Social Media for Small Businesses

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.

Final Thoughts
Social media for small businesses is definitely beneficial and fruitful. If followed correctly, small businesses can benefit tremendously from the power of social media promotions.

For More details you can visit: http://www.infunotion.com/blog
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Using Social Media Creatively to Tell Your Story

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).

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Writing Your Business Plan (Traditional or Online Business)

How To Write A Business Plan

In my previous article, I talked about how you can plan your business startup. I defined a business plan as a written description of the future of your business. This is a document that indicates what you intend to do and how you intend to do it. I further explained that if all you have is a paragraph on the back of an envelope describing your business strategy, you have written a plan, or at least the beginning of a plan. I also said that a business plan consists of a narrative and several financial worksheets.

I mentioned that the 'writing of a business plan' as one of the pivotal steps involved in setting up a successful business. By now you should understand the need for writing a business plan. Writing a business plan, for a traditional brick and mortar business, will probably take a lot of time. It may take up to 100 hours or even more. For obvious reasons, a new business needs to carry out a lot of research before a business plan can even be developed.

For an online business, a detailed and in depth business plan is usually not necessary unless you are trying to combine your online business with a traditional business. For most online business startups, the detail involved with planning a traditional business is not required. However, it would still be beneficial to you if most of the topics were still covered, even if only briefly. Having a written plan in front of you will help you to focus on important aspects of the business.

You may not have thought much about your competition or outsourcing some of your work, but things like that will impact your ability to make a profit. And you will find this especially so in the beginning phases of your business. Even you are just opening a lemonade stand in the front yard, you will still need to know what Susie is selling her lemonade for on the next street over!

So, although a detailed business plan may not be required for an online business, I am going to include it here so you can at least look at and consider each section and determine yourself if it applies to your business.

Here I shall be discussing the basic steps involved in writing a business plan:

1. Executive Summary: The first step involved in writing a business plan is the executive summary. Here, include everything that you would cover in a five minute interview.

Explain the fundamentals of the proposed business: What will your product be? Who will your customers be? Who are the owners? What do you think the future holds for your business and your industry?

Make it enthusiastic, professional, complete, and concise.

If you are applying for a loan, state clearly how much you need and be precise in how you are going to use it. Also include detail about how the money will make your business more profitable, thereby ensuring repayment of the loan.

2. Business Description: After the executive summary, you need to write a short description of the business you are going into. You need to give a general description of the industry your business belongs to. You will write about your company's mission statement, goals and objectives, business philosophy, as well as its legal form of ownership (sole proprietor, corporation, LLC, etc.).

Describe your most important company strengths and core competencies. What factors will make the company succeed? What do you think your major competitive strengths will be? What background, experience, skills, and strengths do you personally bring to this new venture?

3. Marketing Analysis/Strategy: The next thing to write (after the general description) should be your marketing strategy. For new or existing businesses, market analysis is an important basis for the marketing plan and will help justify the sales forecast. Existing businesses will rely heavily on past performance as an indicator of the future. New businesses have a greater challenge - they will rely more on market research using libraries, trade associations, government statistics, surveys, competitor observations, etc. In all cases, make sure your market analysis is relevant to establishing the viability of your new business and the reasonableness of the sales forecast.

4. Location: Writing down the location of your business is very important. Locations with greater customer traffic usually cost more to buy or rent, but they require less spending for advertising to attract customers. This is especially true of retail businesses where traffic count and accessibility are critical.

If an online business, you need to go into detail how you will attract customers to your website. General statements like "I will use Face Book ads and email marketing" will contribute almost nothing to helping your cause unless you have detailed statistical analysis of tests you have conducted or of another similar business you have been associated with. If you do not have any data upon which you reference your estimates, it could show lack of proper thought to the remainder of your business plan.

5. Competitive Analysis: Business by nature is competitive, and few businesses are completely new. If there are no competitors, be careful; there may be no market for your products. Expand your concept of competition. If you plan to open the first roller skating rink in town, your competition will include movie theaters, malls, bowling alleys, etc.

6. Management and Operations: Because management problems are the leading cause of business failures, it is important to discuss management qualifications and structure. Resumes of the Principals should be included in supporting data. If your business will have few employees and rely heavily on outside professionals, list these key people and their qualifications. If you are seeking financing, include personal financial statements for all of the principals in the supporting data section.

7. Personnel: The success of any company depends on their ability to recruit, train and retain quality employees. The amount of emphasis in your plan for this section will depend on the number and type of employees required.

8. Projected Financial Statements: These statements are usually helpful, but not necessary. You will develop and describe your strategies for the business throughout your Business Plan. In the financial section, you will need to estimate the financial impact of those strategies by developing projected Income Statements, Balance Sheets, and Cash Flow Statements.

It is usually recommended that these projected statements be on a monthly basis for at least the first twelve months or until the business is projected to be profitable and stable. Activity displayed beyond the monthly detail may be in summary form (such as quarterly or annually). The forecast period for most business plans is two to four years.

9. Summary Section: This section is where you will be able to attach or explain any detail not applicable to the previous sections. This section should be used to provide the financial statements of the Principle's involved in the business and any other data you think an investor would be interested in seeing.

The main thing to remember in this section is not to provide new data, but to explain in detail data that has already been provided and to provide the support for that data.

When you sit down to compile all of the elements of your business plan, make sure you have each section able to stand on its own merits. This means you should not reference other sections sending the reader (your potential investor) back and forth between sections.

Do not try to write your business plan in one sitting. As I mentioned in the beginning, for a traditional brick and mortar business, it could take in excess of 100 hours to compile all of the information needed into a comprehensive but yet understandable document. For online businesses, probably not that long. But your final product should be well thought out, well documented and easily understandable.

On my website, http://www.bobthibodeau.com, I am helping those who are new to Internet Marketing not make the same mistakes I (and countless others) have made getting started. I also help those marketers who are struggling in an area of getting their business going. I offer no promises - just plain, straight forward training and assistance for those who are serious about making a serious, online income.

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Using Social Bookmarking To Promote Start-Up Businesses

What Social Media Engagement Achieves For Business

Social media in essence is in relation to engagement through sharing, which for business means targeting your product range, your articles, or your services at engaging a potential customer or client base. Collectively, products, services and articles are known as content, and it is through offering quality content that success through your channels can be achieved. Social marketing has around 900 million users globally, and covers every topic range you can think of. As well as engaging a potential customer and client base or readership, social media is also relevant to search engine optimization.

Social media is a unique format as it helps you promote your content on to your audience, and in turn it generates traffic via people sharing your content with others, and through SEO. Perhaps more importantly than this, however, social media with its online reviews helps a business build trust, and nearly every brand you can think of uses social media for this reason. Think of this as: you come across two companies offering the same services; one has 250 Facebook likes, the other 43 - which one would you opt for? So regardless of whether you're an online retailer, an affiliate marketer, offer a service such as tuition, or run a news site, social media can assist you build your business online. Google estimates that by 2015, UK consumers will have purchased £40bn of products and services online.

Popular Social Media Sites And Their Uses

Getting to get grips with the nuances of social media's role in promoting your business can cause more than its fair share connected with headaches. Here is a list of the most popular social media sites and their uses:

Facebook is predominately for sharing. This can be products, articles, or services. In a nutshell, it's for sharing your content with as many people as possible.

Twitter is about sharing news on any subject. Don't let the word news make you feel it not apply for products. New product launches, new stock ready to be sold - Twitter is good for all of this.

Google+ is in part a combination of the two and has become important for search engine optimization if nothing else.

Blogging is a great way to impart news and expertise on your readership, customer and client base, or followers. It offers a good way to attract visitors on your site via search engines.

YouTube is about showcasing videos to a wide audience. It is being utilized by businesses all the time to sell products and services. As YouTube is owned by The search engines, videos tend to feature prominently on search engine results. You can also utilize the YouTube ads to make a secondary income stream.

Pinterest and other bookmarking sites are very good at showcasing visual products. If your business is selling something online, albeit a product or service, ensure you are posting on Pinter est and as many bookmarking sites you could find.
Social Media And Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Good positioning on search engines is about unique quality content that is well shared and well linked to from other websites. By sharing your content on social sites, the more chance there is of people liking it on Facebook, re tweeting with Twitter, or sharing the pin on Pinter est. Links are important for good SEO and posting your content on social sites provides a link from the social site to yours, and in every case this can be targeted to a specific web page. By web page I mean a specific solution, service, or article. This also ensures Google indexes the web page. That is to say, it adds it to its database, ensuring it can be found on search engines.

Finding The Best Social Media Sites For Your Business

To find the best social sites suited to your business, think as to what your business is trying to do. If your business sells products or services, then use social sites that showcase pictures and videos to sell the product. YouTube, Pinter est, Delicious and Instagram are all really good for showcasing products. If you're in the selling game, make videos of your products, take good professional photos and find them on these sites, and ensure you link the pictures and videos directly to the content on your site. If you sell on eBay or an affiliate seller, try to link directly to the product page where a potential customer can buy it. Also, put the products on your Facebook or my space page, Google+ page, and Twitter. For service providers, a slightly different spin on social media promotion is needed as, more often than not, a service provider will sit in the middle of visual social media, and text-based social sites. This also applies to affiliate marketers. If you can, represent your services that has a picture or icon, and publish the picture or icon on the visual sites. Use videos to showcase your services - if you can get testimonials from clients, well, that's gold dust. Publish regularly on your blog and tweet the articles, together with insights into the industry. This engagement will help build trust with all your existing clients, showcase your skills, and help you to be found by people wishing to become new clients.

Social Media Advertising

If you have the budget for it, Facebook offers advertising on a click-through basis like Google Ad Sense, or it can be used to earn likes. It is often in instances of experimentation. For affiliate marketing revenue streams, click-through will expose the user to your revenue stream, while a like will ensure every time an article or new product is published they'll be informed. It's trial and error and seems to work well for some businesses, but others have lost faith from it.

Saving Time

By now, you have probably guessed that updating social sites, especially if you publish a lot of daily content, is hard work. Larger businesses employ people to keep on top of it, something many start-up business don't have the budget or the time for. It is possible to help automate your social accounts updating using automatic syndication sites.

A Social Media Strategy

Step 1: Create a Facebook Page, Twitter account and Google+ Page For Business

These have their uses regardless of the type of business, and all help considerably with SEO. Ensure you create business pages on Facebook in addition to Google+. This keeps your personal details and indeed social media life hidden from your customers or clients, and it offers better options to promote a business.

Step 2: Identify Social Media Sites That Are The Most Important To Your Business

If your site sells products, make a list of all the online bookmarking and video sites you could find and create accounts. Ensure you use Pinter est and YouTube. If your business is for services, information, or is for an affiliate marketing revenue stream, you want to spread the word in as many ways as possible. Use blogging sites such as Tumble, Blogger and WordPress. org to syndicate your sites and services, and try to create news content if you provide services to show your expertise in your field.

Step 3: Use Social Media Tools Such As 'If This Then That'

'If this then that' or ifttt.com automatically updates your social accounts. This is easy to establish and works by syndicating the information across a host of social sites automatically as soon as one site is updated. This, as you can imagine, saves a lot of time. Be cautions, however, and ensure social sites suited to the business, such as bookmarking sites for online retailers, appear just as you want them to be found. Automatic syndication has limitations and often links and pictures do not appear as you would like them to. Nonetheless, and especially for syndicating blog posts via an RSS feed, it is a very good time-saver for promoting your business via social media. Not all social media can be syndicated in this way, but the sites that committer syndicates to are well worth creating accounts on to promote your business. The more social media sites you post on, the better.

Step 4: Use #hashtags

Whenever you post your content, ensure you use appropriate #hashtags. This will help users find your content when they search for it. So if I'm selling tyres on eBay, #tyres, #cartyres, #car, #treys is good, and for sports news, #sports news, #football #cricket, and so on is good.

Step 5: Once It Starts

Once your content starts hitting the web 2. 0 world, monitor your accounts for feedback. Concentrate on the sites you've identified as important to your business and respond to questions and comments. When responding, try to be helpful and non-abusive, even if the commentator is not pleasant. Professionalism goes along way.

Step 6: Participation

Twitter and Google+ show trending topics and these include popular subjects people are discussing. It is worth performing the odd Twitter search to see what people are talking about in relation to your business, and making a contribution to the discussion. This is a good way to make connections and hopefully achieve more success.

Step 7: Monitoring Success

Monitoring success has confirmed to be quite difficult for social media. Unlike SEO results, which can be measured on click-through and content engagement, it is not so simple on social sites for a variety of reasons. You may feel if you provide news that 10 comments on one story is a good sign of success, while 100 likes of a product video on YouTube with no obvious link to sales most likely are not immediately obvious as positive. It is worth remembering, however, that though people may not directly access your main site via social sites, it may prompt them to return later. Always keep in mind that social media is for sharing content, so any like, comment or re tweet is positive.



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How To Generate Traffic Using Ad Swaps

We all know how important it is to build an e-mail subscriber list as part of your online strategy, but
it can be difficult to get enough traffic to your squeeze page.

You can use a lot of different traffic generation methods in order to send traffic to your squeeze page and build your subscriber list including pay per click advertising, search engine optimization,
and article marketing.

There is one powerful method, however, that many marketers overlook, and that method is known as
ad swaps.

This concept is pretty simple because all you have to do is contact another marketer in your niche who also has an e-mail list and you agree to perform a simple swap so that both of you can receive additional subscribers.

You would send an e-mail to your list promoting the other marketer’s opt in list, and he or she would do the same for you.

This is generally a simple and effective way to add subscribers to your list, but you need to keep
some precautions in mind.

If at all possible, you should verify that the other marketer has the number of subscribers claimed.

Otherwise, you could be wasting your time even though no real damage will have been done.

For best results, you should contact marketers who have roughly the same number of subscribers as you do in order to make the whole process worthwhile for both of you.

If you have 500 subscribers, for example, and the other marketer has 1000 subscribers, you might still be able to work out an arrangement if you are willing to send two e-mails  to your list in order to make up for the difference.

If you don't currently have any subscribers but still want to participate in the swaps, you need to build a list of at least a few hundred subscribers as quickly as possible in order to be taken seriously.

The fastest way to achieve this would be to use some paid advertising such as pay per click campaigns so you can begin participating in ad swaps as soon as possible.

Social Media Platform Review

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.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/expert/Kim_L._Clark/647250

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Tips To Help You Become A Better Online Business Person

Starting and maintaining a home business enterprise is a bold move. Home businesses can be immensely successful if you know how to maintain your businesses affairs in the right way. This article will cover some of the essentials you need to consider, to ensure the growth, success and profitability of your online business.

If you have a home based business, don't miss out on the home office tax credit. You can claim this space even if you don't devote an entire room to your business. If you have an area which is only or primarily used for business purposes, you can claim it based on square footage, and calculate the portion of your home that is taken up by your office space.

Once you've decided on a product to sell, do your homework and check out your competition. Look at their prices and study the quality of the goods that they are selling. Make sure not to price yourself out of the market, and figure out how to deliver the best value to your customers.

Set up a Post Office box for all your business mail. It's best to do this, rather than put your family at risk by using your physical address. This is especially important if you are doing most of your business online. Don't ever post your home address online, for any reason.

To reduce distractions keep your office off limits to children. Have set work hours that enable you to run your business and still have time for your family. Older children should understand not to disturb you while you are working. For your business to succeed your family needs to be supportive and respectful of your work schedule.

Take all of the home-business tax deductions that are legally allowed. For example, you can deduct the cost of a second telephone line or a mobile phone if you use it exclusively for your business, but be sure to keep sufficient records to prove your deductions. Taking all permissible write-offs helps you keep more of what you earn.

Although you may be used to working eight hours a day and then being off, you have to realize that in order for a home business to thrive more of a time commitment may be needed. Once everything is in place you will be able to relax a little.

Maintain a professional attitude as you begin your home based business. Keep your personal life and your professional life separate. Just because you are working from home, does not mean that you should engage in any family responsibilities during the time that you are supposed to be working. You will not be successful if you do not put the time into running your business efficiently.

Don't walk into a home business enterprise blind! There are many online discussion forums designed for small business owners to discuss the unique obstacles in this field. Look locally for other small business and home business organizations that meet in person. Either way you go, networking with other business owners gives you an excellent support system.

Having a business license for your home business often allows you to purchase things wholesale. This is excellent news for people who make their product, since you can search on product search engines for bulk orders of raw materials. This minimizes trips to the store, and frees up your wallet for other expenditures.

In the end, for most, having a online business allows for a level of control and creativity that the mainstream approach lacks. However, after reading this article, you may realize that you cannot necessarily go about maintaining a successful home business in the same way that you would maintain a traditional business. By utilizing these tips and advice, you will set your business up for a lucrative and stable future.

Kurt Tasche is an internet entrepreneur and home business professional who enjoys sharing his ideas through his Home Business Ideas and Opportunities blog. You can read and subscribe to his blog by going to www.kurttasche.ws

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/expert/Kurt_A_Tasche/254929
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/9981913

The 4 Rules That Developers Follow for a Great Website

In the present times, websites have become the face of most business around the globe. The reason being the digital world that people have started living in. On an average, 98% of adults owning a smart phone spends a considerable amount of time online and whenever there is a need to search for a business type or probably any information, the smartphone or the computer comes to the rescue.

Taking advantage of such a situation, businesses are known to create websites that represents them in the digital platform while ensuring that all possible information is conveyed to the visitors and accordingly can the sales be retrieved.

When it comes to creating a website, there is the need for a good development team who would come up with a complete package right from creating trendy designs to making it a user-friendly website. While bringing along more traffic and increased sales is the motto behind a good website, here is what the developers are known to follow that gives great results.

Analyzing the trends

Website developers are not just updated on the technical aspect of creating a website but also the market trends that makes any website a success. They are known to follow leading websites and how things function. They analyse the reasons behind such a success and how they can imply the same for creating websites for their clients. They know what would be right when it comes to putting inputs for the website and that is when they come up with the perfect plan.

They customize the website

While they follow modern trends in website making, they wouldn't imply the exact methods in the websites they create. It is something that is against the rules. By taking inspiration from them and customizing it according to your needs, website developers would ensure that you have a website that is made solely to suit your company and its products and services. This would give a sense of uniqueness while personalizing things the way you intend to portray your business to the audience.

They follow the needs of viewers

This is where artificial intelligence plays an active role where data science is known to help developers acquire information based on user data as well as the type of browsing that the masses undertake. This helps in know what the viewers look out for and that is what helps in coming up with the right type of website. Following old trends is no more the 'in' things to stay out of the league. Everyone follows modern trends and that is what all developers do.

Simple coding procedures

Complex coding is something that not everyone would understand. There is the need to make online browsing really simple as the masses lack patience. They do not have the time to browse through multiple pages and layers of a website and unless they find the exact thing that they are looking for, they would move on to the next relevant website. This would create trouble for the website traffic and thus isn't a good idea to follow.

While these are the things that website developers pay attention to, you are to select someone who has the right expertise to help you with a great website.

The author Nina Unger has had close association with a web development company in Bangalore and writes this article to help people know of what professionals for Magento development in Bangalore follow.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/expert/Nina_Unger/2189801
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How Can I Generate More Traffic To My Website?

It's the question asked by every new online entrepreneur and every seasoned online entrepreneur, "How can I generate more traffic to my website?". But you don't just want traffic. You want to get more web traffic that is targeted and wants more than your free stuff. You want to catch the attention of people who really want what you're offering and will buy what you're offering.

Plan the Right Content

Check to see what content is most popular on your website. The create more of that type of content. If you don't have much content so far, study the content material that your audience looks at from your competition and create similar content. Don't copy, but do deliver to your audience the type of content that they want.

Learn Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) is important to learn when it comes to getting more traffic to your website. It enables potential customers to find your website by using the search engines. For instance, using keywords in headings, anchor text, titles, subject lines, meta descriptions and alt text for images that are related to your content, you'll move further up the search engine results.

Advertise Your Content

Just like you would advertise one of your most valuable products or services, you need to promote your content. The good news is, using paid traffic to your website does not have to be costly. As an example, Facebook Ads make it possible to directly target your audience in a very cost effective way.

Create Targeted Freebies

Create freebies that are targeted toward a need that your audience has. If you can solve one problem for them, create that freebie. Then offer that freebie in exchange for a prospect's email address. When you have their email address you can message them with links to your website whenever you want.

Use Different Types Of Content

Don't just use written text for on your website. Search engines like a mixture of content. Mix it up and use text, illustrations or photos, online video and audio to make the ways you provide information to your audience complete.

Facebook Groups

A Facebook group is essentially a community where people with similar interests can interact with you and each other. Facebook groups bring in more website traffic because once you gain trust, make friends, and gain followers, you can promote your business effectively in these groups.

Study Your Analytics

The analytics you can gather from your website are very important, because it can tell you what content is getting traffic to your website so that you know what to create more of.

Everybody likes 'free'. If you're a website owner, you probably want more free, targeted traffic from Google and other search engines, rather than having to pay for it. For more free website traffic methods that will lower your reliance on potentially costly paid traffic sources download my Free Website Traffic Checklist at https://jonallo.com/freetrafficchecklist

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/expert/Jon_Allo/1079948
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How to Choose the Right Traffic Source

If you knew that articles were where you were going to be able to get all of your traction... Or guest blogging was where you were going to get all your traction... Or Google+, or Facebook was where you were going to get all of your traction... Then you could take what I just shared with you and you could say, "Okay, I'll just go out and I will become an expert at that one source of traffic."

However, there's a preliminary stage that has to happen. You've got to figure out which one of these is going to work better for you. In the process of figuring out which one is better for you, you might try multiple sources of traffic.

You'll notice I talked about this second, not first. That's because I wanted you to hear what I just said about specialization first, before I talked about trying out the different traffic sources. Because, if you're not careful you'll come away from what I'm getting ready to say, and say "Okay, well they said go out and try 10 different traffic sources."

Then they don't hear the part where I say "for a limited time period."

They try 10 different traffic sources, 10 years later they're still wallowing in 10 different traffic sources, and they've never become an expert. So they're not generating very much traffic.

What I recommend that you do is: choose any, some, or all of these traffic sources that you wish. And you set up a tracking page for every one of these.

For example, if you write an article that goes to EzineArticles, you send them to a unique squeeze page, that has a unique webform code on it, so you know exactly how many subscribers are being generated every single month from those articles.

You know exactly how many subscribers are generated every month from guest blogging.

You know exactly how many subscribers are generated from LinkedIn, from Facebook, from your affiliate program, from anywhere else.

Then you'll combine that with a time sheet. Call it a traffic time sheet. Every time you sit down to work on traffic, you log into your traffic time sheet. You can do this in an Excel spreadsheet. You can do this with pencil and paper.

Here's how to use it:

If you work on articles for 15 minutes you write down "Articles - 15 minutes."

Let's say, for example, that it's April, so you have an April spreadsheet. And it says, "Articles - 15 minutes. LinkedIn - 30 minutes." Then you spend another 20 minutes in Articles, so you need to update Articles to 35 minutes.

At the end of the month you'll be able to see at a glance that you spent 200 minutes on articles. You spent 100 minutes on guest blogging. You spent 75 minutes in LinkedIn. You spent 95 minutes in Facebook. So on, and so on.

Next you're going to look at how many subscribers you generated from each one of those traffic sources. Do the math! For example:

You spent 75 minutes on Facebook and you got 4 subscribers. That's 1 subscriber every 18.5 minutes or so. For articles you get 10 subscribers for 200 minutes of work, that's 1 subscriber per 20 minutes of work. And at the end of the month, you'll be able to say "Okay, from one traffic source I get a subscriber for every 10 minutes of work. From one traffic source I get a subscriber from 20 minutes of work. From another traffic source it takes me 30 minutes of work."

What does this mean?

It means if you're going to continue to do the work in the future, you probably want to get subscribers that are coming in from sources that don't take you as long to get. Or, what it means is, if you hire somebody to do your work for you, you know what to have them do to be the most cost-effective. Let's say you hire somebody for 10 hours a week to do work for you. If you're going to pay them for 10 hours of work a week, you want them on the traffic source that will allow them to generate the most number of subscribers for you as fast as possible.

The only way you will know is with your spreadsheet.

By the way, would you like to get the newbie-friendly insider's secrets to building a stable, thriving business online... year after year? Swing on by our friendly Business Builders Cafe at http://infobusinessuniversity.com/cafe for the latest freshly-made marketing techniques... that just plain work beautifully. You'll love what you receive!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/expert/Sean_Mize/28298
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10 Creative Strategies For Promoting Your Website

Do you have a website or blog you publish content to every day but still not able to get enough visitors?

Have you just created your very first blog and are keen to try out all the ways to promote it?

This article presents 10 smartest and most effective strategies you can use to promote your blog and instantly attract visitors who are genuinely interested in your niche.

1. Stop Tweaking / Modifying Your Blog

Are you spending too much time tweaking your blog to give it the right feel? Let me tell you, the overall design does not matter to your audience as much as your content does. Instead of tweaking your blog every now and then, focus on creating content that is fresh, engaging and informative for your readers and make them come back for more.

2. Creating Pillar Content

Producing quality content is one of the biggest challenges for bloggers because creating high-quality content on a regular basis isn't easy. Good content makes a powerful impact on your audience, which is why it is important that you take the time to create the high-quality pillar content that can solidify your blog's reputation. Pillar content refers to a series of posts that represents your blog's best content. It includes all the great posts that you will refer new visitors to for their usefulness.

Great content serves as a go-to source for good and informative message for your audience within your particular industry. Pillar posts provide major support to your blog and are considered a very important component or staple of your blog. When you start promoting your blog, pillar content will serve as your bait to attract more traffic.

Once you have set up your blog, the very first strategy you should implement is to create relevant posts and populate your blog with some really new, yet interactive information.

3. Don't Focus On Monetizing Your Blog Too Much

Many new bloggers create blogs to earn money. Although there is no harm in earning money, putting too many banner ads on your blog can become too distracting for your audience. If there are too many, they can make your blog look really ugly and they can actually take your visitors away from your blog. Do you still think this could be a great way to promote your blog? I bet you don't. In fact, you should focus on building your email list and a targeted pixel list. Both of them will help you get what you're desperately looking for, more visitors and more money by re-targeting your visitors through paid ads.

4. Research Your Niche and Find Out Who and What Matters

A very important step you should take before starting your blog is to thoroughly research your niche. You should need to spend know all the ins and outs of your niche and know who matters, for instance, who are the influencers, big players and small players contributing to the niche in their own capacities. You should make a list of all the competing sites, channels, podcasts, influencers, communities and groups that are working within your particular niche. It's very easy with SE Ranking competitor research.

By doing so, you will have a major reference file of all your competitors within your niche. You will be able to see what they are doing and talking about and also all the items they are putting for sale and products that are popular among your audience.

5. Reach Out To Your Audience

Once you have your blog nicely set up and great content to pull your audience in, start promoting your blog. Take out the detailed list of all the influencers, big players and small players you're made prior to starting your blog. Keep a close eye on the small players, because you need them for blog promotion. You can start by offering them testimonials, case studies or even a blog post they would be interested in publishing. It is important for you to start a one-on-one relationship with the big and small players. By contribute on other people's' sites through commenting and sharing their work on your blog, they will start to recognize you and connect with you.

6. Become An Expert In Your Niche

Whether your niche is SEO, Digital Marketing, Content Marketing or any other, you should not only attain extensive knowledge about your niche but also present it in an interactive and engaging way through your blog. Your future audience is waiting to read content that addresses them and their needs. It is the power of your writing and expert analysis that will help you attract your audience.

7. Post Comments

Commenting on blog posts and participating in various forums and social groups is often seen as a way to get backlinks. But if it's done right, no such issue will arise. Always post comments on blog posts only when you have something meaningful and informative to add. Make sure to use your own name to do it, and not your brand. Participate in niche groups and influential communities on social media. Present yourself as an authority in your niche and genuinely help people. Don't just drop links.

8. Create An Interactive Conversation Flow And Acknowledge Your Readers

When creating content, make sure it is engaging enough to get the audience talking. Your posts should pose questions from your audience and encourage them to respond or share their own similar experiences. Your audience can talk to you via blog comments or email, make sure to acknowledge them and reply to them. This will encourage facilitate interaction.

9. Monetize Your Site

When it comes to earning money from your blog, take a proactive approach, because it can bring organic traffic. When you offer a product or service on your site you can attract your target audience. By creating a profit funnel, you cannot only generate more leads but also generate a lot of revenue in the next few months.

10. Use Paid or Sponsored Media

Utilizing paid or sponsored media is a viable option and an effective strategy for blog promotion. It includes blog promotion through Facebook ads, Google ads, promoted tweets, YouTube pre-roll ads, and much more. These social networks can bring an incredible amount of traffic, as well as, hundreds of leads to your site.


When you follow the strategies discussed above for promoting your site you will not only be able to boost traffic to your site but also generate revenue from it. Remember, promoting a site or blog is not a difficult task. It just takes a little time and understanding of what works. Implement one strategy at a time and see the difference.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/expert/Diana_Ford/2513821
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/9941596

How Can You Make Money From Social Media?

Every sensible business owner today should have a social media marketing strategy. The real secret to success is in being able to earn money from your social media following.

At the end of the day, you're in business to make money, not just constantly post free content.

Take Advantage of Facebook's Options

With over two billion users on Facebook every month, this is the best place to start to generate income from your social media following. Your Facebook fan page should mirror who you are and why you're worth doing business with. You should make the most of the special features Facebook offers, including:

• The Like button
• Contact Us button
• Email sign-up tab
• Polls
• Events
• Give obvious calls to action, like, "Click the Like button so you can keep up to date with all of the hottest news" or, "Click the Contact Us button and we will be delighted to answer your questions."
• Encourage Engagement

Motivate people to like, comment and share your posts. This will maximize your messages about your business, and more traffic means most likely more money. You can do this on most social media networks, not only Facebook.

Promote Your Account to Get Followers

Facebook makes it possible for you to advertise your profile in order to get more likes and followers. You can do the same on Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn and more.

Boost Your Best Posts

Check your Facebook Insights and find the content that is getting the most engagement. Then convert them into an ad by boosting the post. It should have a link they can click to learn more. Focus on the audience carefully so your boosted post will be shown to people interested in your market.

Produce Ads from Scratch

Creating a Facebook ad from scratch on Facebook will take a little more time, but give you more control. You'll need:

A good picture
An attention-grabbing headline
An intriguing description
A URL to send them to in order for them to take an action, such as subscribe or buy now
Market on YouTube
YouTube is one of the top five sites in the world and the top video-sharing site. Develop how-to videos and useful content. Include a call to action to subscribe to your list, or to buy a product.

Pinterest

Research has found that Pinterest users are 80% women and that at least half of them buy products they see on the site. Starting a business account on Pinterest instead of a personal account offers a number of benefits. Pinterest provides analytics to the business owner, buy buttons on pins, and other helpful business tools.

Instagram

Instagram is all about images and video. Use hashtags to promote your products. Instagram stories get sent out to all your followers, but are only there for One day and then they disappear. These are a great way to post flash sales and special offers that can help you make money fast.

Facebook is the best place to start with your social media monetization strategies. It's the number one social network for all ages and your target audience are using Facebook. To learn how to make your Facebook marketing successful and profitable, download my Free Checklist, Successful Facebook Ads at https://jonallo.com/FBads

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/expert/Jon_Allo/1079948
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The Biggest Social Media Changes in 2018

As the year 2018 has started it makes sense that in this new year what could be the biggest social media changes that can be expected.

Typically, the world of social media has witnessed a continuous growth in technology and innovation. Every day some new innovations are seen, or new announcements are heard.

So, let's discuss the prospective trends that can follow in this year and ways in which the social media managers can plan for these changes.

1.Continuous growth in the Live video content.

Recently Facebook announced some changes to its News Feed algorithm that will change itself based on the type of content users that shifting from the user's friends and families to the type of content or pages which the user's followers. This further implies that it is going to initiate an intensive discussion among the users as they share a content in their own private network.

2. Messaging apps will be an important mode of communication.

Today there are various messaging apps like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat etc. Almost 4 billion people use these kinds of messaging Apps to communicate with the each other. These kinds of Apps provide a much faster and easier way to contact people. In fact, using messaging for customer service is more far more scale and lesser to cost especially for businesses and customer services.

3. Virtual reality on the rise of better marketing experiences.

In the era of Artificial Intelligence Virtual Reality is making the headlines. With its unique features, it creates a memorable experience unlike other mediums in the field of marketing. In fact, due to this brand are instantly acknowledging its value.

4. Voice search and AI will be the game changer

As the development continues the voice-powered devices which are quick in responding to the verbal commands are heavily dependent on Artificial Intelligence. As we can see in the market that some voice controlled for personal help are being built into a few devices that we use such as smart speakers, TVs etc.

The other innovation where Artificial Intelligence plays an important role is in autonomous vehicle technology continues to progress. Based on this technology, it is apparent that voice activation will be certainly used for the self-driving cars too. As these kinds of vehicles will be equipped with voice-powered capabilities that will allow the drivers to execute other functions like making phone calls without taking your hands away from the steering.

5. A boom in Live Streaming

There will be an outgrowth of Live streaming and we are going to see a lot more to it. The presence of Live Streaming will increase as it works. For instance, through this technology, we get an upgrade in the phones every day.

6. Online Hangouts will be the order of the Day

The online hangouts are trending fast with the Generation Z which believes in more of socializing and partying. In fact, Online Hangouts goes hand in hand with the VR.

7. Influencer Marketing will be at the Focal point in the Social Media Engagement

The influence of marketing is a Big business with a billion-dollar riding on it. In fact, there are many people mint money up to 6 figures through influencer marketing.

It has a huge impact on the millennials in making their career choices and kind of choices they make in everyday life such as the kinds of products they want to buy.

8. Making stories with Instagram

From a marketing standpoint, the Instagram stories will have a lot of relevance as compared to another marketing platform. There is a flood of Instagram stories which accounts for almost 10,000 followers.


Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/expert/Martin_Smith/2502997
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Social Media Marketing Tips - Following the 80%-20% Rule

There are endless ways you can reach your audience, there is no secret formula as such. Applying the 80-20 rule should always be an integral part of your social media marketing strategy. In short it means 80% of your content should be engagement oriented which gives something valuable to read to your viewers and engage them in conversations or participation and only 20% should be dedicated for your business promotion.

It is necessary to establish the fact that people come to social media platforms for social interactions and not to read your sales pitch! Social media marketing is more inclined to building relationships, trust and authority online rather than annoying your audience with repeated sales pitch.

80% Content - informative & interactive:

This part of the marketing strategy mainly aims at sharing good content related to your business. Simply put, look over for the content that interests your audience and share the same across various social networking platforms. Think about re-tweets, re-sharing posts, links to reviews, inspirational quotes, greetings, polls, trivia & contests and other such engagement oriented ideas. If confused how to come up with such posts, do as listed below:

• Follow top influencers in your industry, watch their posts, tweets and design your own or probably re-share them as a good piece of information.
• Share your own interesting facts, content amongst your own page followers and get them engaging.
• Make your content reach out to your influencers and try to connect them.
• Organize trivia, competition and award the winners which compels the audience to engage in the activity and gain confidence in your brand.

20% self promotion:

While working on this section, include information which "benefits" your audience by providing discounts, special offers with a call to action button leading to your website which will enable them to learn more about your services/products. Publish your products/services advantages, reviews, testimonials, specifications and all other information you need to keep your reputation.

The bottom line: 

If a brand focuses too much on its sales and irritates the audience on social network with non stop sales pitch is sure to drive away visitors and referrals. Audience will simply jump in and out of your social media page without even landing on your website (traffic to your website is the sole motive of any marketing strategy). Give your audience what they want to read at regular intervals and you shall see a spike in your brand's followers and authority and maintain a consistent social media presence.

If you like what you read or require any digital marketing assistance, feel free to reach out to us.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/expert/Carlshen_Firoze_Wadia/2502433
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/9943393

7 Tips for Improving Online Sales Using Social Media

Nowadays there is huge competition prevailing in the online marketplaces. Thus, it has become very important to improve your online sales process and provide a better user-friendly experience. However, you will need effective tips to connect with your potential customers on your social media channels. By using the right plan, you can improve the experience of your visitors and create more sales.

In this post, you will explore seven tips for improving online sales using social media:

1. Use messaging services to offer excellent sales support

You must focus on providing sales support by using native chatting within every social network. By using conversational e-commerce you can use the messaging services that will help you to personalize, automate and customize your communication. These messaging apps have become great go-to-choices for many customers. It helps them to directly interact with companies as these apps have increased engagement and retention rates.

So, if you aren't using messaging apps to automate confirmations and for selling, you're losing a big social e-commerce opportunity. However, make sure to be careful while using automated chat apps such as Facebook Messenger Bots.

2. Analyse conversations about your brand and services

When it comes to participating in conversations with your customer's social media is the most effective tool. However, the continuous attack by customers make it difficult to determine the useful information. Thus, keeping an eye on your users online activities will help you to understand the confusing situations. You will be able to generate more leads and create effective marketing strategies.

Brand listening is the skills of developing important insights by analysing your clients' conversations about your services, brand, and competitors. However, you will need to need to focus on more than simply monitoring your official social media accounts.

3. Encourage your users to share their personal experience

There is no doubt that the success of every social media is not based how much they talk about themselves. Instead, it depends on how much their customers talk about their services and brand. Thus, you must provide your customers an option to share their experience before, during and after making a purchase.

A recent evidence has shown that 1 out of 3 Facebook user has first shared, liked and commented the product prior to purchasing it.

4. Provide easy and quick buying options on your social channels

These days we can see a great expansion in retail sales that are driven by social channels. In these channels buying buttons play a major role in generating more sales. With the help of the buy buttons your clients can make smooth and secure purchases from within the social networks. This reduces the need to follow a multi-step process and limit it to a single click sale process.

5. Feature User-generated content (UGC)

The content that is created and shared by your customers, followers and fans on social channels also generate content - User-generated content (UGC). They either create it instinctively or through other options like giveaways or contests. Curating UGC's work effectively for e-commerce businesses. Usually, people who see UGC are 97% more likely to buy your services, according to Business Insider.

The content generated in the form of images by the customers also work effectively. In fact, 77% of online shoppers choose Instagram pictures when they were to make a choice between UGC (like images posted on Instagram's) and professional images (given on the pages of product description). When you use authentic pictures it works as a social proof, enhance your ad performance, attract high-intent visitors from Instagram to product pages and improve on-site conversion rates.

6. Develop seasonal and business-related content

Almost all eCommerce businesses create effective business-related according to the seasonal calendar. They perform very well in generating sales, creating special offers, incentives and emails. They also outdo at stocking their social channels with announcements about all related seasonal e-commerce activities.

But when you create seasonal content that isn't highly promotional most stores fall short. Therefore, it is best to stay organized with an effective content creation platform on your social media channel.

7. Create social-friendly visuals

Nearly all businesses using social streams are hard pressed to create social-friendly content. As users are more knowledgeable and they avoid generic stock images. According to a Chute Digi day Study over 70% of users find it at least two times more effective to use pictures than only written content alone.

However, the problem arises when a web owner is not able to hire a professional designer. In that case, you can consider using Buffer's Pablo, which offers more than 600,000 royalty-free photos to choose from. On the other hand, if you need pictures for graphics and infographics, using Venn gage will be a great option. It offers hundreds of design templates to generate detailed images quickly. These templates are usually are categorized into Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced. So, you can choose pictures according to your level of expertise.

Are you planning to improve the online sale for your business using social media, get in touch with A1dezine crew and get this done.

Glen Hunter is an online marketing consultant, PHP programmer, project manager, writer, blogger & social media enthusiasts.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/expert/Glen_Hunter/2552263
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/9947191

The Role of Content Transformation in the Digital World

Media companies, entertainment firms, and IT organizations to some extent, are literally getting more and more distraught in the modern era. It is because of the Digital Transformation factor, which they are being forced to consider. More specifically, the Information, Media and Entertainment (IME) channels are totally watchful of the current situation and are playing a safe game.

Given below are some steps helpful in realizing content transformation digitally.

Content Marketing

Generating quality content is not just enough. Remember that it requires a lot of efforts to produce top-notch content after a lot of research. Why not take financial advantage of the situation by publishing the content generated and earning revenue from it through the best available subscription plans.

Google tells smaller content creators to increase base to more than 1,000 subscribers

Dynamic Content

Multidimensional content that is ultra-rich in quality besides being effective and informative with a faster reach will have maximum impact. Creating the initial impressions in the minds of the readers ahead of the rest gives your company the competitive advantage that is quintessential. The below-mentioned tools are ideal and helpful in this regard.

Content Developer Tools
Drag & Drop editor
Web 2.0 User Authoring
Those content resources aiding quicker generation along with social integration is something that one needs to prefer in the first place.
Operational Model

Every customer will have a definitive objective as far as their content requirement is considered. Leveraging the content and matching it with the operational aspects of the corresponding businesses will be highly effective. The focus should be on creating different content strategies fitting in a single framework yields best results.

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION - KEY FEATURES

Content plays a vital role in any organization when it comes to it getting transformed digitally.

Reuse Your Content

A centralized editorial system is your platform for creating content. However, you cannot go on producing content in a context where reusability plays a huge role. A single piece of content could be considered across platforms helping you to gain more traffic.

Maximize Your Technology

Going digital is not an easy task to manage as it requires to consider multiple domains with respect to technology. It is possible to drive increased user engagement as bots take care of a majority of your requirements resulting in a comprehensive automated experience.

Revamp Your Market

Reconsidering a business decision from a new perspective will play a huge role in your future growth. It should not be forgotten that business trends constantly impact current market situation. Hence, it is a must for business processes to scale up and obtain maximum savings.
If you have any questions about the different marketing services or just don't know where exactly to start, reach out to Aptiva Corp for a consultation.

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Video Marketing: Look Into The Future

It is 2017 and the world has become digital. Video marketing has slowly but surely turned out to be the go-to medium for promoting a brand. Social networking platforms are dominating the market as far as video-sharing is concerned. Consumers are becoming more and more keen to educate themselves about a product before purchasing it or learning about a service. A well-crafted video goes a long way in giving potential customers the specifics they require before they take the next step.

There are several trends observed in video marketing that can surely help in shaping the future.

DIY (Do It Yourself) Videos

Of late, YouTube has become the go-to place to promote how-to videos. People love to learn a new skill or become independent. An interesting make-up tutorial or a carpentry workshop will go long way in making folks self-reliant. A great marketing video developed by a Product Video Company for a particular brand can also double up as a training content.

Welcome to the World of VR

Virtual reality (VR) as a concept is already a big thing in the gaming universe. This technology requires a virtual reality headset and produces visuals, sounds as well as other sensations that artificially reproduce a user's actual presence in the imaginary setting. It is only a matter of time when VR will be used as a marketing platform to promote a brand.

Innovative Techniques

When it comes to developing quality videos, it is important to consider all options. Some of the creative ones like drones or time-lapse videos have slowly become popular techniques in video production. If you wish to stand out from the crowd and attempt to impress the audience then using unconventional methods can do the trick.

Live Video

This trend is already emerging as a winner in several social media platforms especially Facebook Live. With live streaming videos, users can be part of the action as it happens. The brand engagement is immediate and viewers can give their feedback immediately via comments.

Strong Storytelling

An emotionally powerful story can always tug at your heartstrings. So a marketing video that has strong storytelling with a crisp video & audio can work wonders. An appealing background music can help viewers connect with the video. A good Explainer Video Production Company should be able to develop an engaging video that leaves a lasting impression in the minds of viewers. An impactful video ought to evoke the right emotions or stir your senses in the correct way. All of this can lead to the video being in your minds all the time, thus increasing brand awareness and ultimately growth in sales.

All businesses, big, medium or small, have started the realize the significance of video marketing and how it can help organizations greatly. This marketing platform has shown that it is an effective tool to craft brand awareness, create a positive brand image and ultimately increase sales for your product/service. With technology developing at a lightning speed, the future of video marketing looks bright.

Amit Thaker is not only the Founder of Buzz Creatix but also a vivid writer. Leading his creative agency which also has a reputation of being one of the leading corporate video productions in Mumbai, he has varied expertise spanning across domains. Gaining a Bachelor of Arts in Film-making at London College of Communications, he has accrued a wealth of experience in corporate and explainer video making catering to several top corporate across industries.

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How Video Marketing Can Help Your Business

Reaching the target audience and encouraging engagement are challenging for businesses today with all the updates and changes. Out of all forms of media circulating on the internet, video is the one that's on top. Why is it the top and rising trend today?

Think of a topic and there's probably a video about it. For many people, videos are fun and easy to consume. It's no wonder why it's effective at marketing your products or services. Want to know other benefits of video marketing?

Improves SEO

To get more visibility, businesses also put effort into search engine optimization. The good thing about videos is that it can boost your website's traffic. Videos increase a visitor's time on your page if you get them hooked enough to finish or watch a good chunk of it. You can also share it on platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and many more.

Works for Many Types of Audiences

Making a fun and creative video is hard, but watching one is not. Your target audience can view it anywhere and anytime--from their sofa, on the commute, at the office, before they go to bed. The possibilities are endless. People go on the internet to relax and unwind. Most times they won't be inclined to read through your explanation about your product.

It doesn't mean that they are completely shut off from buying. It just has to be less work and more entertaining. How do we do that? Show it with a short entertaining clip, an effective script and attractive graphics.

Highly Shareable Across Platforms

You've seen how many videos go viral on social media in a matter of hours. It doesn't have to be boosted. All you need is to be innovative enough to catch the interests of your target audience. Aside from that, social media platforms now prioritize video content more than images and text posts. They also increase your posts' reach when you can gain more personal engagements such as reactions, shares, and comments. And there's no content more capable of doing that other than video.

More Effective for Ads

Compared to banner and sidebar ads, video ads are not immediately skippable. Within the short time frame, you have the opportunity to capture your viewers' attention so that they continue watching. There's definitely more you can accomplish, given the right copy, so don't forget to include a call to action.

Don't be afraid to experiment with video marketing if you have not tried it yet. Videos have no limit, you can make use of imagery, sound, and message. It's all up to your imagination to craft an effective video that will compel your customers to patronize your brand and buy your product or service.

That's the challenging part of it all. A dedicate content team from a trusted digital marketing company can take those worries off your shoulders.

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