Social Media – 5 Great Tips For Your Small Business

Social media…There is plenty of buzz around it but, you may be wondering  “What can it do for my business and more importantly, how can I utilise it in my business operations?”

Well the best way to start to explain why you should be focused on Social Media is with a story. Think back to the days of the wild west. Most of us are familiar with the old western movies where back in those days, towns had one general store, and the store owner knew everyone. People trusted him and knew what they were getting.

Enter the industrial age, and efficiency trumped personalization. People didn’t mind where they bought from, as long as goods were cheap.

Now, that mentality has changed. Consumers are once again reverting to a need for personalization from businesses large and small. The need has been rekindled by the Internet, and our ability to find anything we want, as well as a mistrust of advertising (think used cars salesmen).

We’ve reached a point where the consumer wants to know the store owner’s name and that he can be trusted. Small businesses must look beyond their want to grow into corporations, and instead focus on their core customers. Thanks to social media, we’re able to foster these relationships easily and quickly.

Top Tip 1: Blog or Social Hub

When most businesses begin a social media campaign, they tend to focus on Facebook, Twitter, and other social sites. They usually forget to incorporate their own site and tie their social profiles together. So our first big tip, is the creation of a blog or social hub. Why push your consumers to connect with you on other sites, but not give them a reason to visit yours?

Building and writing a blog may be time consuming, but it creates a way to connect with users on your own website. Additionally, creating useful content such as how-tos or industry insights can keep customers engaged.

For business owners that don’t have the resources to update their blog regularly or can’t think of what they’d write, I suggest building a “Connect” page. A connect page, or social hub, offers readers a way to find your business’ most active profiles and join you on those social sites. The page could also include a short bio or how you use each social site.

Giving consumers a reason to visit your site is extremely important. A blog or social hub can pull consumers to your site and into the sales funnel.

Top Tip 2: Local Social Networks

For local businesses with a storefront, sites like Qype and Yelp and can make a real impact. Qype.ie and the like, allows businesses to create listings with all the necessary information for a consumer to find you, while other customers can review and comment on your business. Many of these sites will let business owners “claim” their listings and add information, such as phone numbers, store hours, menus, etc.

Consumers use local social networks to find businesses, but also to get social proof when making a decision. They use comments and reviews to go with the “best” listing. Because of the demographic these sites target (people ready to make a decision) small businesses can see a great return from local social networks.

The other great thing about these sites is the SEO value attached to them. They can provide great backlinks to your main website and if you can build up reviews,  connected to your business profile on these sites, you will find that they can have a significant bearing on your standings in google maps, or now called “Google Places”.  In some market places reviews on these sites will determine if you are visible in the Google maps listing on page one of a search or buried in the background of the maps listing. Ignore this tip at your own peril.

Top Tip 3: Twitter

Everyone is talking about Twitter. So why is it a big win? Simple: it connects you with your consumers in real-time via the web, desktop applications, and even mobile. Finding a way to offer value while humanizing the business can lead to a stronger following and increased word of mouth marketing.

Soulplantation – This San Diego restaurant offers made from scratch soups and salads. The restaurant did well but it’s parent company, Garden Fresh, saw the potential of social networking and decided to dive in headfirst. They hired a social media specialist and began a very successful Twitter feed for the restaurant. The feed is used to play games with customers, such as trivia. Coupons and free meals are given out but only to the first respondant, thus driving up the desire for customers to take part. It’s also used to post recipes and other restaurant-specific information.  It has proven to be extremely successful, having racked up over 3,000 followers and contributed to a 5-10 percent increase in foot traffic in the restaurant. Twitter address:  Soulplantation

For more Twitter Success Stories you can check out this Blog article where the above story came ffrom…

With Twitter, business owners are able to cater to their consumer’s needs instantaneously. In a world where everything needs to be done yesterday, a quick response can create a lifelong customer.

Top Tip 4: Facebook Fan Page

You knew it was going to get a mention eventually and thats Facebook. No discussion on Social media would be complete without featuring this Social Media Giant. Creating a Fan Page is simple, but truly utilizing it to its fullest potential takes some guidance.

A Fan Page allows a business to visualize and build a community, similar to Twitter. However, unlike Twitter, you can add and customize a great deal more.

At the very least a business should update their Fan Page “status” to keep consumers informed and engaged. A more advanced technique would be to add things like coupons or Google (Google) maps directions to the storefront. These kind of resources give consumers a reason to visit your Facebook Fan Page and interact with the brand.

Top Tip 4: Custom Wiki

My final tip is to use a custom wiki, which takes advantage of a phenomenon called crowdsourcing. In other words, use your customers to give information to other consumers.

The easiest way to do this is by creating a wiki for your FAQ or Customer Service knowledge base. Let your consumers enter the problems they’ve had via a public forum (the wiki), and provide your responses publicly as well. Although showing problems may seem backwards, it’s a very effective way to retain customers and generate new sales.

Consumers aren’t stupid, they know that mistakes happen. Instead, they want to see that their questions will be answered quickly. Also, with a public wiki, customers can see if a concern has already been addressed, saving time for both you and the customer.

With minimal moderation, a wiki can build trust in your business and make your customer service more efficient.

Search Engine Optimization – Vrs – Paid Search: Which To Choose?

As a search engine marketing company, we are often asked by clients and prospects which is better, should we choose Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) or go for paid advertising, Pay-Per-Click (PPC) traffic.  Do we have a preferance of one over the other or whats our thinking when it comes to organic search engine optimization and paid search advertising.

“Is one tactic more favorable than another? How do I know which channel to pursue? Should I do both?”

Without a hard look at your company’s goals and unique situation, there really isn’t a concrete answer to these questions. The true test of pursuing either an SEO campaign or PPC advertising (or both) is knowing that it all boils down to your company, it’s ROI objectives, budget, and countless other monetary and marketing factors. To determine which, or what combination of both, might offer the most bang for your buck, let’s examine five types of “models” that my search engine marketing company often deals with.

1. SEO Only.

Some clients are strictly interested in kicking off an SEO campaign, usually for a few basic reasons. They often have tried pay-per-click and decided it didn’t work, so they aren’t interested in trying it again in the foreseeable future (whether the initial campaign was set up effectively and the channel should be revisited is a subject for future discussion). They also often feel that since they themselves ignore PPC ads on the right hand side of the page, everyone else must do the same.

While there’s nothing inherently wrong with pursuing search engine optimization exclusively, it can take awhile to achieve rankings for competitive, profitable keyphrases, and there’s simply no way for your search engine marketing company to accurately predict (as they probably can with some degree of accuracy with PPC advertising) exactly what the initial results will be, and precisely when they will appear. However, for companies which do not have an immediate sense of urgency in their online marketing initiatives and who for whatever reason do not want to pursue PPC, organic SEO still offers a great, albeit slightly delayed, return on investment.

2. PPC Only.

Alternatively, a search engine marketing company may encounter the clients who are primarily interested in PPC … and nothing else. Even with a limited spend, clients can turn their campaigns on and off as needed, making market segments easier to control than with an SEO campaign. Pay-per-click also allows clients to achieve a somewhat predictable ROI if the campaign is managed effectively: “If I spend X, I’ll get back Y.”

The clients that fall within the ‘PPC advertising only’ category may have worked with a search engine marketing company before, pursuing SEO exclusively, and achieved less than stellar results. Despite all the positive press hyping up what search engine optimization can do for website visibility in recent years, it still tends to be viewed as more voodoo than science by most companies pursuing online marketing for the first time. With such companies, organic SEO is usually a topic we broach after achieving success with PPC.

3. SEO with PPC Stopgap.

The first and most common question a search engine marketing company may hear concerning an SEO campaign is how long it will take to achieve results. Naturally, clients want to be able to see the investment almost immediately.

This is where the PPC stopgap approach comes in. Though a client’s budget is usually fixed, they are often willing to spend a little more on the front end to see immediate results. Once positive results are evident, PPC spending is scaled back as SEO takes hold. An advantage of this approach to clients with limited budgets is that it can be managed on a very granular level. When top organic results are achieved for a given keyphrase, PPC bidding for that term can cease. Over time, PPC expenditures can theoretically be eliminated entirely. This model appeals to those who want a wide range of coverage and immediate results but have a fixed monthly budget that they do not control.

4. Hybrid Model.

A hybrid model is similar to a stopgap model, except that the client has no intention of eventually leaving the PPC arena entirely. Rather, the client has their search engine marketing company do a full on optimization AND paid search campaign at the outset, with the expectation that PPC costs will be reduced but not eliminated as the organic campaign takes hold.

In this model, a client recognizes that in an organic SEO campaign, they will be limited in the number of keyphrases that they can target by the amount of real estate on their website. With a PPC campaign, however, there is no downside to targeting thousands upon thousands of relevant “long tail” keyphrases, that is, search terms that are comprised of longer strings of words. Using the hybrid model, a company removes keyphrases from the PPC campaign on a granular level as they achieve top organic results for those phrases, but continue to bid on keyphrases that the site does not currently target.

5. Full Out SEM.

This approach calls for both SEO and PPC initiatives running at full speed. These types of clients are generally those that consider these two efforts as separate ‘beasts’ and frankly believe that showing up highly in both channels is a good thing…as long as the return justifies the spend.

These clients are happy to spend as much as possible with with their search engine marketing company and do not usually have a set marketing budget – just strict ROI objectives. As long as each channel is performing within acceptable ranges, they are happy to reap the benefits. Generally, they treat the two disciplines as unique channels and monitor the results independently.

Choosing the Right Model

Which approach is right? It depends (you weren’t expecting a definitive answer, right?). The decision between SEO efforts vs. PPC advertising depends on means, goals, budget, comfort level, corporate restrictions, and many other elements. Keep in mind that these are only five possible models that we often encounter. Many clients do not fit neatly into any of these scenarios. Some clients may start out with one option and evolve into another. Some switch back and forth depending on their own ever-changing situation. The most important thing is to be aware of your options and pursue a path that fits your current goals.

If you are new to Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and would know how you can take advantage of a well optimised website then be sure to check out our SEO Education 101 Training Video. Click the link to go there now.

Article By: Scott Buresh

Facebook Marketing 101 – Promoting Your Facebook Presence

After you’ve mastered the basics of Facebook and set up Facebook fan pages for your business, it’s time to promote your fan pages and identify ways to be found in real time search results.

Is customer loyalty important to you? Have you ever wondered about which sources provide loyal visitors who will repeatedly return to your site?

Chitika analyzed the browsing habits of 33 million unique visitors during September last year. They found that Facebook provides the most loyal visitors, with 20 percent of those who originate from the social network in turn visiting the site they landed on four or more times in a week. Other notable social media sites include Digg at 16 percent and Twitter at 11 percent.

This should help you feel better about the time you invest marketing on Facebook. Now let’s look at some ways to promote your Facebook fan page.

How to Promote your Facebook Page

A promotion is a good way to reach out to your customers and make them aware of your new Facebook page. Offer a discount or prize drawing for customers who become fans.

Let your fans know that you would like them to share their feedback on your products or services. Be prepared to receive this feedback, good or bad. This should be a given with any type of social media marketing strategy.

When your customers (or fans) interact with you on Facebook, their friends will see those comments on their news feed. This is one way to leverage the power of Facebook as a viral marketing tool. This should attract more fans and prospective customers.

Engagement and Conversation

Many people are fixated on the goal of acquiring new fans. You can’t ignore this metric because the more fans you have, the more successful your campaign is, right? Well, not exactly.

The real goal is to engage your fans in conversation. If you don’t communicate and converse with your fans, then your fan page will become dormant and fans will disperse to other interesting sites.

You must commit to spending time doing this. Set aside the time to read through comments and other posts from your fan base. Many businesses create a fan page with the mentality that “if you build it, they will come” and don’t invest the time to interact with their fans, a lost opportunity.

Facebook provides some great tools to help you engage with your fans. You have the ability to send videos, photos, messages, or links to each fan.

Each time you send out one of these communications, you show up on their personal newsfeed. This helps to keep you and your products or services top of mind with your fan base. Be careful not to “spam” them. Spread out your communication pushes and make them meaningful and relevant.

A cool feature of Facebook is that it also gives you the ability to segment your audience by region, age, and gender. This helps you send the right messages to the right demographic group. Learn who your audience is and plan your messaging strategy around those groups.

Facebook also provides a helpful reporting tool called Insights. This tool helps you understand the various types of content your fans enjoy interacting with.

Also, because you’re encouraging open and honest conversations, you might find that you occasionally get some objectionable posts. Facebook provides tools to help moderate and even block users. But you should plan on how to handle this ahead of time and communicate to your fans up front so they understand the policy.

Regardless, use these tools sparingly. If fans feel their comments are being edited or you’re watering down the Kool-Aid, then it’s less likely they will engage in future conversations.

Being Found in Real Time Search

One advantage to search marketers is that search engines are working with Facebook and Twitter to integrate updates into their search results. Getting found in real-time searches is another strategy for promoting your fan page. Let’s look at some useful tips that should help you show up in these real-time searches.

• Keywords: This is always the place to start. If you’re doing SEO or PPC, then you probably already have a good handle on your targeted keywords. If not, start with keyword research. Include your targeted keywords in your content, updates, and especially your titles. Make sure everyone who updates your Facebook page has a keyword list handy so they can use these keywords as much as possible.

• Research and converse about relevant and interesting content: Take time to “listen” to what people are talking about on your fan page and other sites. Then you can post content that will interest your fan base. Ask a question to spark a relevant and timely conversation. Discuss current events and news if these are relevant to you and your targeted keyword set.

• Many followers: More followers means it’s more likely your content will spread virally and be shared. This also helps generate more impressions of your content.

• Call to action: You might be surprised sometimes by the power of a simple invitation. Invite people to “act.” Ask people to share the content with others. Include buttons like “retweet” or “digg” that help them do this easily. Doing this gets you one click away from showing up on another site and being promoted for more viewers to see.

The principles discussed here can also be used for other social media sites. If you are new to Facebook marketing and would like to set up a fan page and begin using facebook as a marketing channel for your business then be suer to check out our Facebook Marketing Unleashed Training Program. Click the link to go there now.

Discover 7 Great Tips For Generating Traffic To Your Blog

Have you set up a blog with the expectation of attracting a lot of traffic, only to have your blog collecting dust and not getting enough traffic? It’s a common problem for bloggers. Their blogs are good, but no one is coming to visit. The burning question then becomes “How do I increase Traffic To My Site?”. Increasing traffic is actually easier than it seems–provided you know how. In this article, we will go over 7 specific methods of increasing traffic. These are guaranteed methods to draw more visitors to your blog. You should include these in your ongoing internet marketing campaign for your site.

Tip #1: Sign Up For Pinging Services

It seems pretty obvious, but most bloggers, even those who are more experienced, don’t sign up for pinging services. If you’re new to blogging and don’t know what pinging means, pinging basically means that when your blog is updated, a “ping” is sent out by the service to let pinging sites know that your blog has been updated. People who are visiting sites with pinging services will then see your blog flash across the side of the screen as “newly updated”. Pinging services include Yahoo’s blo.gs, weblogs.com, Google Blog search, and ZingFast.

Tip #2: Sign Up For Technorati

If you go to technorati.com, you’ll see an option on the left side of the screen to “Claim Your Blog”. Doing so allows you to get updated link counts, add your photo or branding to Technorati, and see your Technorati link. Having your blog claimed on Technorati helps to increase traffic because the millions of people who go to that site will have a chance to see your blog on there.

Tip #3: Sign Up For FeedBurner, a RSS Service

What FeedBurner basically does for your blog is it helps you to promote your blog’s content, build your audience and measure your audience. In other words, it helps you increase your blog’s traffic.

Tip #4: Bookmark Your Blogs At Places Like del.icio.us

You can set up an account and profile at del.icio.us. Then, using that, you can add links to your blog along with excerpts from your blog. Anytime someone visits your profile on del.icio.us, they will see a link to your blog and excerpts. There are other social bookmarking sites that you can use in much the same way. The bottom line is, using these social bookmarking sites can help you increase traffic. Using social bookmarking can really improve search engine optimisation (SEO) and boost your traffic.

Tip #5: Post comments at other blogs

No, this doesn’t mean you should go and spam other blogs with comments that are only there to promote a site. It means that you should visit similar blogs to your own, post legitimate comments and then sign your name(along with a link to your blog). This way, people know you aren’t there just to promote your site—you’re there to post a good piece of feedback and also say where you’re from. This tip should form a prominent part of your internet marketing strategy as it is also an excellent method of enhancing your search engine optimisation (SEO) efforts.

Tip #6: Ask Owners Of Other Blogs To Post A Link To Yours

Find other blogs that are similar to yours. If they seem to be decently popular(that is, they have a good amount of comments for each post), you can try to contact the owner of the blog to add a link to your blog if they have a links section. To make them really want to do this, you can offer to link back to their blog on your blog. People do this reciprocal blog linking all the time and it does help to increase traffic.

Tip #7: Use Keywords In Your Blog

Like regular web pages, having a good keyword density on a blog is a terrific way of getting search engine spiders to notice your page. (FYI: Search engine spiders are programs from search engines that browse sites and report back their findings to the search engine database, which then lists that site. The more keywords on your site, the more likely it is for a search engine spider to pay a visit)

If your average blog posting is around 200 words, try to use 2-6 keywords per blog post. 2-6 keywords in a blog posting of 200 words is a keyword density of between 1 and 3 percent, a respectable number. Remember that you don’t want to use too many keywords, as that will make your blog look bad. Also be sure that the keywords used are relevant to your blog. Before even making a blog posting, decide what the post will be about and then select a keyword or two to use in your post. Then do it. It’s a surefire way of getting more traffic to your site!

P.S. Signing up with a service like Technorati is a quick, painless way of increasing traffic to your blog. So sign up today!

That’s it for this post, hopefully that will help you in your ongoing Internet Marketing efforts and generating extra traffic to your blog.

For further indepth information on generating floods of traffic to your website then you should sign up for our newsletter and you will receive absolutely free a copy of “Traffic Overdrive”, containing Top Traffic Building Strategies That Will Put Your Site on High Octane.

7 Irresistible Traffic Generation Internet Marketing Strategies…

Here are the 7 most effective internet marketing strategies to quickly get a flow of targeted traffic to your site using Private Label Rights.

1./ Private label rights products, with its very own nature of its rights, allow you to break them into small content
segments. Break them into pages of content and upload them to your blog. Use some software to upload them in regular
intervals automatically, say one per day. Two to three private label rights products in the same niche can thus feed enough content to your blog for a year- A great automated internet marketing strategy to make money by bring free search engine targeted traffic!

2./ Join some good affiliate programs in the same category as that of your private label rights products. Insert your affiliate links into these plr products and give master resale rights to them so that your customers can resell them and make money, but can’t change your affiliate links. Increase the viral internet marketing effect by giving give away rights and re brand rights to some of the links in the content.

3./ In order to make money from private label rights products quickly, you can just change the graphics, rename, and make sufficient changes on the sales page to make it appear different; as though a new private label rights product being launched. Submit them to affiliate networks and marketing networks and enjoy the targeted traffic coming from the ‘new products category’. Some of the private label rights products available in the internet marketing category and niches are actually this sort of second generation products.

4./ Combine strategy 02] and 03] to create your unique viral marketing ebook to promote some high demand affiliate products. For example, in the internet’s biggest affiliate network Clickbank; the niche ‘weight loss,’ has some of the best money making products. With your viral ebook created solemnly from plr products can be a lethal weapon to make you victorious in the highly competitive affiliate marketing war. Creating such a viral ebook with unique graphics and title from private label rights can be
finished in a few hours, with a good graphic creator software available in the market.

5./ Break the private label rights products, with a few necessary changes, into articles. Submit these articles to article directories and permit webmasters to republish them with a resource link back to your site. Allow them to customize these articles with their affiliate links. If you have your own product in the affiliate networks like Clickbank, it will be very easy to allow webmasters to
republish your article in their ezines or websites with their affiliate links to your products. If done correctly, it can be a brilliant internet marketing strategy to recruit affiliates.

6./ Use these articles to add more content to your website to make more money from Adsense. More content will bring more free targeted traffic from search engines, and hence more income.

7./ Private label rights products are the quickest way to make money from internet. How? Just stick your name as the author and sell them as your own products, as though you have created them. The time factor predominantly determines your success rate in selling private label rights products. The faster you buy a private label rights product and set up a site to sell it, by implementing a good internet marketing strategy to bring targeted traffic, higher the chances you have to make money.