Different tutorials will be added to cover the spectrum of Social Media Marketing that will increase your website traffic. 1. Twitter Marketing Tutorial
Pick your Niche. Stay laser targeted and focussed!
Create a mailing list
Find top notch content (check out 7 free tools under free traffic)
Share curated popular content
Use fully automated tweeting like FollowLiker or engage manual twitter marketing
Find Niche Leaders via Google keyword planner
Follow the right Influencers on Twitter in your Niche
Truly engage by asking questions
Build High Influence retweet circle
Cross-feed your content among different platforms
Ask questions and hasstags
Optimize elements
Tweet timing optimisation
2. Twitter Basics Explained in 5 minutes for beginners
3. Complete Guide To Twitter 2020
4. Make $100 per day from Twitter with these 3 tricks
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Social media has become an integral part of our day-to-day lives. Businesses of all size and shapes have started making the most of available mediums. Today we will try to anatomize tips on social media for small businesses.
There are a plethora of small businesses eyeing social medium to promote their business/services. However, majorly these small businesses are failing or not being able to make optimum use of social media for their business growth.
There are many theories and strategies on how to effectively use social media for established brands, but the topic social media for small businesses is seldom addressed. According to Digital state of eMarketing India 2017 Octane Research:
60% small businesses promote their business on social media. 50% focus on SEO and 35% use multichannel marketing funnel.
70% small businesses consider content strategy as their primary marketing activity.
52% business owners are using social media as to efficiently address customer engagement.
More than 20% of business owners said that they are making 50% plus profit using social media.
The primary reasons for the low turnout are uncertainty on an application of social media, calculating return on investment and persuade employees/stakeholders to clinch social media. Hence it is important to address the elephant in the room and analyze how beneficial is Social media for small businesses.
Social media for small businesses is a great way for emerging businesses to generate lead and build a reputation. If regularly updated, social media can deliver more results as compared to traditional mediums. Social media for small businesses gives brands an edge of control over the content that they want to post. Also, since social media is a two-way dialogue process, it helps businesses to instantly identify what is benefitting them. Social media for small businesses also helps generate Word of Mouth, which is one of the best tools for emerging businesses.
Social Media for small businesses | 10 Tips to effectively use Social Media
Define your Target Audience
The first and foremost important part that small businesses should focus on is to define their target audience. This helps small businesses to device their social media strategy accordingly. The target audience should be defined basis age group, sex, location, users' online behaviors, their likes, interests, and preferences. For niche products, business owners can even target users based on their birthdays, anniversaries and important milestone. Audience targeting plays a very crucial role in the outcome of the results. For e.g.: a local shop selling footwear should not target users with interest in entertainment. The shop definitely won't get the desired results. Set achievable goals
Overnight success is a myth. Small businesses must understand this basic fact. Generally, when a new business starts selling on social media, there is palpable excitement is achieving more than set targeted sales. Businesses need to set goals which are upwards and forward. To achieve enormous goals, small businesses start updating social feed with multiple updates in shorter duration. This leads to user's disinterest in the product/service. The set goals should be in sync with brand's core capabilities and expertise. For e.g.: if a business is into selling shoes, they shouldn't set a goal to repair maximum shoes in their area.
Choose the right medium
By now everyone knows, social media is for free. Even paid campaigns can be conducted at a relatively low cost as compared to traditional mediums. It is in this scenario, that we often see small businesses jumping the bandwagon and creating profiles on all the available platforms. Creating social profile doesn't hamper brand image, but aggressively promoting a brand on wrong platforms can lead to brand losing its potential customers. Hence it is advisable for SME's to first identify the right platform through which they can maximize their business. For e.g.: If a shoe selling brand tries to aggressively sell on LinkedIn, they won't get a plausible response as compared to promotions on Facebook/Instagram.
Promote your core product/services
Since each and every business is riding in the social media wave, it is important for a them to promote their core product/services. Nowadays, we see a lot of businesses promoting their services as well as promoting peripheral products/services, which revolves around their core product/services. Majority of the times, this SME's doesn't have capabilities to fulfill a requirement, which can lead to a bad word of mouth for their business on social media platforms. Let us go back to our example; if a shoe seller is trying to aggressively promote socks instead of shoes, it is not going to benefit the business in the long run.
Create quality content
Now that we have covered the topics of identifying the target audience, setting achievable goals, choosing the right medium and promoting the right product/services let us now take a look at the type of content a business should promote on their social pages. A business should always focus on creating good quality content rather than not-good quantity content. Even if the business updates their page once in a day as long as it is relevant to their business, advocates about its core products send across a clear message it is considered as a good quality content.
Antagonistically, if a business posts multiple updates which aren't even relevant to the business's products and services leads to users considering the business as fake/spam. Also, new businesses should try and refrain from promoting other businesses on their social platforms initially. Create a content calendar
Making a small business successful on social platforms is no small task. It takes a lot of efforts for the businesses to keep up their conversion ratio. One such effort is to create a content calendar. Small businesses must anticipate important events and create a content calendar accordingly. Ideally, a content calendar must be planned a month in advance but an even weekly content calendar is highly recommended. This helps businesses to avoid any last minute hassles, strategize much more effectively and it also helps in creating curiosity amongst its loyal fans/customers.
Test and re-test
Social media is highly unpredictable. The content a business posts today, might not work for tomorrow. Hence, small businesses must always test their content before publishing it on their pages. Testing content also applies to the platform a small business chooses to promote. Small business owners must always don the consumer's hat before posting about any product feature, updates, schemes or offers. A consumer's perspective is the key when testing the content that has to be uploaded.
Look for inspiration
Small businesses must always look for inspiration from a competitor who is successful in the same category. Copy pasting competitors idea or content is not the answer. Small businesses must look for the kind of content its competitors are putting up and derive their own strategies subsequently. Inspiring content/stories always make a business to strive to create their own content that is appreciated by one and all. It helps in increasing brand consideration, brand visibility thereby increasing conversions for the business.
Calculate ROI
Even a small promotional budget is not justifiable if there is no mechanism to calculate its return on investment. It is more important in case of small businesses. It is very important for a small business to keep a tab on the budgets allocated to any promotions and the subsequent ROI related to it. If a certain promotion is not doing well or the business is not getting desired results, the brand custodian can always look for other platforms to generate quality conversions.
Analyze and Re-strategize
There can be umpteen instances where a particular campaign/promotion might not work for a business. That doesn't mean that the promotion is wrong or the product/service is not good. Doing an analysis of the campaign is as important as setting the objective. This helps the business to formulate their upcoming strategies in more effective ways. At the end of every campaign, brands must note down the learning's from that campaign and identify if the content/idea was appreciated by their fans or not. This helps businesses to skip the non-performing updates from future communications.
For More details you can visit: http://www.infunotion.com/blog Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Shashank_Dhadiwal/2543191
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/9931702
When it comes to marketing for your business, telling your story (even if it is one of many) is critical to your success in business. You must always have a story to tell and not only is how you tell the story important but where you tell your story is often just as important when it comes to achieving the desired results.
Why your story is so important
You may not be sure why telling your story is such a necessity when it comes to writing content and marketing that content for your business. Well, your story is absolutely critical to your brand's and your business' success because it is how you are able to connect with the other person as two human beings and it is also how you demonstrate who you are and the values that you hold dear.
When it comes to sharing your story, your chosen social media channels are a wonderful vehicle to do just that and to do it extremely successfully. Here is how you go about accomplishing that.
Tell your story on Facebook:
Your Facebook fans enjoy a good story very much. If your story is well written and compelling, your fans will have no problem reading your posts all the way to the end. That all depends on how you present the information. With Facebook, you have the opportunity to tell a really beautiful story and you can tell that story as elaborately or as succinctly as you wish. It just depends on your writing style and on your target audience members. If you feel that you have a lot to share with your fans, you may want to choose to write a longer post. Just remember to keep it compelling and engaging. If you do that, other people will want to read your story and they will want to keep on reading other stories that you share in the future.
Tell your story with images:
In many cases, a picture is worth a thousand words. Using images to tell your story is a wonderfully creative way to grab the attention of your target audience members. If you have experienced an event that you would like to share with other people online, images will probably work extremely well. You can post the photo album and it can be shared in its entirety subsequently many times and in many places. That will also make it easy for other people to share your story with other people whom they know (if they feel that your story is worth sharing). Your album should encompass the whole experience, including other people who attended who you fee had some significance, as well as any other photos (or other images) that were also worth sharing in your opinion.
Tell your story with a video:
Videos can be an extremely effective way to tell your story. Just as is the case with the written word, a video can be shorter or it can be longer. Don't be afraid to tell your story at length, if you feel that what you have to say will be of interest to other people. Of course, if you don't have a lot to say, there is no point in just dragging out your video just to take up minutes. Make sure that the amount of time that you take to tell your story is the most appropriate amount of time for what you have to say.
Tell your story using storyboards:
Another way to share your story is with a combination of words and images. It can be a very effective way to tell your story because it will appeal to many different people. Some people react more positively to the written word and others react more positively to images because they are visual people. The storyboard luckily satisfies both types of people.
Tell your story with a combination of original and curated content: You can take some concepts from curated content and combine those with your own story and experiences. It is a creative and effective way to tell your story and other people will be able to relate to what you are saying. Conclusion
Telling your story is essential for your brand and for your business and using your chosen social media channels to tell your story is an intelligent, effective way to do just that. It helps you to establish a solid connection with your readers. The reality is that each and every time that you post content, you are sharing a story with your intended target audience. You are involved with social media on a regular basis for your business anyway so you may as well take full advantage of all that it has to offer you.
Michael Cohn is the founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of CompuKol Communications. He has over 25 years of experience in IT and web technologies. Mr. Cohn spent a significant amount of time at a major telecommunications company, where his main focus was on initiating and leading synergy efforts across all business units by dramatically improving efficiency, online collaboration, and the company's Intranet capabilities, which accelerated gains in business productivity. He also reduced company travel and travel costs by introducing and implementing various collaboration technologies.
His expertise includes business analysis; project management; management of global cross-matrix teams; systems engineering and analysis, architecture, prototyping and integration; technology evaluation and assessment; systems development; performance evaluation; and management of off-shore development.
Mr. Cohn earned a Master's degree in project management from George Washington University in Washington, DC; and a Master's degree in computer science and a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck, NJ.
Mr. Cohn is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
Discover which platform your ideal users prefer and how to you know if it's right for growing your business
Visual aggregator platforms for social media marketing really boil down to the two majors: Facebook-owned Instagram and Pinterest.
Both have their own way of presenting images and allowing users to compile images they like but they also have limitations that may push your ideal users towards the other option.
Growing your business with Instagram is a great idea but don't count Pinterest out.
The main appeal of Instagram is the images are supposed to be unique and even candid. Overly corporate posts seldom do well, and users don't want to see traditional advertising methods employed.
Pinterest allows users to curate images from anywhere online and on the platform.
The images are often very polished and professional. Traditional advertising methods are also seen a lot more on this platform such as how-tos and DIY posts.
Demographics will play a big role in your decision. Is your product or service more appropriate to women?
If so then Pinterest is for you. The most recent stats show within Pinterest user demographics that women make up over 70% of Pinterest users.
Pinterest also draws in a slightly older, domestic demographic.
What about services that are better promoted through a discussion? Are you a speaker who wants to show off a recent speaking engagement and create a dialogue around your expertise?
These make you an ideal candidate for using Instagram to promote your small business.
Remember this audience is a fair split between men and women and Western vs. International users. They like to see photos and videos of what you do or sell in action and they like to engage the poster if possible through the comments section.
The best business Instagram accounts show off your core brand identity.
Are you hoping to sell items through a post that links back to the page on your site with that product or service?
Instagram only allows one place a user can click through from. With IG you get one link in your profile bio. Whereas with Pinterest, you can link from the actual post like a traditional ad.
The big difference is how you intend to start your customer experience.
If they start with you at a brand level and you intend to use the entire account to create the first step in your conversion, Instagram is great. For anything where the user starts at the actual post level, Pinterest is going to be better for you.
It's something you can plan for if you haven't already.
Look at your ideal client as you defined them and evaluate the demographic information in your analytics. If you deal locally or even nationally to women and you're selling a product, then Pinterest is obviously the best option.
If your online marketing is about building a brand around your expertise and location isn't as important nor gender then you would be better served by Instagram.
If you can't nail down which would serve you better you can always try both!
Having the capacity to create content suitable to both platforms and manage both profiles is great.
If you do elect to use both a good rule of thumb is: Pinterest for images of what you're offering and Instagram for images of you creating those images.
If you make a Top 10 list with a polished image you can use that on Instagram as well but get lots of video and images of you creating the image that goes with that list and post those to Instagram!
Once you see better traction on one you can then focus your efforts on it.
Pinterest is a fantastic tool for many businesses but if your business is your brand and you're building your online reputation, Instagram is going to be a better option.
Vary your content but remember when users do follow you, they do so for a reason so don't stray from your core brand identity.
Susan Friesen, founder of the award-winning web development and digital marketing firm eVision Media, is a Web Specialist, Business & Marketing Consultant, and Social Media Advisor. She works with entrepreneurs who struggle with having the lack of knowledge, skill and support needed to create their online business presence.
If you are new to Social Media and online marketing or find it overwhelming and confusing, my monthly group coaching program, AMPLIFY! Business Academy http://amplifybusinessacademy.com/ is a perfect way for you to incrementally learn the best strategies and tactics to help you grow your business online.
Many online businesses start out on a limited spending budget and think they can't manage to pay for advertising. The good news is that there are now many more options to start online advertising than even just a few years ago. Even better, there isn't a sharp learning curve to be able to use them and get a good return on your investment.
Paid ads do cost money, but they're scalable, so when you produce an effective ad, you can increase your spending to show your ads even more, for more traffic and profits.
PPC Networks
PPC stands for Pay Per Click. As the name implies, you only pay if someone clicks on your ad. There main two PPC networks. Google AdWords
This is the most well-known network. It shows ads on its own search engine results pages and on a range of other sites. Some of the sites are owned by ordinary people who want to make money from their website, so they join the Google AdSense program.The system is challenging to use, however. It's so full-featured, there are courses online to teach you how to use the system.
Bing
Bing, by Microsoft, amalgamated with Yahoo PPC ads a number of years ago in an attempt to compete with Google. Although you might not get as much traffic from Bing as you do from Google, the Bing ad program tends to be less expensive and simpler to use.
Social Media
There are a number of social media sites you can use for online advertising as. Their ad programs are highly targeted, and they're easier to use than Google. The ads are driven more by matching your ads with the interest people have stated or shown through their likes and content they engage with.
Facebook
Facebook ads offer some hard rivalry to Google AdWords because their online advertising rates are less expensive, the system is much easier to use, and the website traffic can be much more highly targeted. You can get the same amount of traffic for pennies on the dollar in comparison with Google once you learn their fairly straightforward system. You need to have a Facebook business page to run ads. And all your ads will have to have an image.
Ad Marketplaces
There are also ad areas like BuySellAds or Chitika where you can connect with various sites who take advertising. The objective here would be to find a substantial website that matches the niche or industry you are working in so you can get "qualified traffic," that is, people most likely to be interested in what you have to sell.
Facebook wants you to succeed using their advertising platform. This just makes sense. If you achieve your business goals while spending money on Facebook advertising, you're likely to use that marketing practice again in the future. To learn how to make your Facebook advertising successful and profitable, download my Free Checklist, Successful Facebook Ads at https://jonallo.com/FBads
3 Steps to Help You Create This Essential Part of Your Business Brand Identity
Creating your brand identity involves many different facets including the logo, taglines, website colours and brand voice.
Every brand has a voice. Your brand is unique, so your brand voice should be too. Your branding voice is the constant personality you use when communicating your message to the world.
From digital advertisements to social media posts to product packaging, it's important to have one consistent and unique branding voice across all your marketing materials. Otherwise, you'll end up with a muddled message that won't resonate with your customers on any level.
Here are some brand voice examples from well-known brands:
• Quirky, casual and fun.
• Friendly, optimistic and joyful.
• Inspiring, powerful and positive.
• Helpful, encouraging and funny.
No matter what you're selling, you need to create an engaging branding voice that's authentic to your values.
Here are 3 ways to make defining your marketing easier:
1. Make your brand voice relevant.
Think about who uses your product or service. You want to define your efforts to speak to your target audience and create an emotional connection to what you're offering.
If your audience is millennials who love yoga, your voice is going to be different than if you're targeting 40+ women shopping for clothing.
Some good questions to ask are:
1. How do your customers (or how do you want them to) define your brand identity?
2. What's the greatest benefit your product or service provides to people?
3. How do you want people using your product or service to feel?
4. How does your product or service stand out from the competition?
Once you've answered questions like these, you can...
2. Start with three words.
What three words do you want to reflect the personality of your brand? Three is the number commonly used by organizations to define this voice. Choosing more will just duplicate what you already have or water down your core characteristics.
Here are some examples of words to describe brand voice:
• Enthusiastic
• Confident
• Helpful
• Innovative
• Inspiring
• Fun
• Authoritative
Next, choose limitations for each word. For example, confident but not cocky. Funny but not silly. This will help you further define your brand identity and write targeted brand copy (or give your writers a guide when they're writing your copy).
3. Implement your brand voice everywhere.
If you're going to keep your brand consistent, you need to ensure every piece of writing reflects your brand's personality.
This means looking at your website, emails, social media accounts, and print materials such as business cards. You may have to rewrite older copy to reflect your voice or create totally new content, but don't skip this important detail.
Imagine getting an email with no defined plan or a totally different brand voice than the one you get on a company's website - it's jarring, confusing and doesn't evoke a feeling of trust.
These three steps will help you define your business as part of your bigger brand identity. Once you've defined your brand's identity, you can start speaking to your customers in an authentic and compelling way.
Susan Friesen, founder of the award-winning web development and digital marketing firm eVision Media, is a Web Specialist, Business & Marketing Consultant, and Social Media Advisor. She works with entrepreneurs who struggle with having the lack of knowledge, skill and support needed to create their online business presence.
If you are new to Social Media and online marketing or find it overwhelming and confusing, my monthly group coaching program, AMPLIFY! Business Academy http://amplifybusinessacademy.com/ is a perfect way for you to incrementally learn the best strategies and tactics to help you grow your business online.
How to make money streaming - 6 ways to go live and get paid
In this article, we are going to see how you can make money by video streaming or in other words monetize your live video stream.
1. Run ads
Running ads is one sure method of monetizing your live video stream. There are two types of video ads - In-Stream (Linear video ads) and In-Display (non-linear video ads). The ads that are displayed before the video are called linear video ads while the non-linear ads are the ones that the viewers see concurrently while watching the video.
Ads are a great way to monetize your video content, but it's tricky. You need to play the ad, get the viewer to click on it, and at the same time ensure that the viewer doesn't get bored and leave your live stream. Plus, major platforms like Facebook and YouTube have different regulations for video streaming and running ads.
When to run the ads - the best time would be when the creator or the person doing the live streaming wants to take a break. Time the ad correctly - don't leave the viewer hanging in the middle of a sentence!
When you're running a live stream on YouTube, you can play the ad at any point of time in your live video. However, do try to keep your audience informed that a break would be coming up.
On Facebook, not every video streamer will have the option of taking a break. If your Facebook page displaying the live stream has more than 50,000 followers and more than 300 concurrent viewers in the last live video, you can take a break after 4 minutes.
If you want to maximize the earnings from your live video stream, you need to build traffic to your website or your Facebook page. When you have higher number of visitors, the number of concurrent viewers increase, so the chances of ads converting are higher, which translates to increased revenue.
2. Subscriptions/Pay per view
The other way to make money from your videos is to get your audience to subscribe or pay for your video. You could release a teaser, giving the audience a taste of what is to come. If the viewers want to watch more, they need to subscribe to your page or pay for the video. Streaming platforms such as Vimeo Live and IBM Cloud have in-built subscription features.
3. Donations and Crowdfunding
A recent study by Deloitte Global found that "Donations are also an emerging element of the business model for other live-streaming platforms, including platforms used for streaming video game play." Many live streams are asking their fans for donations and in return giving them virtual gifts.
Crowdfunding is another method to monetize your video stream. Indiegogo, Kickstarter and Patreon are a few of the popular crowd-funding platforms. You need to create an account on these platforms, build your project, specify your goals, and then promote your project on other platforms, so people visit your project page and contribute to it.
4. Affiliates
Setting up an affiliate program is a sure way of monetizing your video stream. It could however take time to establish and give you the returns you expect. The best part is that once you have set it up, you can passively earn money as your video gets more popular.
You need to first link up with affiliate platforms like Amazon and Flipkart. You can create videos about products sold on the platforms. If you have a video stream that focusses on technology, then you can choose such products. For example, a mobile phone - you can create a video about the features of the mobile phone, trouble shooting tips, best ways to customize the cell phone, and lot's more. At the end of the video, direct the viewer to go to the product page on the affiliate platform. Every time a viewer clicks on your video and goes to the affiliate site, you earn a commission. 5. Sponsorships
If your live stream channel is popular, then you can confidently approach the larger players in the market for deals and sponsorships. Brands don't come forward to sponsor your video stream, you need to take the first step and approach the right people. However, when you're doing that make sure you stay within your niche. The theme of your video should be in accord with the brand that is sponsoring you.
6. Sell your products
Live videos are a great opportunity for subconscious selling. For ages, marketers have been using this technique to sell products and services to their audience. However, you should remember that subconscious selling only happens when you have already built the trust in your viewers. Market research shows that a person is more likely to buy a product when someone in his/her social group has already purchased it. That's why influencers play a huge role in promotions. However, you don't have to directly sell your product when you're streaming the live video. Use the product and then casually talk about its features and where one can buy it and then go back to your video's main theme. This could subconsciously encourage viewers to check out the product and buy it.
Live video streaming gives you plenty of scope to explore your passion, share your views with your fans, and still get to earn money. To make the maximum earnings from your live video streams, you can use a mix of the above 6 ways. Competition on the internet is very high, so you need to continually work to keep your fans' attentions so that they keep coming back to you. To keep your fans interested, your video content needs to be interesting, useful, and clear. Create great videos and build a loyal fan following - you can surely see returns on your investment.
When it comes to marketing online for any business be it online or offline, the key is to drive as many eyes to your sites or in your stores doors as possible. You need to expose your business and build a brand for yourself that presents trust, great customer support and over delivers.
This is what makes social media so important now with new advancements on the internet social is all the rave. It's a great way to answer and address customers questions fast and to build a reliable and trust worth brand.
Word of mouth used to be the best way to make money with your business. Consider social media word of mouth on steroids. A simple like, comment or tweet could spark a huge flood of traffic your way. Below are a few key ideas to building your brand and spreading the word about what you have to offer quickly.
If your store has products which people can buy consider adding a few of your popular or really unique items to your Pinterest account and ask a few of your friends to repin it. It could take off and have people flooding your store and placing orders for this unique item.
It's important to keep in touch with your customers and some will leave comments on your fan page or just start tweeting. Be proactive and any time you see something come up where a customer might have an issue or maybe even give you praise be sure to get in contact with that person as soon as possible and help them out or thank you. A simple thank you can go a very long way.
One last method might be communication on your Facebook fan page. By interacting with customers with polls and other such tools you can gain a good amount of insight on what your customers are looking forward to and want. This is a great way to research and build your next products.
But overall you need to start somewhere with getting traffic and the best way to do that is via free website traffic sources. These types of traffic sources are the building blocks when you first get started and often times produce just as well or even better then paid traffic methods.
There are literally thousands of ways to get traffic to your sites below I will go over a few of the main ones that will get you results.
Consider swapping ads with other companies such as those that are not in direct competition with you. For example Amazon being promoted on UPS and UPS being promoted on amazon its a mutually beneficial trade in advertising as both companies support each others growth and do not take away from it.
Social media plays right into this as well as we disused above. Being proactive in it will yield you amazing results and cost you nothing but a few hours of your time or a few of an employees.
If your looking to learn how to build more traffic streams I created a free to download ebook at - Free website traffic ebook
Recently, Australian clothing brand YP Threads sent an email that seemed like they were blackmailing customers. In it, they "threatened" to expose incriminating photos of them to the public if they didn't buy from their brand. The email ended with the lines, "We know where you live. Time starts now."
The tactic proved to be a bad judgment call, ending with YP Threads apologizing for the email. Some may argue the strategy raised publicity for YP Threads. In the end, their approach still served as an example of bad marketing practices.
Coming up with an effective strategy can be difficult. Firms specializing in email marketing campaign services would gladly tell you. Marketers sometimes forget what might work isn't always what might be best. It's time to review which email practices you should avoid.
1. Having an extensive list with people who have never heard of your company
Nobody cares about how many people you have on your email list. The point is that you get your message across to the people whom you want to sell to. Having an email list longer than the Great Wall of China doesn't assure you email opens or conversions. It's all about reaching the people who are most likely to care about your business.
Think about it. How many times have you received an email from a company whose services you had no interest in? Maybe it was an email about car repairs, and you don't even have a car.
Trimming down your email list to a fewer number may make you think twice, but it actually guarantees better results. Try it.
2. Making it hard for subscribers to opt-out
They're called "opt out" for a reason. Give your subscribers the choice to refuse being sent future emails, and don't give them a hard time about it! Sometimes email marketers do it to retain subscribers, but that just means you're more likely to be identified as an annoying brand.
It's not personal-it's marketing. While there are people who don't want to hear from you, there are people who still do. Either way, respect people enough to give them the option to unsubscribe.
3. Incorporating spammy content in your emails
Emails that only contain words like "free" or "buy now" aren't exactly timeless. Sure, it works for your CTAs, but when people receive emails, they want to be engaged. Emails are an outlet for you to get creative with content to drive your customers' attention. Your customers are in the 21st century as you are and they're smart enough to get tired of the same word usage.
Give your users quality content. That way, they'll enjoy opening your emails and even look forward to receiving more. US-based makeup brand Glossier sends their customers updates, promos, and even random content that's aligned with their brand personality, such as wallpapers for customers and a photo of a baby goat smiling.
4. Writing misleading subject lines
You could get in trouble for your subject lines. Sometimes, marketers want a quick way to get customers to open their emails, and a way to do that is to engage them through the subject lines.
When marketers have a chance to do this, sometimes they cause panic for their customers. One furniture store emailed their customers a "receipt from the future" with the subject line "Thanks for your order!" as part of their April Fools ' Day campaign. Some of their customers ended up panicking over a false order before realizing it was a marketing ploy.
The last thing you want to do is strip off the trust your customers have with your brand. After all, gaining trust is more important than grabbing their attention. Find other creative ways to engage them with your email campaign.
Sometimes people get caught up in their marketing that they don't realize their methods carry consequences. So whether you're setting up your own strategies or hiring email marketing campaign services, take note of these practices and avoid them.
In some ways, we can consider email revolutionary. It even predates the internet's ancestor, the ARPANET. In 1965, the first version of email was found in computers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a program dubbed "MAILBOX". In a little over ten years, people saw the potential of marketing in email, but because such method was non-existent at this point, Gary Thuerk ended up pioneering the first spam message when he sent the same email to 400 people in 1978.
Today, we know there's a clear distinction between spam and email marketing. But usually when people think of spam, the first thing that comes to mind are messages that tell you one million dollars is waiting for you and all you have to do is click the button. By this standard, almost everyone is able to identify what messages are considered spam.
Since nobody falls for that anymore, spam senders have gotten more cultured with their techniques. And sometimes, this means even your techniques can get lost in the strategies of spam. So if you're constructing your own email marketing campaign strategy, here are a few pointers for you to distinguish legitimate email marketing from spam. Spam is sent with no permission, email marketing asks
If you'll notice, legitimate campaigns begin with an opt-in form on websites. As entrepreneurs, you have to respect your customers enough to let them decide if they want to receive weekly updates from you via email.
Spam messages are intrusive, and there's almost never a way for you to opt-out of their mailing list. But one takeaway from spam is that they offer their readers something (not real but it's the thought that counts). Mention what you can offer to your readers, like a free trial or free PDF, to let them know what they can get from subscribing to your emails.
Spam enters deceptive subject lines, email marketing sends specific ones
Spam messages usually promise something big in their subject lines. But even legitimate email marketers get carried away with using subject lines such as "Your invitation from us" or "Your gift is waiting". Studies show, the click-through rate of emails with deceptive subject lines is next to zero. Why even bother?
Everyone knows this tactic, too. Admit it; you'd never open an email that says, "your gift is waiting for you".
At this point, one of the best methods to get users to open your emails is to use open loops, or incomplete ideas. For example, you could use "The one thing I wish I learned from college is... " to make recipients want to find out more.
Spam makes it impossible for users to opt-out of mailing lists, email marketing honors opt-outs
As email marketers, you should make it a point to give your recipients choices to opt out of getting your emails. Along with this, not only does good email marketing allow users to opt out, they present clear and concise explanations on how users can opt out. Make sure to give your recipients a return email address, too.
It's worth noting that some email marketers still act intrusively, still sending certain types of emails to people who have already opted out. You must honor recipients requesting to opt out of all commercial messages. Remember, at its core, spam is a bulk of unsolicited messages.
When you follow guidelines on email marketing and respect your customers, you know your campaign can and will succeed. It all boils down to your strategy. With the help of some experts on email campaign management, your company can deliver the best email campaign without bordering on spam. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/expert/Donald_Smithon/2139064 Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/9925636
Digital marketing is great hype today. New methods and techniques to conduct the marketing are being devised every day. Amidst all this, it is easy to assume that email marketing is an obsolete process.
We may consider it as it is no longer being used or isn't fetching desirable results.
However, you couldn't be more wrong.
Email marketing is still widespread today. It is, in fact, becoming more successful with time. But what makes it such an appealing marketing technique, despite being so old?
Well, let's find out.
Here are the reasons why people are still in love with email marketing:
1. Low Cost
The biggest reasons why emailing continues to remain one of the favorites is the cost factor. It has a very low cost involved. All you require is an operational email ID, and you are ready to start working on the email marketing tactics.
Sometimes, people start buying bulk email addresses. However, it is quite rare. Mostly they send emails only to people who genuinely subscribe to the site themselves.
An emerging practice is to use software for automating the generation and sending of emails. However, this cost is often less compared to other modes of marketing.
There are neither any print charges involved, nor do you need to pay fees for the advertisements space like space on television and newspapers. Overall, email marketing remains one of the cheapest modes of marketing.
2. Only for the customers
Most marketing techniques involve users who may have never interacted with the brand. Some types of digital marketing tactics target users who have shown similar interests in their actions, as seen on Facebook and Google.
However, email marketing is the only marketing mode where the users themselves ask to be part of the company's subscribers.
Companies get email addresses of the users either when they subscribe to the newsletters or when they register to their website.
Taking advance approval from customers ensures that emailing effort is more visible and effective compared to other marketing methods.
3. Target your audience
One of the big merits of the email marketing is that it allows you to target a particular segment of your audience.
Since companies usually obtain email addresses by subscription or registration, they also capture their basic information about the customer like name, gender, age, location etc.
This information could be utilized in creating targeting emails.
For instance, if your company has a great offer for students, you can send emails to users who are less than 24 years of age. And, if your company is offering discounted prices on women apparels, then you may consider targeting females instead of men.
Users can also notice the pattern that they receive only those emails that are relevant to them. Thus, apart from saving a lot of resources, the company is also able to create a trust factor between the customer and the brand. 4. Ask them to make a move
One-way marketing despite having a broader reach suffers from a very critical drawback, i.e., lack of interaction. Even if you pitch the best of your marketing ideas, yet the user is free to ignore them.
In simpler words, you just cannot compel users to make an effort for paying heed to your offer. However, small efforts can definitely pay off.
Email marketing allows you to put in those efforts. By introducing a simple "call-to-action", you can ask the users to visit your website and see what you have to offer.
Having call-to-action also saves you from the trouble of giving too much information in the mail itself. Thus, in the email body, you can simply include the most-appealing content. 5. Saves you the effort
Apart from being cost-effective, it is one of the simplest marketing methods around. One does not require any high-end software, no huge team or a separate department.
All you need is the required hardware and a few professionals who know the job.
There is always a scope for better software and tools to be used in email marketing.
However, people mostly prefer the simple format, since it is majorly the content that decides the effectiveness of an email. The lack of complexity allows you to focus completely on creating an appealing email content.
6. See your score
A salient feature that makes the email marketing technique a desirable one is the metrics. Most traditional marketing methods have no or poor metrics, like radio, television, and newspapers.
However, in email marketing, despite being decades old, you can get all the measurements you need.
Also note, to identify the performance metrics, you would require appropriate email software.
A right software will tell you everything correctly, right from the number of emails that were actually opened to the ones that redirected the user to your website.
These results could give you insights into what is and isn't working for your campaign.
7. See instant results
One great benefits of using email marketing is that it allows you to perceive instant results. As soon as you send an email, the user would either receive it or be notified about it. Most people check their emails within 24 hours.
Thus, whether or not the user decides to take your offer, you get to see the real results the next day.
Most other marketing methods require some days or even weeks to bear results. But email marketing can get you the results before the date changes.
Some people argue that such hasty marketing is counterproductive, but that is utterly false.
8. No boundaries
Email marketing being a prominent part of the internet marketing, it does not have any boundaries set by geography.
While this is true for any digital marketing method, the email marketing is the true alternative to the traditional marketing methods like print and television.
The difference is you can target customers globally belonging to various countries, genders, age groups, professions etc.
The more range of customers you choose, the bigger will your potential customer base would be.
Conclusion
Email marketing, despite the negative stereotype, is both alive and productive even today. As discussed above, there are loads of speculations that make people fall in love with it.
Though there are other marketing methods may beat the email method in one or two ways, overall, it is still one of the most effective and accessible marketing methods across the globe.
Nisha Garg is an affiliate marketer cum blogger. She believes each day as a learning day and presently exploring facts about email marketing. To know more about her visit: http://nishagarg.com/
In this article, I'm going to share with you 6 ways to make email marketing more effective so that you can use it to increase your sales and at the same time increase your customer base.
B2B (business to business) and B2C (business to consumers) are way different writing styles when it comes to emails.
In this article, we will focus on B2C since that's what I do.
Here are 6 ways you need to consider focusing on if you want to create a more effective email marketing campaign.
1. You need to know what kind of a campaign you are going to be sending
This could be a promotion or it could be just a content series. Whatever you choose will depend on what you have going on in your business at the time.
Just remember a rule of thumb is to make sure you are not just sending out promotion after promotion day after day. Make sure you throw in some valuable content at least once or twice a week to break up the promotions and to provide value to your list.
2. Use curiosity subject lines
If you want to get more opens on your emails then you need to play it smart. Write subject lines that get attention and make them want to read more. If you tell them what the email is in the subject line do you think they will open it? Use just enough curiosity to make them take action to see what it's all about.
3. Be friendly to build relationships faster
Remember to write as if you are writing to a good friend, be friendly and casual. The friendlier you sound the faster you will build a relationship with your subscriber.
Tell them stories about what you are doing that day or something you might do later after you finish writing them the email. Give them valuable advice of something that happened to you that they can benefit from.
4. Leave a clear call to action
Believe it or not your subscribers want you to tell them what to do so don't beat around the bush. Say what you need to say and tell them what you want them to do such as:
Click here to do this, or Click here to watch this video.
Remember that they got on your list because they were interested in something that you are good at. And they are looking up to you for guidance and advice, so don't let them down.
5. Keep them engaged
When sending out your campaigns be sure to segment your list so that they get on the right list. This will help make better sales and get better conversion rates from your products.
If you are sending the right promotions to the right list of people you can see how your business will benefit.
To do this simply create a new list for each type of product you promote. Let's say for instance list building. When you send out your warming email series for your new list building product you want to have a list set up with an opt-in page (squeeze page) where you are giving something away about list building.
That way all the subs from your regular list will not be put on your "list building" list and when you're ready to sell that product you will have a hungry list of people ready to buy it. Make sense?
6. Track your results
A lot of email marketer that are just starting out make the big mistake of not tracking their open rates, click through rates, and they don't keep their list clean.
Most autoresponders these days have all the tracking you need, all you have to do is go in the "statistics" section and see how many opens you got and how many clicks.
I'm not going to tell you how to manage your list, but my rule of thumb is if no one opens any of my emails in 60 days, I delete them. Because chances are if they didn't click or open anything for that many days they never will.
Now you can also send out a win back campaign before you delete them just to see if they finally open something from you, but I'll leave that for another article.
If you would like more cool info on email marketing, here is 10 email marketing hacks I put together: http://ronnierokksmith.com/email-marketing-hacks-7-special/
The recent introduction of the general data protection regulation (GDPR) has had a direct impact on marketing practices, including email marketing. Is email marketing still one of the most effective marketing tools for your business?
The answer is yes, email marketing is still one of the most effective tools for driving sales in your business, but as with most forms of marketing, it rarely stands still.
Ensure You're Compliant
Personal privacy is a major concern today when it comes to email marketing. So is the way you use the data you collect. Read over your current privacy policy and terms of service for your website to ensure you are up to date.
Mobile-Friendly Emails
Your email should be readable on any device that your subscriber decides to read it on. You can check out how your emails and website look on free tools such as mobiletest.me and responsinator.com to view your content on a range of simulated screens.
Email Rendering
There's a similar problem with the way emails appear in different email services. Check the overall look of your emails at Yahoo! mail, Gmail, Hotmail etc to be sure it doesn't look wrong.
Coding Issues
Some marketers prefer HTML coded emails, while others opt for plain text. Any HTML coding mistakes could ruin the look and feel of the email, or even prevent some or all of it from being seen. Check your code at a site like Dirty Markup and clean any errors.
Check and Test
Be sure to carefully check any email before you send it. Look for typing errors and ensure that the link clicks through to the correct page. Make sure that things like the date and time of an event are correct. People are very busy and don't have time for you to send two or three emails on the same subject, trying to correct basic errors you should have found in the first place.
Send High-Quality Information, Not Just Sales Info
Be certain all your emails are relevant and interesting to your target audience. Do more than just try to sell them stuff, and odds are they will continue being on your list, look forward to your emails and open them, and even forward the emails to other people.
Make It Easy For People To Unsubscribe
If your subscriber makes a decision that they don't want to get any more emails from you, make it possible for them to easily unsubscribe. If you make it difficult, they will start to begrudge your emails and will certainly never buy from you. They may also report you as spam, which will cause you complications in the future.
Email marketing can achieve awesome results for the smart marketer. On average, a prospect needs to see your messages 7 to 8 times before they trust you enough to buy something. Email is the perfect way to deliver these messages with a structured marketing funnel. To learn more, download my free Marketing Funnel Checklist at https://jonallo.com/salesfunnel
Email marketing is becoming one of the best effective and affordable tools for online marketing.
As the Net has grown, e-mail marketing is becoming one of the best effective and affordable tools for online marketing. E-mail marketing significantly impacts businesses if they are B2B or B2C (business to business/business to consumer).
Marketing throughout e-mail raises your brand devotion and raises your customer service throughout the eyes of your buyers. When ever permission based e-mail marketing is carried out correct it can easily be even more good than any sort of other kind of web marketing technique. The point to bear in mind is that no one single element of website marketing may stand on its own.
For example, an e-mail newsletter must have a tremendous site to support it and also curiosity in your business to build your e-mail list in the first place. The quantity one activity on the web is e-mail. This is the reason e-mail can certainly be utilized as a superb internet marketing tool. Various Internet end users say that they would rather get marketing messages in their e-mail than be bothered by sales phone calls at home Permission Based E-mail.
One essential key element to a powerful e-mail marketing technique is to just concentrate on permission based mail. This involves that consumers have to select to get mail from you. This is known as "opt in". You should certainly by no means rent or purchase an e-mail list since this is regarded as to be spam.
No matter what precisely the person of the e-mail list will tell you, the absolute majority of the addresses on the list did not opt in to get e-mail or to have their exclusive info sold to you. Once you send e-mail to customers who don't desire it you're sending spam. Spam will grant your company image a cheap appearance and eliminates virtually any trust that clients have in you.
You need prospects that are top quality and not amount and this results in building up your personal e-mail list. You'll discover that the final effects will be huge to you and your business.
Not really an add-on of support services.
E-mail marketing will need to be viewed as a complement of the customer service that you offer. You want to be capable to connect with your buyers at every single point in the sales procedure. The moment you provide your consumers what they request, with out mistreating any authorization, you set up the foundation for a bond that is founded on value and leads to long-term customer devotion.
Learn Internet Marketing and start making money right now! Take my Free Internet Marketing Email Mini Course. Also make sure you visit my Internet Marketing Blog [http://blog.onlinemarketingcore.com] to read more similar articles of this topic.
Digital Marketing is not a new concept now. Still, a lot of companies and experts lack the actual understanding of the subject. There are still many dark areas to explore for many. Actually, every blogger also needs it. So, here are my 6 tips for bloggers to leverage digital marketing. It is easy if you apply common sense and go for it with a proper strategy. In fact, it doesn't require you to pay to somebody else for it. If you just acquire some basic understanding, you can do it yourself. So, let us try to take a deep dive into the subject to understand it better. The Internet has been a revolution in everybody's life. In fact, technology gets a new meaning with it. Similarly, marketing has become easier and faster. Definitely, for businesses and entrepreneurs, it might become important to hire an agency or an expert.
The reason for that is businesses can't afford to lose their sales because of lack of their knowledge in the field. That is why they can even think of outsourcing their marketing to an agency. But bloggers can't do that. Contrarily, they also need to market their posts appropriately. So, here are a few tips for bloggers to leverage digital marketing.
#1. Manage Your Online Presence
Every blogger needs to know how your readers perceive your blog and posts. If you look at blogging arena, it is no less than an ocean. Every day new bloggers are born at an exponential rate. So, just imagine why someone would like to spend the time to read your 300/500/700/1500 words post. While your blog is obviously your home ground, but you also need to play on various social media platforms that are not basically your home ground. How do you make your presence on various social media platforms? What is the frequency? How do ensure every new post you write that is worth mentioning through various platforms reaches your followers well in time. Mind it that it is not only your followers that would get to know about your new post. There are people who keep a track on new posts on the basis of keywords or hashtags.
If you are a blogger do go through these tips for bloggers to leverage digital marketing. Understanding your niche is quite important. For instance, if you review products, do you post reviews on other review sites? Do you visit relevant forums and participate in topics of your interest? How is your post performing in Google Search? What more can you do to improve its rank?
#2. Your Time Is Your Marketing Budget
Now, since you are not spending money on outsourcing an expert, you have to invest something substantial at your end. That is your time. You need to spend the time to research well and understand well the crux of the matter. Otherwise, the benefit of these tips for bloggers to leverage digital marketing will not be that fruitful. At times, you might feel that you are in a tunnel with no end and light visible. But the situation will not remain same for long. You will become expert swimmer only if you practice on daily basis. Merely standing at the pool will not bring that expertise. Similarly, you need to have that urge to dive deeper to draw out more.
#3. Your Blog Post Sharing Is As Good As Your Marketing Campaign
When you share your new post on social media platforms does it fetch some interest? Do you get organic reshares, likes, and comments? If not, there is something wrong with your marketing strategy. Either your post is having juicy content or you have not been able to present it well on social media. Learn about the concept of relevant hashtags, keywords, and context to attract more people. Use some tools to find out which social media brings more traffic to your blog. What is the reason that another platform is not fetching that much response? Try to post in some engaging manner. It has to be a perfect mix of the right post with the right pitch.
#4. Gain Knowledge Of Marketing Trends
I covered it in the point above. I hope these tips for bloggers to leverage digital marketing will benefit you in some way.
#5. Test Your Posts
Keep an eye on your posts. Some posts will always do better than others. Definitely, there was something in those that could attract more visitors. Similarly, if comments are not something happening regularly on your posts, some posts attracting comments means there is a reason behind it. Try to analyze. Spend time on these posts to understand what was better that is lacking in other posts.
#6. Make Marketing Your Top Priority
Remember that your blog and posts are yours. If you are not convinced, you will never be able to convince anybody else. Spend time daily on this exercise. Take these tips for bloggers to leverage digital marketing as starting points. Once you are on the right track, you will find your own ways to excel further.
In the end, I would like to request something. When you find out some more ideas that work well for you, don't forget to come back and share them in the comment section so that others can get help and I will have some fresh tips for bloggers to leverage digital marketing. After all, it is all about your passion that needs some polishing so that others feel the glitter.
You can read this and various other posts on my blog http://pebbleinthestillwaters.com
Introduction
The internet is an elephant, so to speak. So how do you eat an elephant? One would say one piece at a time. Every internet guru has his own views about how to succeed in the internet or online, but like any other thing in life, there is no one perfect way, or one size fits all. Some say content is king. Some say begin with a list. Some say begin with 100% automation. Content, list, and automation all matter, but what about the person that is just beginning and doesn't know his left from his right? I believe a beginner should start with a product to prove his credibility and from there move on to building a list while at the same time gradually working towards automating his website to work on autopilot. A Caveat about Starting With a Product
Having said that it's better to start with a product, I believe it's appropriate to throw in this qualification by saying that at the highest levels, you can actually sell a product you have not yet developed to your list or followers, but as a beginner, you may not be able to employ that strategy. At its most basic, it involves telling your followers that you have a product that is coming out in say 90 days or 180 days time and any one among them that buys in advance would get it at 30 or 20 percent discount. Some may decide to buy and you can then use the cash to develop the product. This strategy is for already well known "brands" like Peter Diamandis, Brendon Burchard, Tim Ferriss and Tony Robbins to mention just four.
How to Develop Your First Product
This presentation focuses on how you can develop your first product. The truth is, in internet business, you don't have to wait until you have a perfect product. Just begin and continue improving along the way. If you compare cars or any product for that matter made in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s and 2000s, you notice that they keep getting better in terms of design, sleekness, and performance, to mention just three aspects. That should be your aim. Start, and keep improving day in and day out.
In this presentation, the focus is entirely on electronic products (eProducts), not the selling of physical products online, which is referred to as e-commerce. I'm assuming that you're already an expert operating in six dimensions as an author, trainer, speaker, coach, consultant, seminar leader and now gunning for the seventh dimension, information marketing. If you don't consider yourself an expert, don't worry too much, we'll come back to that and the scales will fall off from your eyes. Even if you're not operating in any of the dimensions yet, say you're just an employee, don't worry, this presentation will open your eyes to the possibilities ahead. The author of the book Instant Income, Janet Switzer, listed over 52 eProducts one can develop in her Maverick Program but we'll limit ourselves to just the simplest products as this is a beginner's program.
Understanding or knowing which products to develop, the demand for those products and how to position your products are beyond the scope of this presentation. Also marketing, selling and launching your product are outside the scope of this presentation. Having covered those preliminaries, let's dive in on your product development journey.
Products Suitable For E-Copies
The main products that you can easily convert to e-format are:
• Books
• Music
• Courses (seminars) - these are generally referred to as "How to Products."
• Speeches
• Research findings
The Top 7 Most Lucrative "How to Products" Areas In the Expert Industry
According to Brendon Burchard, in his book The Expert Messenger, the seven most lucrative how to product areas are:
E-Product Formats
The main formats are:
• PDF
• E-pub
• Mobi
• Audio (MP3)
• Videos (MP4)
Sites For Uploading Your E-Products
Having made or created your product, the next thing to do is to launch. You can launch your products through a combination of channels, including:
• Your website
• Third-party websites
• YouTube
• Vimeo
• Stitcher
• iTunes
• SoundCloud
• CD Baby
• To your List through an e-marketing platform, example, Mailchimp.
The Various Product Formats In Detail
Let us now take the product formats one at a time in slightly more detail.
PDF (Portable Document Format)
One of the easiest ways to join the online business as an expert is to start with training course, workshop, seminar or a book. Your book in particular can and will open doors especially if you can write a New York Times best seller. For a beginner, that might be far-fetched so let's just begin with a good book or a well thought out course. Having done your book or course (this applies too to seminars and workshops), you save in word or PowerPoint and convert it to PDF. PDF (portable document format) is a special format developed by Adobe and can be bought online or better still buy the CD and install in your laptop. Once converted to PDF, no one can amend or tinker with your product and you can upload it to your website and start selling. Sounds so simple? Yes! Technology simplifies things. Anybody with a laptop or smart-phone can buy your product and start enjoying it right away. Most new generation laptops and smart-phones have PDF reader pre-installed or you can simply download an app that enables you read the PDF document.
E-Pub
E-Pub (ePub) is short for electronic publication and is an eBook file format that the majority of devices, including iPad, android smartphones, tablets, computers, or e-readers can read. To convert your book to e-Pub requires a special software, which an average business centre can help you achieve. If you cannot get a business centre near you to convert your book to epub, you can do it online through a company by the name Allzone.
Mobi
Mobi is especially peculiar to Amazon Kindle as that is the only format that Kindle uses. Starting in 2011, some analysts projected that within five years there would be over 53million Kindles worldwide so if you want one of the Kindle users to buy your book, you have no choice but to have it in Mobi format. But there is good news. Amazon does not even require you to convert your book into Mobi before uploading to Amazon. You can upload to Amazon in Word format and Amazon KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) will automatically convert it to Mobi for you.
MP4 and MP3
Just a few years ago we were using what was then known as CD (compact disc) before the mp3 format, which is an audio coding format for digital audio, was introduced. The mp3 (or MP3) format can store enormous amounts of sound so you don't need hundreds of CDs as before. Your finished work can be converted to mp3 very easily to be listened to using digital devices including smartphones, iPads and laptops. Don't worry about how to do this as an average sound or video editor would handle the technical aspects and help you uploaded your product to Stitcher, SoundCloud or CD Baby. Editing is not very expensive and goes for as low as $5 for a one hour episode depending on the editor and the fee keeps coming down as more and more people master the art of video editing.
Videos
Videos are what make the internet tick. Video engages more than any other medium so it's a must you learn how to do video. And the good news is that it's not as complex as you may imagine. You don't even need any technical skills. Direct-to-camera video is the one you make with an ordinary camera or camcorder. Camera comes highly recommended compared to camcorder not only because cameras are generally smaller in size and cheaper, but because they develop less heat compared to camcorders. Initially, you may have to rent the camera but with time, you may decide to acquire your own. The most popular camera type is Canon, but you can also make videos with your smart phone however there is a slight drawback as you may not be able to edit or get audio or MP3 out of a smart phone so having a camera has advantages.
The other type of video is the one you make with a software. For Windows computer, you use a software called Camtasia and for Apple computers, you use what is called screenflow. You have to pre-install camtasia (or screenflow if you're using Mac) in your computer to begin with. Let's focus on Windows computers since that is the one I use. Having installed camtasia in your computer, the other processes are pretty straight forward. You first prepare your presentation in PowerPoint. When your slides are ready, you put on the earphone and plug in the voice converter or adapter and switch on camtasia. Once camtasia is on, you start speaking and as you finish with one slide, you move to the next one until your presentation is over. Once your presentation is done, you save what you have done for editing and viola your video is ready and you can upload it to your website, YouTube or Vimeo. Editing is not very expensive and it's not something to worry about as an average business centre can handle it for you.
There is yet a third way of producing videos. This is different from camtasia video we just described above. In this case, there are actually companies that specialize in helping you make videos by providing you with prepared templates. One of them, which I use, is a company called Animoto. What you do is you sign on to Animoto and they give you the architecture to do a video complete with background music. You simply register with the company and once you log-in you just follow the straightforward instructions for preparing a video.
Animoto has free and paid versions of the service. The paid version starts at about $96 per annum. You don't need any skills to do a video. The website provides all the needed headings, such as description of video, which you fill in and upload the pictures and provide a description of your video and viola, your video is ready. In the free and lower end paid versions, the company's logo, Animoto, will appear on your video, but in the premium versions, nothing appears so no one would know you used Animoto. For the very high end versions, you can even customize by putting your name or company's name and logo on the video. For the free version, you'll be provided with a maximum of 6 place holders for just 1 minute video and no more. If you want longer videos then you have to go for the paid versions.
Conclusion
A journey of a thousand miles as the saying goes begins with one step. Internet or online expert business sounds and appears hard when you have no one to guide and show you the way. The fastest way to cut your learning curve is to get a coach and you'll be up and running in no time. In our Expert Empire Program we guide you through how to develop e-Products.
Paul Uduk is the author of five books, including Bridges to the Customer's Heart, Wealth Beyond Your Imagination and The Celebrity Speaker, all available at his website, http://www.pauluduk.com and on Amazon. He is the CEO of Vision & Talent, one of Nigeria's most respected service excellence and process excellence training consultancies, which can be reached via http://www.visionandtalent.com. In addition to training for some of the most respected brands, including Nestoil, Heineken, Inlaks, Dangote and Berger, to name a few, he coaches executives on book writing and the list of his clients read like who is who. Paul recently launched The Expert Empire Program that helps beginners stake a claim in the expert industry on Vimeo. Paul can be reached by email via paul@pauluduk.com or pauluduk@gmail.com and by phone +2348033075133.
An excellent and often overlooked way of getting traffic is establishing your own affiliate program.
If you've been involved with Internet marketing for any length of time, you probably are already familiar with the concept of affiliate marketing and have probably already made some commissions for yourself.
In this case, however, we’re talking about joining the other side of the equation -- in other words,
you're going to have affiliates promoting your products!
Many people are interested in making extra money (and possibly a full-time income) through affiliate marketing because they don't want to deal with selling their own inventory, processing credit card
payments through a merchant account, or shipping products from their home or office.
With so many people looking to get started with Internet marketing by becoming affiliates, this is
an excellent opportunity for you to generate more traffic and revenue for your online business!
You see, those affiliates can take care of much of the groundwork and generate traffic for you by
sending people to your website through their affiliate link in exchange for commissions.
Of course, you probably already have other traffic sources, but an affiliate program can simply make
you even more successful by expanding and diversifying your traffic generation methods.
An easy way to start an affiliate program is to simply join one of the popular networks that handle
all of the annoying tasks like tracking and commission payments for you.
Clickbank is very popular and user-friendly when it comes to digital information products, but some
Internet marketers prefer to use other affiliate networks in order to avoid commissions theft.
A few of the other affiliate networks include LinkShare, ejunkie, and Paydotcom.
You can, of course, establish your own private affiliate program if you're confident in your abilities and for some reason want to avoid the popular affiliate networks.
In this post we'll discuss different traffic methods
that you can put into action in your business to
attract visitors to your websites. Building a business online without traffic will result in no
sales and something you want to avoid.
Generating traffic is a thing you should master.
This is because it’s the one thing that will help you
make sales and generate revenue. Let’s discuss 3
traffic generation methods that you can implement
in your business.
Article Marketing
Driving traffic to your blog with the help of article
marketing is a powerful thing that can make or break
your business. The best approach to article marketing
is by writing a killer article that has a minimum word
count of 500 and make sure to post it in your blog for
search engine traffic. The best way to distribute your
content to blog networks is by using article marketing
software such as:
a. Uniquearticlewizard.com
b. Seolinkvine.com
c. Submityourarticle.com
Social Media
Attracting traffic with social sites is a powerful strategy
that can uplift your traffic and link count from the major
social sites. The best social sites are:
a. Digg.com
b. Twitter.com
c. Stumbleupon.com
d. Facebook.com
In order to win this game you need to submit high
quality posts that will attract traffic and generate
leads for your business.
Press Releases
This method of submitting press release to
major news sites is also a powerful strategy
that can propel your business to the next level.
In fact Google really gives weight to authority
sites such as news sites. The best tool to use is
PRWEB.COM and Bizwire.com. These two major
sites can have a big impact towards your business.
That is just a few ideas of traffic methods
that you should employ in your business. I recommend
you try them out and see which methods work for you,
then stick with them and addon other traffic methods as
you go.
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.
