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The Key To Making Money In Your Small Business

Dec
09
2011

What’s the number one thing you must have in order to grow a successful small business? It’s not clients or customers, though those are critically important.

It’s not effective marketing, though you absolutely need that too.

I’m talking about something far simpler. And I know I risk sounding like Master of the Obvious with this, but I’ve seen so many entrepreneurs struggle because they don’t have it…

What is this key to making money in your small business?

You have to have something to sell!

See, I told you it was obvious. But I’ve had more than one client come to me and say…

“Okay, I’ve built my new blog site, launched my brand and am trying to get out there and make connections. But so far I’ve spent a bunch of time and money and none is coming in.”

Oftentimes they really aren’t clear about what they’re selling. One person was offering the always too vague “coaching”… Another had spent all her time and money building a free membership site with no real idea of how to monetize it …

Yet another was trying to sell other, complimentary experts into becoming members of her site and program in exchange for marketing them online and getting them more exposure. The only problem? She didn’t have a list of people to expose these experts to. So she still really had nothing to sell.

If you’ve got nothing in particular to sell it’s hard to make any money.

The solution?

Create specific products and/or services that provide value now.

These could be ebooks, audio trainings, video tutorials, membership programs, coaching programs, consulting packages, done-for-you services, or a combination of any and all of the above.

The only criteria are:
Whatever you’re selling has to be something people want to buy
It has to be easy to understand what you’re selling, who it’s for and why they would want it (that’s the old “what’s in it for me” part)
It has to be sold in a way that makes it easy to buy
Of course, there is just a bit more to it than that.

But the most important thing is that you come up with something to sell that’s got tangible value and benefits, and provides a specific set of services and/or products for a specific price.

For example, selling coaching or consulting does not fit the bill here. However, selling a specific number of hours or sessions with a particular goal does. So selling marketing consulting is a no go, but selling a 6-hour Marketing Jumpstart program works. Throwing in a complimentary workbook makes it even better.

Make sense? If so, then take a look at what you’re offering and find ways to turn it into specific, value-packed products, services and programs.

About the Author:
Practical Marketing Expert and Business Lifestyle Architect Stacy Karacostas is on a mission to end Entrepreneurial Overwhelm and Marketing Madness! Discover how to grow your businesses with less effort-so you can help more people, make more money AND still have a life-by grabbing your copy of her FREE “Success without Shackles Starter Kit” at http://www.theunchainedentrepreneur.com.

Posted in Business Development | Comments Off

5 Creative Facebook Places Marketing Campaigns

Dec
08
2011

Facebook Places, Facebook’s location-based feature that launched in August, allows Facebook users to see where their friends are and to share their locations in the real world. It has also become another powerful Facebook marketing tool for businesses, who can design campaigns around the checkin service to build awareness, grow their fan base and engage and reward customers.

Each time a Facebook user checks into a particular location on Facebook Places, Facebook broadcasts the checkin to that user’s friends’ news feeds. This is not only viral marketing for the company – it also allows businesses to provide incentives for people to come to their physical locations or events.

Although the service has only been around for a few months, quite a few companies have already begun integrating Facebook Places into their marketing programs. Here are five great examples that illustrate different ways companies can use Facebook Places, from offering simple discounts for checkins to multi-step rewards programs.

1. Discounts for Checkins: Westfield Valley Fair

A simple but powerful way to use Facebook Places is to reward fans for every checkin.

Westfield Valley Fair, a premium shopping center based in Santa Clara, CA, wanted to use Facebook Places to bring more shoppers into the center and to promote its merchants. The company worked with social media marketing company Fan Appz to launch a location-based marketing program that gives shoppers valuable merchant coupons when they check in at the Westfield center.

In its initial campaign, Westfield enticed shoppers with a 15% off coupon at Betsey Johnson if they visited and checked in at the shopping center, which the company reports has driven a boost in checkins. They’ve since introduced a number of other offers, including a 25% off coupon at Gap.

2. Leveraging Events: Electronic Arts UK

Events provide a ripe opportuníty for companies to use checkins to promote their brands. Electronic Arts UK, for example, recently worked with creative agency Imperial Leisure Ltd to launch a Facebook Places campaign around the Electronic Arts Christmas tour “Play4Xmas,” leveraging six events at shopping malls across the UK in November and December. People attending the events are encouraged to check in at each event for a chance to win up to 10 games per day.

The Facebook Places campaign has already helped turn fans at the events into advocates, with events to date generating many hundreds of checkins and tens of thousands of free brand impressions in attendee news feeds.

3. Creating Event-Specific Places: Onitsuka Tiger by Asics

Onitsuka Tiger by Asics also used Facebook Places in a brand marketing campaign as part of its sponsorship of the Sydney Bicycle Film Festival, working with retail marketing agency IdeaWorks.

The strategy was to make the Onitsuka Tiger brand a key engagement point at each of the 10 events of the four-day festival. To do this, the team visited each venue to create unique Facebook Places, naming them as “Onitsuka Tiger Check In Points,” so that when festival-goers were prompted to check in, they’d be checking in at the “Onitsuka Tiger Check In Point @ The BFF” instead of at the venue.

Attendees were then asked to check in with Facebook Places at three of the event locations and answer a question on the Onitsuka Tiger Facebook Page for a chance to wín a custom bike as well as Onitsuka Tiger gear. The company has shared publicly that more than 50% of attendees at the first event checked in; if this is any indication of the rest of the program, the campaign looks to have been a huge hit.

4. Daily Checkins: University of Kentucky

Just weeks after Facebook Places was announced, the University of Kentucky saw a way to use the collective reach of its student’s networks to build awareness among prospective students.

Working with its ad agency, Cornett-IMS, the university installed giant, wooden Facebook icons in the university’s signature blue on its campus to encourage students to check in at different locations around the school every day. Each student checkin shows up in the students’ news feed, which the university hopes will be seen day after day by thousands of the students’ friends who are still in high school and boost their recruiting efforts.

The university reports that the campaign has already created a good deal of conversation on the campus and it’s seen a large number of people checking in while on campus and at sporting events.

The university is also using this campaign as a way to educate students about online privacy and responsible use of location-tracking services.

5. Facebook Places Leader Boards: VisitBritain

VisitBritain, the UK tourism promotion agency, and Betapond, a Facebook and social technology development company, recently launched a Facebook Places program that uses a leader board (among other tactics) to promote various UK landmarks and the country as a whole.

The program encourages visitors to check in every time they reach a notable British location and write a review of what they find. This information then automatically updates a “Top 50 UK Places” leader board on VisitBritain’s LoveUK Facebook Page.

Dubbed “a global guest book” for Britain, VisitBritain hopes the leader board will become an influential barometer showing shifts in opinion about the UK’s most popular icons, landscapes and attractions.

The program has already driven tens of thousands of checkins in just a few weeks, with more than 250,000 visits to the Top 50 Places page. VisitBritain’s fan numbers have also spiked by 34% since the start of the campaign.

Getting Started

If you’re thinking about launching a Facebook Places program, here are four simple steps to get started.

Find, create and claim your Place Page. Search nearby Places to find your business; if it’s not already added, you can add it manually. You then need to “claim” your business so you can edit relevant information.

Merge Facebook Places with your Facebook Page. This ensures that anyone who has “Liked” your Facebook Page will be connected to your Places Page; it enables you to manage offers, links, status updates and more from one location; and adds new features such as maps and checkins to your main Facebook Page.

Encourage checkins. Use your existing social media vehicles to promote your presence on Facebook Places and even consider signage at your physical location. Consider spicing up the competitive spirit of your work force by encouraging employees to check in when they come to work, too.

Reward customers for checking in. Just as you might run an offline seasonal sale or special, take advantage of third-party tools to run specials and reward customers who check in with discounts, coupons or deals. Hopefully these five campaign examples will have given you some ideas!

About The Author
ChatterBox is a specialist SEO Web Design Company based in Cookham, Maidenhead. ChatterBox design dynamic SEO websites with great design, SEO and good usability that can really make the difference to your business and yield the results you are looking for. SEO Web Design

Posted in Facebook, Social Media | Comments Off

Social Media Trends 2012 – Analytics and Measurement

Dec
07
2011

Today I am going back to the four social media trends Beverly Macy predicted would be hot in 2012 in the Huffington Post

The rise of Social Intelligence
Better use of analytics and more focus on measurement
Content creation and curation
Social media education and training
Social Media Intelligence is a sure bet in my view – see this post.

Let’s take a look at Analytics and Measurement.

Measurement

One of the aspects of social media that is changing as it matures is measurement When businesses first started to experiment with social media activity no-one was particularly concerned with measuring anything. Kind of like we found a new game of water polo, we all jumped in at the deep end, splashed around a lot and the more people in the pool and the more people we splashed, the better. We were playing the game, but we weren’t too sure who was on our team or where the goals were. But since everyone else was there, it seemed like we should be too.

Social media is no longer a game or an experiment. It’s an accepted and effective business strategy. It is on the CEO’s radar. According to a report byUseful Social Media, 12% of the companies surveyed claimed that social media was under the direct control of the CEO.

There is certainly an increased pressure on corporate social media practitioners to deliver on investment – there’s an ever more pressing need to demonstrate ROI, along with progress against other crucial KPIs. But this simply represents social media being treated as a regular business investment, says the report.

74% of CMOS agree that social efforts were finally tied to hard ROI. What are they measuring?

Some of these are outputs and outtakes, but a good number of them are outcomes: what did people do as a result of reading your content or engaging with you on a social site?

Did they click a link, share your content, visit a landing page, fill in a form, download a whitepaper or a coupon, watch a video or recommend you to a friend?

CMOs are also measuring purchases and customer satisfaction via reduced returns, lower call center volume and fewer complaints.

One measurement that rarely gets mentioned in these studies is amplification. We know that word of mouth is powerful and it’s even more so on social media. When a friend shares something with you it has a much deeper effect that if you received it from the brand.

It is possible to measure how many times your message gets shared by your fans and followers in Facebook and Twitter and it gives you a good measure of the success of your social content. It also highlights brand affinities and identifies your brand advocates.

Analytics

This is an area that traditionally has not been a PR skill, but it is one we have to master. And we need to do it in a hurry!

Several years ago Jim Sterne of the Web Metrics Summit said that someone who can understand web analytics and interpret the numbers for the marketing and PR people is worth their weight in gold – and I believe that is still the case today.

So how can you measure all these items? What tools can you use?

Start by learning the basics of Google Analytics. Buy this book and spend 10 minutes a day reading it.

Facebook Insights has a fairly robust set of analytics. Read their product guide here and watch this video tutorial.

TweetReach is a good tool for tracking amplifiers in Twitter.

And what about Google+? Christopher Penn has a very smart idea of what to do with your amplifiers – create a G+ circle for them

Although measurement, statistics and analytics have not been top of the list of PR skills in the past, they are going to become more and more important going forward. It’s no surprise to me that they are on the list of hot trends for 2012.

About the Author:
Sally is the author of Website Content Strategy blog: Information about the shifts in media consumption and the use of technology in marketing and PR so business can stay in touch with their rapidly moving audiences.

Posted in Social Media | Comments Off

10 Questions for New SEO Clients

Dec
06
2011

Hello Jill,

If you could only ask 10 general (non-industry-specific) questions of your new SEO customers, what would they be and why would their answers help you help them?

Thank you,
Andrew

++Jill’s Response++

Hi Andrew,

Great question! I have a variety of different questionnaires that I send to clients, depending on the type of ‘SEO consulting’ (http://www.highrankings.com/seo-services) that I’ll be doing with them. For any SEO service, the more information I get from the client about their business and website, the better I can help them with their SEO.

Here’s a selection of some of the questions I ask and why they’re important to the overall SEO process:

1. What Web Analytics Program Do You Use, and Can We Have Access to It?

Web analytics are the key to measuring the current level of SEO success (or lack thereof). They’re also the key to determining whether any future SEO implementation is helping to bring more targéted traffic. Therefore, it’s critical for me to have access to this information regardless of the level of SEO service I’m providing. If you use Google Analytics (GoAn), it’s very simple to add new users to the account and in most cases it’s fine to provide report-only access (rather than admin). Along with GoAn, I also ask for access to the client’s Google Webmaster Tools (GWMT) account. These days, if you have GoAn access, you can usually add the same website to your GWMT account as well, which makes the process easier.

2. What’s the Purpose of Your Site and who is Your Target Audience?

This is a seemingly simple question, yet it often stumps many clients. Some of them will cop out: “Well, the purpose of our site is to sell our product.” And your target audience? “Umm … anyone with a credít card?” Not very helpful. If you don’t have a good handle on who the people are who are buying your products, how will your SEO consultant help you bring those people to your website? An SEO consultant needs to have a clear picture of who you are because everything we do hinges upon this — from the keyword research to deciding what type of content needs to be written, to how you might want to attack social media marketing. If you’re an SEO consultant, I urge you to push for deep answers to this question.

3. Are There Any Other Domains or Sites That You Own or Control, or That You Used to Use Instead of the Current Domain? (Please list them all.)

This information is important so I can assess any duplicate content issues. I need to know whether that other site I found that is using nearly the same content as yours is owned by you, or if someone scraped yours. I also need to know if you’re using multiple domains as an SEO strategy (so I can smack you!). I added this one to my questionnaire when I kept finding doorway domains or other sites that my clients *forgot* to tell me about. Even those who really do forget or who purposely don’t tell me about their additional domains aren’t getting away with anything. I usually end up finding them during my website audit process. So if you’re a client, do us both a favor and come clean from the start. This will save us all some time down the line! (And I was just kidding about smacking you :)!)

4. What Have You Done so Far (if anything) About Optimizing Your Site?

My favorite answer to this is “nothing” because that means we’re starting with a clean slate and have nowhere to go but up! But most clients these days have done at least some rudimentary SEO. While I can usually spot any on-page optimization, it’s helpful to hear it from you. Sometimes, the things clients say they’ve done (e.g., created keyword-rich Title tags) don’t actually seem to be done when I look for them. That tells me that your idea of SEO and mine may be quite different, and it’s good to know this up front. It’s also good to know if you have already been through a string of SEOs and what each of them has done to the site during their tenure.

5. Is There Anything That You May Have Done That the Search Engines May Not Have Liked Regarding Previous Optimization Efforts for Your Site?

This one is sort of an addendum to the last one for those who may have *forgotten* to tell me any bad or spammy things they (or a previous SEO) may have done. While they may have not mentioned anything spammy in the last question, this gives them the chance to add anything that they weren’t quite sure was on the up-and-up. Very often, the client may think something was bad or caused problems, when it’s actually innocuous. Other times, there can be a big mess to sort out — e.g., all kinds of paid-for spammy-anchor-text links. As an SEO it’s helpful to know right away where to focus my efforts.

6. List the Websites of Your Three Biggest Competitors. Why Do You Feel They Compete With Your Site?

I like this question more for the second part than the first. It’s always interesting to see why people think another company or site is their competitor. Very often, the only reason people think it is that the other site shows up in the search results for the keyword phrase that the client wants to show up for! While that may make them your competitor, it also may not. It may simply mean that you’re shooting for the wrong keyword phrases. It’s also very helpful to look at competitor sites to see how they’re set up and whether they seem to have done much in the way of SEO or not.

7. What Do You Feel is Your Most Unique Selling Proposition (USP)? Why Would These Clients Come to You as Opposed to Anyone Else Who Offers the Same or Similar Products and Services? What’s Different or Better About Your Product or Service?

Hat tip to Karon Thackston for these questions, because they are ones she always asks before doing any copywriting for a website. Along with who your target audience is, these are some of the most important questions for any client to think about and answer. Sometimes a client will have a great grasp of this and provide lots of valuable information, but more often, the best they can come up with is that they are “more friendly” than their competitors . In today’s competitive marketplace and search results (especially since Google’s Panda Update), it’s critical to be able to differentiate your products and services from the rest. And even those who have an excellent grasp of this don’t always make it clear to the users of their website, which is something that will need to be fixed.

8. After a Potential Customer Visits Your Site, What Specifically Do You Want Them to Do?

This is a wonderful way to understand what the various conversion points of your website are. If your only answer is “Make a sale,” then you likely need to add some other smaller conversion points, such as signing up for a newsletter or updates, following you on social media, filling out a contact form, calling you, etc. As an SEO you need to know what all of these points are so that you can make sure that the client’s web analytics are set up to correctly capture all the conversions, and that the website is properly leading people to complete those conversions.

About The Author
Jill Whalen is the CEO of High Rankings, an SEO Consulting company in the Boston, MA area since 1995. Follow her on Twitter @JillWhalen

If you learned from this article, be sure to invite your colleagues to sign up for the High Rankings Advisor SEO Newsletter so they can receive similar articles in the future!

Posted in SEO | Comments Off

3 Ways to Get Readers More Engaged in Your SEO Content

Dec
05
2011

It’s something that you hear all the time – all of the SEO content in the world doesn’t do you any good, unless your readers are really engaged in it. After all, people don’t purchase products, sign up for email lists, or share links if they think that something is “just OK”. If you’re not publishing SEO content that really gets readers involved, you’re missing out on countless link opportunities, traffic, and sales.

So, how exactly do you create SEO content that’s going to engage readers?

1. Don’t Overlook the Importance of “You”

Your SEO articles, blog posts, and optimized sales pages are not formal research papers. The best way to get results out of them is to make each reader feel like you’re speaking directly to them. Luckily, you can do that by focusing on one little word – “you”. Writing in the third person (using “he”, “she”, or “they”) is impersonal; writing in the second person (using “you”) brings your SEO content to a personal level.

Take a look at this sentence:

“People have a hard time driving traffic to their websites because they haven’t defined a target audience.”

It’s not a bad sentence. It contains an important fact that is easy to understand, and it’s certainly better than some of the gibberish you see floating around out there. Your readers will look at this sentence and probably agree with it. Unfortunately, though, there’s no personal investment on their behalf. Instead, they’ll probably think, “Sure, ‘people’ probably do have that problem. So, what does that have to do with me?”

Now, change the same sentence ever so slightly, to:

“You have a hard time driving traffic to your website because you haven’t defined a target audience.”

You’re making the same point and using the same fact. The only difference is that you’re not talking about other people. Instead, you’re speaking directly to the reader and telling him exactly what his problem is. By phrasing the sentence this way, your reader is much more likely to think, “You know what? She’s right. That is my problem! Let me keep reading to see if she has any tips to help me fix it.”

Just like that, you’ve encouraged someone to read your SEO content all the way to the end. Assuming the rest of your SEO content is full of important information, readers will get to the end and think of you with more respect. You can’t ask for a reader to be more engaged than that!

2. Get Rid of the “$10 Words”

I don’t know about you, but I hate “$10 words” – you know, the words you learned for the vocabulary section of the SAT’s and haven’t used since. Most of the time, I see big words and the writer instantly strikes me as someone who wants everybody to think he’s smart. Unfortunately, it’s a terrible impression to give to readers – that you’re some kind of stuffy know-it-all. After all, would you do business with a stuffy know-it-all? I sure wouldn’t!

Making matters worse, you may have a reader who doesn’t know what your “$10 word” means – and now he feels stupid.

Guess what?

People don’t buy from businesses that make them feel stupid!

Bottom line – keep the “$10 words” out of your SEO content. You can provide answers, list solutions, and summarize benefits with the same language that you’d use talking to a fríend over lunch.

Remember, the goal is to make the reader feel like the two of you are having a conversation. You simply can’t do that with big, fancy words that no one actually uses in everyday conversation!

3. Use Lists Whenever You Can

Internet searchers are a bunch that love to scan and skim. They scan Google results, article titles, and even the body of the SEO content itself – until they see something that catches their eye. Once they think something’s worth their while, they’ll sit down and read the whole thing. So, the easier you make it for readers to scan your SEO content, the greater your chances of them slowing down to engage with what you have to say.

That’s why you see so many numbered lists and bullet points around the web. Successful writers know that they’re crucial to catching people’s attention. After all, scanning a list to see if it’s got some merit is a whole lot easier than trying to trudge through long paragraphs.

That doesn’t mean you should try to force lists into every piece of SEO content that you publish. In some cases, they just don’t work. In situations where a list isn’t appropriate, make sure that your SEO content has short paragraphs. That way, readers won’t feel “intimidated” by giant paragraphs that look far too time-consuming to read.

How short are we talking?

If your paragraphs have more than 5 or 6 sentences in them, they’re too long. Chances are you’re trying to make too many points in your paragraph. Stick to one point per paragraph, so that you don’t end up with SEO content that looks more like War and Peace.

Remember – internet searchers want answers and solutions, and they want them now. If your SEO content makes it easy for them to find what they’re looking for, you greatly improve the odds of them being fully engaged in what you have to say!

About The Author
Nicole Beckett is a former award-winníng journalist who now specializes in SEO content writing. As the owner of Premier Content Source, Nicole knows how to create content that engages readers and generates results!

Posted in SEO | Comments Off

On Page SEO Factors to Not Forget

Dec
02
2011

One of the most basic things which a webmaster should understand is how to do on page SEO and the on page SEO factors to consider when both creating a new website or when adding new content and pages to an existing website.

On page SEO predominantly pertains to tweaking your site’s code, choosing the right keywords, and optimizing your content overall to make it more attractive and identifiable to Google and other search engines’ web crawling bots so that they will in turn rank your site higher in the SERPs.

Here I’ve expanded on the major techniques which you should implement on your site if you want to rank and rank well at that. Keep in mind that the weight which search engines place on these techniques is subjective as no one knows for sure the algorithms behind Google’s and other engine’s ranking practices. No one factor is ever been unanimously considered to be more paramount than all others, so don’t overlook any of these techniques. Most of them are quick and simple to implement, so there’s really no reason not to, either.

Editor’s Note: For additional information on the techniques noted below, and in some cases an alternate viewpoint, read Jill Whalen’s article “16 SEO Tactics That Will NOT Bring Targeted Google Visitors“.

Keyword On Page SEO Factors

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: keywords are the gateways to your site and they play a huge role in on page SEO.

Once you know what is a good keyword and how to do keyword research, then you can find the keywords which you should be using for your on page SEO. WordPress combined with a good free SEO plugin like All in One SEO Pack makes implementing most of the following keyword related on page SEO factors simple as can be, but let’s take a look at where we need to make sure to effectively use our keywords.

Keyword(s) In Title Tags – The title tag is the line of clickable text which appears in Google’s SERPs for each ranking page. This is also the text which appears at the top of your browser’s window in naming or identifying the page which you are currently browsing. It’s important to work your best (most relevant, highest searched, lowest competition) keywords into your title tags as Google will consider this over most factors when indexing and ranking your page and in general in determining what it’s about.

Keywords In Heading Tags – Effective use of heading tags helps Google know what is most important on your site, and what text it should pick out over the rest. It’s been estimated that most people when opening a new page will first instinctively read the top left of your page before other elements. Consequently, your most important message using your most important keyword that you want to get across should be here and ideally using the H1 tag.

>From here, less important keywords should be put in H2, and even less important but still noteworthy keywords should be in H3, and so on. An effective use of heading tags is a valuable skill to have in on page SEO.

Keywords In the Body - There is no substitute for good content, and in SEO a large part of good content is effectively including keywords where applicable. This means no over saturation because as I mentioned in the last chapter this will get you penalized and possibly de-indexed. A number of SEOers have argued for years over just the right saturation which will get you ranking well but not penalized and they have thrown out different figures to try to answer this magical ratio.

My advice is to not waste your time trying to crunch ratios as there is no perfect ratio. Besides, you have better things to do with your time and other ways to optimize your site. Just make it look natural and don’t over think it and you’ll be fine.

Words Surrounding Keywords – This all may seem a bit redundant, but the words around the keywords are just as important as the keywords which you include to begin with.

Google not only looks at the keywords which you are targeting, but it looks at the words surrounding them to get a better idea of what your site is about, not to mention that it does this to check you on keyword stuffing and make sure you’re not doing anything “black hat” which could get you in trouble.

Keyword In Domain Name – This takes some careful planning, but many SEOers agree that this has a decent amount of bearing on how Google ranks a site for a keyword. In continuing with this point, you can set your site up as it expands to be more SEO friendly by naming subdomains after keywords, as well. So be as specific as possible when naming if you can. For example name a subdomain of a music site “Gibson-guitars” rather than just “guitars”.

Note the use of the hyphen in the example. Hyphens represent spaces, so if you are using keywords in your URLs, break them up. While keywords in the subdomains don’t carry quite as much weight as the top level of the domain, they’re nonetheless important and helpful to Google in identifying what your site is about.

About The Author
Note that much of this post is taken from my “No Nonsense Marketing/Making Monéy Online Handbook” which you can get as a free gift for signing up for my FREE course. Check out this video to see how quick and easy it is boost your revenue when the path is laid out clearly right in front of you without costing you a dime.

OR you can check out this post on writing copy for SEO for more SEO tips.

Posted in SEO | Comments Off

Why Is My Social Media Campaign Not Working

Dec
01
2011

In my previous blog I wrote about the importance of setting up a social media account for your business. Now, let’s analyse the reasons why social media campaign are not always successful.

Some businesses set up their social media accounts and then don’t manage them correctly which leads to a great disappointment rather than success.

Let me list and analyse some of the most common reasons for that:

List of Reasons

1. The account looks abandoned – Some businesses get very excited about the possibility social media gives. They set up their account and… don’t do anything else about it, thinking it’s just a toy for teenagers. Wrong! Social media can be very successful bringing you high quality traffic, however the only condition is that it needs frequent updates so that it doesn’t look abandoned. It’s easy as the only thing you have to do is to write what you know best – what is happening with your business.

2. Lack of control – People tend to worry that they won’t be able to control what others (employees, customers, stakeholders) say online about their company, products and services. Can they control what is being said in real life then? With a social media account not only will you know when your products or services are criticised therefore change them, but also with its constantly improving features you can listen and monitor the online conversations. If you are willing to listen to feedback and attempt to turn a complaint into praise, you won’t have a problem.

3. Fear of the new – Although we like new gadgets etc, at the same time we are afraid of anything that’s new. However, any business owner knows they need to stay ahead of technology and customer habits, and if your company doesn’t occupy its space in social media then one of your competitors will.

4. Lack of time – You‘re too busy to go online. Do you realise 2/3 of the society use internet on daily basis? Your customers are there too! For a successful business online presence should be as natural as breathing or driving a car. If however you personally can’t spare any time at all, dedicate a suitable member of staff in your company or find an experienced company who’ll take care of your campaign on your behalf.

5. Liability – If you’re afraid that your employees will say something online that affects your company, there’s a solution for that: set up a social media policy! That will tell your employees clearly what expectations you’ve got towards them and allow you to avoid unpleasant situations.

6. No plan – Sometimes the social media marketing starts just as an experiment, which results in it not being included in the overall marketing plan. You need to set out your objectives and goals, how much time you aim to spend and what kind of content you will share, and what your aims are (to increase conversation, to increased sales, to increase leads?) and how you will measure this.

7. Financial resources – While social media sites are free of charge for participants, a good marketing campaign including them will require financial resources. In your planning determine a budget for your company’s social media presence.

Social media is a powerful tool in your business growth. If your campaign is not as successful as you expected, take some time to analyse the reasons for that – you may find some obvious areas where you can improve and start to build a successful business social media presence.

About The Author: Agnieszka Wach is the administrator and receptionist for WNW Design, and also assists the SEO team with website optimisation. You can email her at agnieszka@wnwdesign.co.uk or phone her on 01395 542569. You can also follow WNW Design on Facebook.

Posted in Blogs By Agnieszka W., WNW Staff Blogs | Comments Off

The Importance of Social Media

Nov
30
2011

The social media phenomenon has been gaining popularity all over the world.

It is no longer just for talking to friends or regaining long-lost connections – its importance for businesses should not be overlooked as part of corporate social media branding.

The social media account is no longer a “could have”, it’s a “must-have”. Nowadays customers don’t rely on newspapers, radio or TV advertising only, they are using the newest technology as it comes out, and more and more people are depending on the internet for what they want.

Follow Your Customers

The ultimate goal is to get leads and new customers, and social media provides an excellent opportunity for that. What needs to be done is fresh content added on regular basis as this is what drives other social media users to your account.

Statistics show than businesses that spend six or more hours a week using social media get 52% more leads than the ones who do not. (All research published here).

Companies using Twitter usually double their number of monthly leads in comparison to those who do not.
Recent studies show that 2/3 of internet users use social media.

Setting up a social media account not only will give you a better branding but also provide you great credibility by having online communication with your customers. Once your social media partners know you better, they’ll want to do business with you.

This also worked both ways – opening your company up to customer feedback can result in product improvements that can improve sales, and less guessing as to why your customer base may or may not be buying certain items.

A social media account is the best and cheapest way of introducing new products or services. Not only you can easily spread the news but also inform about the launch day and products price.

Another great feature is the possibility to share valuable content in many different ways. You can like blogs, articles and videos, which can assist with your Search Engine listings and also encourage more potential customers to follow your updates.

Showcasing your company or products via fan pages or groups that you can find on social media websites is another way to get your name out there and get some internet-based networking started.

How To Use Social Media

As in real life communication, people like it when you listen to what they’ve got to say. Therefore be authentic, ask questions. Of course, at some point it will be good to present what your business has to offer but be careful not to annoyingly repeat the offer over and over again.

There are many ways to build relationships online. Helping people solve their problems is one of them. The best thing about that is that it doesn’t even matter where in the world they are.

If you don’t feel confident enough to set up a social media account yourself, speak to our experienced Social Media team for a friendly advice.

Social media is not just a toy, it’s a powerful tool to help your business grow. You must, however, be respectful and careful with your actions to make sure you do not alienate or ignore customers, spam your followers or get your account blocked.
It is easy to get it wrong by pushing your products or services instead of introducing their value. Offering value means to get in touch with people who will actively want to buy your products or engage your services.

So make your online presence a helpful and informative one, providing clarity, conversation and information to those that are interested. Take advantage of the fact that social media has made the world much smaller and easier to reach, and with this world comes your customer base – make your business accessible to them and reap the benefits!

About The Author: Agnieszka Wach is the administrator and receptionist for WNW Design, and also assists the SEO team with website optimisation. You can email her at agnieszka@wnwdesign.co.uk or phone her on 01395 542569. You can also follow WNW Design on Facebook.

Posted in Blogs By Agnieszka W., WNW Staff Blogs | Comments Off

Key To Digital Marketing Success

Nov
29
2011

One of the things that distinguishes me in the world of social media blogging is that I am old … at least old enough to remember how things used to be before we were digitally tracked, sliced, diced, priced, immersed, consumed, and tethered to these social platforms.

I was working in sales and marketing before Facebook … before email … even before computers. And you know it wasn’t THAT long ago that business relationships were built through a firm handshake, a trusting friendship, mutually-shared experiences, and trust.

And then, sometime in the late 1990s, your company probably took all its order forms, sales brochures, and customer service policies to a strange person called a web developer and said, “turn this into a website.”

We could have hardly realized it at the time but we were creating a layer of digital distance between ourselves and our customers that would only become more tangled as layer upon layer of technology was wedged between us. And it was a one-way ticket.

Sure, it was efficient. Administrative costs went down and customers had the convenience of placing orders through our new machines at any time of day or night.

And yet, something was missing. The soul of business was reduced to computer keystrokes.

I thought a lot about this as I was writing my upcoming book. As I was working on it, I had a chance to ask Dr. Robert Cialdini, the celebrated author of Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (and one of my academic heroes!), what he thought it took to stand out in this increasingly bloodless, dense, and competitive digital world.

His reply was simple.

“Be more human.”

Doesn’t that seem ironic?

Being human, simply being ourselves, can create competitive advantage!

“One of the things I advise when I’m consulting in corporate environments is to accentuate certain features that may be deemed attractive and include them in personal bios — the about us categories and so on,” Dr. Cialdini told me. ”We should be including hobbies and how many kids we have, whether we’re hockey fans or runners, and so on so people can register a connection that they wouldn’t necessarily get online, but is typical of face-to-face contacts. Why not infuse those online contacts with the type of information that humanizes them more and leads to cooperation and rapport?”

Dr. Cialdini pointed to research at Stanford that revealed the importance of human connection:

“Participants were told they were going to negotiate through a problem as part of an exercise, but they were told that if no agreement could be reached, both sides would lose and neither side would receive credit for even in the exercise. When they had participants only negotiate via e-mail, 30 percent of the negotiations remained dead-locked and people walked away with nothing.

“However, in the instances where they had the participants exchange some personal information about themselves via e-mail prior to the negotiations the dead-locks dropped to 6 percent. So the general human tendency is to respond positively when we know something about them, when we see something similar to us, when we see humanizing features of that person’s persona available to us. Those things still work – even over the Internet or e-mail — but we have to do something to infuse those technologies with the same sort of information we might get in face-to-face interactions.”

Behind the Twitter avatars and Facebook updates, the text messages and the Skype conferences, people are the same. They still want to be acknowledged. They want to be heard. They want to cut through that digital distance and get to know you as a person.

Personally, I often struggle with infusing a whole lot of personal stuff into my content, but I do recognize the power of that. How are you doing it? Any ideas or best practices you would like to share?

Check out {grow} for more articles by Mark Schaefer.

About the Author:
Executive Director Mark Schaefer has 28 years of global sales and marketing experience and advanced degrees in business and applied behavioral sciences. He is an award-winning business writer, university lecturer and innovator, receiving seven international patents for new product ideas with Fortune 100 companies. He teaches at Pellissippi State College in Knoxville and serves as an adjunct professor of marketing at Rutgers University. http://www.businessesgrow.com

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WNW Design Launches Mistry Medical Supplies

Nov
28
2011

We’re proud to launch a new eCommerce shop for Mistry Medical Supplies, a company offering a huge range of medical supplies and equipment. They stock a wide range of vaccines, from influenza to hepatitis, and also offer pharmaceuticals, hospital couches, furniture, single use instruments, surgical equipment and much more.

Mistry Medical Supplies have been supplying equipment to hospitals, veterinary surgeries, GP surgeries, dentists, private individuals and the NHS for over 30 years, and hope their online shop will offer an even more convenient and fast way for existing and new customers to order products.

Browse their website here: http://www.mistrymedical.com

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