to offer a suitable and obvious solution (That Actually Works). And make sure this offer is available On Your Blog, preferably with a proper discussion because you want to inspire your visitor to want to Know More.
The purpose of your comment must be to get the visitor to your own blog or website, you then need to ensure your content is interesting and useful enough to keep your visitor there. A great way to check this is to pay attention to your visitor/view ratio. Your visitors should be less than the views because it indicates that you're on the right path, it means you have returning visitors.
Now I did promise to provide access to my personal 5 commenting favourites, but I strongly advise you master that research method we discussed earlier.
Moz- This site offer an On Site Comment window that allows you to share your URL as a Hyper Link. Do not enter a raw URL (And Especially an Affiliate Offer URL) anywhere, because this is also a great way to get Moz to recognize your Blog or Website. Share the link to your personal site by means of the Hyper Link option provided.
Once signed up and inside your membership, you need to visit the Moz Blog to be able to comment and share your thoughts. You will also be able to answer questions because this is a site that offers great engagement, I can tell you that.
The Penny Hoarder - This site uses a Facebook comment plugin. You will need to login with your Facebook credentials to comment here, so be sure your profile is as complete and professional as possible. You will not have to register an account with the Penny Hoarder, only Facebook login to comment. And remember to only share the link to your blog or website when asked to do so.
Pro Blogger - And this is a perfect example of the on-site comments window where you have the option of sharing your blog URL. Once your comment is approved, your site will be accessible to reader when they click on your name in the comment. Pro Blogger, like Penny Hoarder requires no registration.
Money Talks News- Another high value site that does not require any registration. Like The Penny Hoarder, Money Talks too uses the Facebook comments plugin so the same rules apply. Only share the URL to your blog when asked to do so.
Always remember that content is the King of sales conversion, and unique content is what will have your site stand out. Content is the single most important part of actually generating money online, and endless research is the only way to be able to provide your audience with the relevant content. You must do the research, so your reader does not have to.
And that is how you can now leverage commenting to your profitable advantage.
Success Means Going From Failure To Failure Without The Loss Of Enthusiasm - http://easyinternetmoneyandjobs.com
Whenever we create a new website, our prime target is to get indexed by Google as soon as possible. Though there is no time guarantee as when your site will be indexed by the search engine, but there are certain steps that can help you to avoid the worst case scenario and get the search engines working for you. According to Google, crawling and indexing are processes that may take time and often rely on various factors. Predictions and guarantees cannot be made as when the URL will be indexed.
So, in this article, we will take up some factors that should be considered for quick indexing of your site in Google.
Understand what is indexing
Most of you may not be aware of the term indexing. In SEO, it refers to the search engines that keep a record of the web pages of your site. When the search engine bots starts to crawl your site based on index and no index meta tags, it continues to add pages with index tags. In simple words, it is the spider's way of processing and gathering the data from the pages during its crawl, which helps to improve your search results. The spider notes the new changes and documents and adds them to the searchable index that Google maintains. Google's algorithm goes to work and decides where to rank the page among all others based on the keywords.
Enter your URL on the Google's URL submission page:
Once your new website or pages are created, you can visit Google's Submit URL page and then type the URL in the box, check the captcha and hit the Submit Request button. But for this, you need to create an account on webmaster tools by using your Google account. Once it is done, you can wait for your website pages to get indexed on Google.
Create a sitemap of your site:
The next thing that you should consider is to create an XML file that stores all the links and the pages of your site so that it helps the crawlers of Google to quickly find your whole website. Whenever there are any updates or you create a blog on your site, include the link of the HTML site map on every page so that the search engine bot can index your site even if it starts from any corner of your site.
Use Google Search Console to track your site:
Google often recommends logging its Search Console once a month to check if there are any errors or dips in traffic. The site offers a variety of indexing-related tools and you will be able to confirm if Google is able to access your pages or not. You can even notify the search engine for a domain change or any changes in the address and even issue urgent blocks on your content that you want to take out off your site.
Use Robots.txt
In case you are not a developer or a coder, you might have seen a file, robots.txt in your domain files. This is a plain text file that resides in the root directory of your domain. It gives strict instruction to the spiders of the search engine about which pages they can crawl and index. When the spiders find a new domain or a file, they read the instructions before taking any action. So, your first step for your new site is to confirm that the site has a robots.txt file. This can be done by checking the FTP or by clicking on the File Manager via the CPanel.
Submit your site to blog directories:
This is another means of getting your site indexed very quickly on Google. Most blog directories allow submission of your site's content for free. They also give links and traffic. Also ensure to create social media profiles and use sites like Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter and etc. to create pages for your site and submit any new posts regularly on them.
Following some essential tips for your site will help you to index it easily on the search engines. And once the pages are indexed, the search crawlers will easily crawl your site and you will be able to secure a higher search ranking with your content.
