CompuKol Connection » Internet Marketing

Your Evolving Online Business and What Is Expected

Michael Cohn — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 10:00:00 +0000

You own a small business and until now, you have generated leads and converted prospective clients into actual clients. You have invested some money in your marketing strategy. It may not be enough. You may need to do more.

With business dealings that occur online (just like those that occur face to face), the ultimate goal is to sell your products and/or services. The online marketing strategy that you build must be focused on creating highly effective, specific programs that touch people in the right way and at the right time. the avenue that you choose to use must also be the most appropriate for your purposes and for the purposes of the other person. The way that people are doing business nowadays (online and in person) is changing and if you are going to experience continued success in your business, you will have to adapt to accommodate those changes.

The spirit of cooperation

Your marketing and sales people must work closely so that your business process is fully integrated. This process must encompass business goals, milestone activities, and analytics. Your process should include:

Identify your customers’ lifecycles with your business (from initial relationship to prospect to lead to loyal client)
Establish what truly drives your business so that you can satisfy the needs of your clients
Set up marketing initiatives that help to qualify and nurture your clients
Have the ability to recognize a lead that will turn into a paying client
Decide precisely how leads should go to the next level, which is sales and set up a system for tracking that information

Keep a close eye on client data

As a business owner, you will be acquiring client information from all sorts of places. It is important to have an organized way of disseminating and organizing that information so that it continues to remain useful and valuable for your business. If you don’t organize the information, you will be wasting valuable time and resources. The result of that could unfortunately be that you might miss selling opportunities. You need to establish a strategy that entails a well-rounded view of your clients and the people with whom they interact. In order to successfully do that, you must have a deep understanding of the information that you hold in your hands currently and you must be able to identify exactly where the gaps are so that you can fulfill those needs for them. That information will help you to clearly identify your target market.

Identify your client: It is important to identify who the buyer of your products and/or services in the target organization is. You should try to determine which individuals influence the decision to purchase and who the approver of the sale is. The deeper your understanding of that organization, the stronger your foothold will be.

Refine your data: It is very important that you obtain as much client data as you can. The types of information that you should have in your client database are company name, person’s title, contact name in the company, and Email address. Other information is helpful but at the very least, you should try to obtain those pieces of information. If you format the Email addresses and make sure that the domain names of your prospective clients are valid, when it comes time to send them communications, your information will have a smaller bounce rate.

Data matching

Data matching means that you have links that connect different records so that your customer database is more accurate and more comprehensive. You should make sure to use a consistent naming convention among your prospective clients, which will make it a lot easier on you.

Gaining Insight

After you have gathered the information, you will need to put together some answers, such as

Your target market
Which stage your target person is in
Which products and/or services you should be offering based on your target market’s needs
The way in which you need to contact your prospective clients
The most appropriate form of communication

As you market your business online, you need to constantly remember that content is king. Generally, people will check you out way before you check them out and the way that they will do that is by reading what you are sharing with them online. It may take them a while to trust you and find your credible but that is that only way that it is going to happen. The more top-quality content you share with them, the more they will want to read.

Conclusion

As a business owner, there are many things that you need to do in order to be successful. It is certainly not enough to just generate leads and convert them to sales. Marketing online is an entirely different thing and your strategy and the way that you think must be entirely different than how you think if you are marketing for a bricks-and-mortar business. You need to take advantage of word of mouth as much as possible and trust the idea that if your relationships are solid, they will yield what you need for your business. You need to find advocates of your business who will be willing to tell your story. In this day and age, it is critical that you are open-minded and that you are willing to embrace everything that can potentially contribute to your business’s success.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. For a free assessment of your online presence, let's have coffee.

You might also like:

The Transition From Social Media to Social Business

Carolyn Cohn — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Nowadays, many people still think of social media as an entertainment tool whereby people can share a part of their lives with others. Understanding how powerful it is for business will help you gain great strides toward business success.

The approach that you will take when you use social media for personal reasons is very different than the approach that you will take when you use it for business purposes. When it comes to business, you need to carve a place for yourself and your business. One of the profound differences between personal and professional uses of social media is that you don’t have competition of any kind if you are using social media for personal reasons whereas you have a great deal of competition if you use it for business. With that in mind, you need to make sure that you stand out among your competitors so that the people whom you are targeting as clients will notice you and your offerings and begin to interact with you and forge a relationship.

As a business owner, it is very important for you to understand the potential that social media has for your business and you should take advantage of all that it has to offer you. You will see that it is well worth the effort that you put into it and you will be rewarded many times over.

The success of your brand

The success of your brand is totally dependent on other people. To a great extent, your success is connected to other people’s emotions and likes and dislikes. If people ultimately like your products and/or services, they will buy from you. However, it certainly doesn’t start there. It starts the way any other relationship starts. You must forge a bond with the other person and build the relationship’s foundation on trust. If you can’t prove yourself trustworthy and credible, you won’t get anywhere at all. It is critical to understand that building a strong and enduring relationship takes a great deal of time and effort. Because of the fact that there is such a huge volume of information that is available through the Internet, it may take longer than you think for the other person to reach you and to start to interact with you in any meaningful way. Just because there is a great deal of available information does not necessarily mean that your online connections are going to interact with everyone who is an online content contributor.

The importance of your online communities

The parallels between interacting with your online communities for personal reasons and for business are very interesting. In both cases, you need to be a part of a particular circle. The way that you interact with the other members of the circle is the same in both cases. No matter what, you need to get the other people to trust you and to regard you as a subject matter expert. Because of the fact that you understand the basic principles when you transition from social media to social business, it won’t be a difficult transition in all likelihood. There are a few basic ideas that you should keep in mind as you are crossing over to the realm of social business.

Starting with the content: This is absolutely the first thing that you have to ensure is in excellent shape. If your content is not worthy to have other people read and appreciate it, you wont’ get anywhere. Once you have the ideas that you want to share with other people, you need to made sure that you can execute those ideas creatively, succinctly, and in an extremely exciting and well-written manner.
Understanding your communities inside and out: If you truly understand the wants and needs of your communities, you will have no problem (hopefully) giving them whatever they require. The more you understand them, the more they will want to engage with you.
Establishing a strong connection on a human level: There is only one way in which people connect with each other. That is on an emotional level. If you can touch them emotionally, your relationship will start out strong and will continue to grow stronger and stronger.
Build momentum: Social business, just like anything else, needs a momentum in order to be successful. You need to be consistent in how you relate to other people and you need to get them to understand that they can count on you and your business for consistency and reliability. They need to understand without a doubt that they can count on you period.
Be collaborative: Collaboration is a critical part of the success of any business. Yours, of course, will not be an exception. The more you collaborate with other people, the stronger your relationship will be with them and the more successful your business will be.

Conclusion

Social media for business is an incredibly powerful and amazing tool. When it comes to using it for business, it is more involved than merely having social media profiles filled out. You need to really work to tool. Your social business will encompass the internal workings of your business and the needs and happiness of your clients at the same time. The transition between social platforms that are used for personal reasons to being used for business will be smooth as long as you understand how to make the most of the tool and as long as you are open-minded about the idea that the possibilities of what you can do are virtually limitless.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. For a free assessment of your online presence, let's have coffee.

You might also like:

Link Building That Benefits Everyone

Michael Cohn — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 10:00:00 +0000

It is commonly known that effective use of links for business is one of the best tools when it comes to gaining online exposure and for driving increased website traffic to you. The stronger your links, the higher your rankings.

There are several different things that will help you and your business to achieve high rankings on the search engines.

Anchor text linking
Page-linking quality
Site-linking quality
The relevance of the linking site

When it comes to searching, the question still remains as to why so many people are still striving to engage links that will bring their business greater success and increased revenue. What are people doing (or not doing) that is causing their link-building strategies to fail?

There are a variety of reasons for the failure, however, the main reasons are:

The quality of the links that were generated
Successful links were not obtained

The cause of failure for many link-building campaigns is commonly in the strategy and how it has been planned from the start. Many business owners believe that the only way that they will see their link-building strategy succeed is by hiring a company that specializes in search engine optimization (SEO). The SEO firm will provide the business owner with a specific number of links per month. Although the concept makes good, logical sense, the end result often falls short of expectations. It is very important to keep in mind the fact that the number of links is not the only important element. It is also very important to ensure that your links are of high quality.

Ensuring that link building benefits everyone at once

It is critical to the success of the link-building campaign that you (as the business owner) benefit from your links. On the other hand, it is also critical to the success of your business that the other person also benefit just as much. There are many ways to make sure that this happens. It is under your control more than you might realize.

Guest blogging: Guest blogging generates increased website traffic and high-quality, valuable content that is associated with your web presence. Guest blogging is a very effective tool when it comes to link-buildings strategies because the content that you provide is interesting, versatile, and compelling, even more than it would be if you were the only content writer whose content you were sharing.

Free online tools: Making good use of free tools is sensible, intelligent, and makes good business sense. There are many tools available online that require minimal effort for maximum benefit. It is, of course, extremely important for you to do your homework before you decide upon which tools you feel will work best for your business. Once you have done that, you should choose a combination of tools that work best for you and for the person on the other end of your communication line.

The two approaches mentioned above can effectively be used in tandem. In fact, it is advisable to use them together for the best outcome.

Your continued approach

Once you have full confidence in the fact that your link-building strategy will work effectively for you and your business, the next thing that you need to do is to execute your strategy properly. It is critical that you are committed to only providing the highest-quality links and that the information that you are sharing with other people are valuable to them and it is information that can help them to solve their problems.

Conclusion

If you are going to successfully build effective links, you will do so with the deep understanding of precisely which types of links are needed. There must be a relevance and appropriateness between the links and what you and your business represent. You must always bear in mind that your links are there to serve one purpose and one purpose only. They are there to help other people to get what they want and need. If you can help other people and motivate them in some profound way, you and your business will be successful.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. For a free assessment of your online presence, let's have coffee.

You might also like:

Optimizing Online Searches

Michael Cohn — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 10:00:00 +0000

It is critical that your online presence is strong and that you can be found easily by others who are interested in your offerings. It is very important that you make the most of your social media connections.

The relationship between social media and search capabilities

One of the first (and most important) ideas when it comes to being found online is how to increase your rankings on the search engines. What you want for your business is to appear at the top of the search engine pages. The higher, the better. If your business appears lower down on the search engine page than you would like, there are things that you can do to increase your rankings. The other element that should be of concern to you is how to make your web presence rank higher with social influences.

There has undoubtedly been growth (and there will continue to be growth) in popularity and influence of social media channels and how people use them on a regular and consistent basis. Greater and greater numbers of people are using them for business as well as for person reasons. When visitors to your website are being discussed that means unique visitors. The number of people has been increasing on a regular and steady basis. Of course, two of the most influential and popular sites are Facebook and Twitter, which continue to gain more and more popularity.

People continue to search for what they want and their hunger for information is satisfied (to a point) by the vast amount of information that is at their fingertips. When it comes to searching, people are not only interested in educational information. They are also very interested in buying products and/or services from a huge list of possibilities. More and more businesses that have something to sell are taking advantage of social media as an extremely effective vehicle for selling. Their need to appear at the top of the search engine pages is the same as any other business owners need. The principle is simple. If people don’t find them (or if they appear too far down on the search engine page), they won’t even know that they exist. If they don’t know that they exist, how are they going to buy anything from them?

Getting your rankings on the search engine pages to increase

Of course, the stronger your offerings (higher-quality products, more variety, etc), the better your chances of appearing higher on the search engine’s pages. Remember, the more your promote your products and/or services, the better your chances of appearing at the top of the page. There are several ways to make this happen.

Have a link on your homepage to social media sites: This concept is simple but it is also very effective. Having social media integration on your website (or some other aspect of your web presence) gives you an opportunity to make it easy for others to interact with you and your business through social media. It is an excellent way to build a relationship with someone. Hopefully, it will be a relationship that lasts for a very long time and one that is solid and mutually beneficial.
Integrate brand names into your posts: Having a brand name integrated into your postings is an effective way to push your rankings up on the search engine pages. Using your business’s name and the names of your products will help you to achieve this. Of course, as with anything else, make sure to do it appropriately. You don’t want other people to feel that they are being overwhelmed by the information that you are sharing with them.
Pay attention to the numbers: It is extremely important to pay close attention to your statistics when it comes to search engine optimization. The more people you can induce to pay attention to you and your business, the higher your rankings will be.

Getting social influence to influence your search engine rankings

Now that getting your business’s rankings to increase has been discussed, it is time to discuss how to use social media connections to increase your business’s success. The reality is that the connections that people have between social media and your business greatly influence how successful your business will be. It starts with people visiting your website. They are visiting your website because they have some interest in what you are offering. If they are interested enough, they will tell other people to check out your business also. Your website (and web presence, in general) is the first way to measure your business’s popularity. The more you encourage visitors to visit, the better your rankings will be.

Conclusion

Social media and search engine capabilities and results go hand in hand. The more advanced technological tools that are available, the more successful your business will be through your online connections trying to learn about what your business capabilities are. It is well worth your time as a business owner to take advantage of social media to get your rankings to appear as high as possible on the search engine pages. It may take a little more time than you would like to master your strategy of increasing your rankings but you will see that it is well worth the effort and patience. If you are consistent in your efforts, before you know it, you will see positive and incredible results.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. For a free assessment of your online presence, let's have coffee.

You might also like:

The When and Where of the Importance of Your Keywords

Michael Cohn — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Keywords have been discussed many times before and will continue to be discussed well into the future. It is critical that your content is written for the right reasons. The keywords must be strategically placed at the most appropriate time.

If you don’t pay careful attention to your keywords and how you use them in your content, you may miss the mark and the consequence may be that your search engine rankings are not as high as you would like them to be. Your rankings should be as high as possible on the page and they should definitely appear on the first page. The subject of your content should be absolutely clear to the search engines so that your rankings are high. You may be wondering exactly what you need to do to ensure that your content appears high in the search engine rankings because of the keywords. Keyword placement will make all of the difference when it comes to the success of your business.

The importance of title tags

The most critical factor when it comes to your search engine rankings is the title tag. If you want to allow people to find you based on a specific keyword or key phrase, you need to make sure that it is in the title. Additionally, you need to make sure that the exact place on your website where you want people to go has those keywords or key phrases so that there can be a match and the people will land exactly where you want them to land. This is of benefit to your audience and it is of benefit to you. This will give an extremely clear idea about what your business and your offerings are all about to the people seeking the information and, at the same time, it will satisfy the search engines’ need to know exactly what you do so that they can rank your business appropriately.

It is possible with certain Content Management Systems (such as WordPress, for example) to put in a title tag that is different than the actual title of your article. Another tool that may help you in this regard is one of the many SEO plugins. You can download them and these tools allow you to adjust your meta-data (title tags included) for everything that you post and all of your website pages. This is great because you can write an effective headline that may draw your audience members and may attract the search engines for high rankings at the same time.

URL slugs

It is important to include keywords in your URL slug (a slug is a part of the URL that identifies a page using human-readable keywords) of a new page that you are writing and posting. If you have keywords in your URL slug, it will help your page to get noticed in the search engine results pages (SERPs). The correct use of your keywords will really allow people to find you.

Description meta-tags

Description meta-tags are the the words that search engines commonly display under your page’s search result blurb directly under the title tag. description meta-tags don’t really have any effect on the search engine rankings; however, they are important. The description meta-tag is a short pitch (160 characters) whose purpose is to attract a person who is searching the web to click on your page instead of someone else’s page. The reason that the keywords are important in your description meta-tags is that it makes your page look more appealing and people will feel more compelled to click on it. The more precise you are with your meta-tags, the more inclined people will be to clicking on your page.

Keyword and content density

Mixing your keywords with the rest of your content on your pages will definitely have an effect on the search engine rankings. The reason for that is that it is powerful information that communicates to the search engines exactly what the page is trying to say. Of course, you need to be careful not to abuse the use of your keywords. Your keyword density must be pretty exact. There are different schools of thought when it comes to keyword density. Some people feel that putting in a keyword once every one hundred words is appropriate and others feel that either once a paragraph is a good amount. Make sure not to become more concerned with keyword density than satisfying the needs of your audience.

Links and anchor text

The text of your links is anchor text. Anchor text is essential because it tells the search engines what your page is about. The concept is very important. If you use anchor text that is rich in keywords, you are letting the search engines know exactly what your pages are about and how the pages should be organized on the search engine pages. You should never have multiple pages on your website that compete for the same keywords. Sometimes, the repetition of keywords is inevitable, depending on how much content you are producing.

Conclusion

It is well established that keywords are critical to your business when it comes to search engine optimization. If you pay attention to the information in this article, you will achieve rankings that will allow the members of your target audience to find you and to begin to interact with you. You need to let them find you easily so that you can start to establish relationships. Once you have done that, you will need to reach out and interact with them so that your relationship with them has a strong and fruitful foundation that will last for a very long time.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. For a free assessment of your online presence, let's have coffee.

You might also like:

The Success of Social Commerce

Michael Cohn — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Social commerce is using social media to conduct online business. Just as all things that surround social media have taken off in a giant way, so has social commerce. It’s just as easy to conduct business online as in person.

The end of the year is when the most business is conducted and conducting it online is easier than ever and the advantages of doing so are many. When you are involved with social commerce, it is essential that you use online collaborative tools so that you can sell your products and/or services to customers. There are so many different companies that are selling their offerings online that your competition is fierce, to say the least. Some of the companies that you see online now will not last for a long time and others will last indefinitely.

Having a social commerce strategy

Before you decide to get involved with social commerce for your business, it is important to form a plan and then, subsequently execute that plan, on which approach you want to take. As with any business strategy, you need to have goals and objectives in mind before you even start. Your goals may be that you want to sell more of your products and/or services, you may want to acquire more clients, or you may simply want to develop deeper relationships with your already-existing clients. If you aren’t sure yet what your strategy should be, a great resource for ideas is other people. If you see what other people who have been successful so far are doing, mimicking them is an excellent idea (as long as the approach is a good fit for your business). When establishing your social commerce strategy, it is very important that you identify the following categories:

Type of social media channel
Objective
Goal
Timeline
Details about how you are going to use the specific social media channels that you have identified

There is such a great deal of information and opportunities that are at your fingertips as a business owner. You should do your homework thoroughly and identify those tools that you feel will really work the most effectively for you. However, it is important to exercise some caution when it comes to the actual choice of the tools. If you choose tools that are brand new, it may be harder to get advice if something appears to not be working the way that you think it should. If you choose tools that are a little more established, you may have an easier time of it if you are faced with that situation.

Your specific goals

Depending on what your specific goals are when it comes to a social commerce strategy, you should approach it from different angles.

Goal #1: Increased sales

If you are trying to increase your sales, if is critical that you gather as much information as possible on your existing customers’ needs and way of thinking.

Follow the crowd: This strategy involves selling using social technology that help clients to shop more intelligently by making them understand the products and/or services more completely.
Exclusivity: This strategy involves making your clients feel that the offer that you are making is special and that they are special based on the fact that very few people will be allowed access to it.
Expertise: This strategy involves your imparting your vast knowledge to your clients so that they understand the superiority of your offerings because of your expertise.
Consistency: This strategy involves your approach with your clients being consistent. They will understand that they can count on your approach being the same every time and your interactions with them also being just as consistent.
Reciprocity: This strategy involves giving your clients an opportunity to help each other. You could build an incentive program that would reward your clients for helping other people to become clients or to take advantage of what you are offering.

Goal #2: Acquiring more clients

If you are trying to acquire more clients, there are very specific values that you will want to use:

Experience: Give your clients the benefit of your personal experiences so that they can learn from them and do things differently, if necessary. This will create a great deal of loyalty in your clients and you will appear trustworthy and credible to them.
Getting clients more involved: If you involve your customers in decisions and discussions, they will feel that you value them and this will also cause them to be loyal to you and your business. People love to believe that their opinions matter and that they are making a positive contribution.
Provide incentives: Reward your clients for getting involved and opting in. People love to be rewarded. If they feel that they are getting something of value and don’t have to pay for it (at least not in the traditional way), it will be very attractive to them.

Goal #3: Developing deeper relationships with your clients

If you are trying to have relationships with your existing clients that go to a deeper level, you should

Ask them what they want: This is one of the simplest approaches when it comes to relationships yet it is one that very often does not occur to business owners when it comes to their relationships with their clients. If you ask them what is important to them, they will tell you and you can focus on that when helping them to solve their problems.
Promote discussions with them: Having in-depth discussions is a great way to really get to understand your clients on a deeper level. Just as it is with any relationship, you should interact with them whenever possible. The more you understand about them, the more valuable your relationships with them will be.

Conclusion

Social commerce, if approached properly, can be an extremely effective tool when it comes to the success of your business. If you use the tips that were suggested here, you will see that the strategy works for you and your business as well as adding another layer to what you are already doing and how you are interacting.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. For a free assessment of your online presence, let's have coffee.

You might also like:

Social Media Questions That Business Owners Ask

Michael Cohn — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 10:00:00 +0000

As a business owner, it isn’t necessarily easy to decide which social media channels work best for your business. There is so much information from which to choose and each one offers different innovative features. You need to choose wisely.

At this point, you are an active participant in social media. Before you can actually make any kind of decision, you need to research what is available thoroughly so that you can make the best choices for your business. Cost will most likely not be an issue. When it comes to investment and social media, it isn’t about the money that you will need to spend. Rather, it is about the time and effort that you will need to put into your social media activities so that it pays off for your business and allows you to achieve greater success than ever.

There are some common questions that occur to business owners regarding social media.

If I don’t have a location, how can I successfully use location-based marketing?

Location-based marketing tools, such as Foursquare, Gowalla, etc, are designed to enable people to find the best spots in close proximity to where they are. Brick-and-mortar businesses take advantage of this opportunity by offering promotions that are specific to their venues. When a prospective or existing customer checks in to a particular business on their mobile device, they will immediately see whichever promotions are currently available to them. There are many different ways to use location-based services and it is challenging to businesses that only exist online. However, it is far from impossible and there are definitely plenty of opportunities out there. You just need to be as creative as possible. For example, an effective approach if you have a blog or website is to leave tips in venues that are related to the content that you are offering. Another effective way to get involved with location-based marketing is by connecting with apps (applications) that act as advertisements to users in specific locations.

Will group buying be good for my business?

Group buying is a practice that a lot of business owners have been getting involved with. Group buying is when a large number of consumers get really good deals by buying products and/or services together. Several websites, such as Groupon, BuyWithMe, and LivingSocial, are good examples of this and have been very successful so far. Websites for group buying have the potential to earn people a lot of money in a short amount of time. Before you can make an informed decision about group buying for your business, you should make sure that you are aware of all of the positives and negatives. Then you can decide. Another positive aspect of group buying is that because there are so many consumers involved, it allows you to increase your list of new prospective customers. One thing that you should keep in mind as the business owner is your brand’s reputation. It is critical that the group-buying website is a good fit with your branding and your target audience.

Will I be able to start a blog if I don’t have any technical acumen?

You definitely don’t have to be a computer genius to start a blog. You can start with the simplest blog platform. If you don’t feel that it is working for you the way that you would like it to, you can hire someone to make it work for you. If your goal is to create some simple pages (such as an About Us page and a Contact Us page), and update your blog posts at regular intervals, there are several tools that you can use to accomplish this (such as Tumblr). Several simple themes for small businesses are available and the tool is easy to use. Once you have created your pages, updating your blog is a matter of inputting your new blog post, typing in a few descriptive tags, and publishing the article.

How do I make sure that my company’s social media pages are optimized?

At the hear of search engine optimization (SEO) is content. First and foremost, you need to make sure that your social media profiles are all complete and that the URLs that you have chosen have your business’s name incorporated. If you choose a certain URL and it isn’t available, you can modify the URL somewhat. However, be careful to keep it as close to your company name as possible. Once you have established the URL, make sure that the following elements are filled in: biography, products, location, mission, etc. Make sure that you include back links on all of your other pages. The more numerous your back links, the higher your rankings will be on the search engine pages. Maker sure that you are consistent about updating the information that you feel is important to share with others. Make sure to keep your target audience in mind regarding the type of information that you are sharing.

Why hasn’t the number of people who follow my business through social media increased?

There are many possible reasons why your following might not be increasing. There are several things that you should examine if that is the case.

Is your messaging too promotional?
Does your messaging speak about how great you and your business are instead of telling the other person what you can do for him or her?
Are you coming across as a salesperson?

If any of these apply to you, you may be making people feel discouraged rather than encouraged without even realizing it. The goal is to get as many high-quality followers as possible and you need to make sure that you interact with people in the most appropriate and sensitive manner possible.

Conclusion

The questions that have been discussed here are very important and very basic. They are questions that are on many business owners’ minds and if you take the advice that is given here, you will strengthen your social media savvy and your efforts will pay off. The result will be greater success for your business.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. For a free assessment of your online presence, let's have coffee.

You might also like:

Recognizing Affiliate Marketing Scams

Carolyn Cohn — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 10:00:00 +0000

Many people don’t truly understand affiliate marketing although they are familiar with the term. Affiliate marketing is marketing that rewards affiliates of a particular business as a result of that business’s marketing efforts. Some are legitimate and some are not.

There are several different ways to tell if a specific type of affiliate marketing is genuine or if it is a scam. A sensible thing to do when it comes to spotting legitimate versus not legitimate affiliate marketing programs is to get a hold of testimonials from the affiliate marketing company.

Cost versus no cost

Genuine affiliate marketing programs don’t cost anything to join and the only way that you will ever make money affiliate marketing is if you sell something. Many of the affiliate marketing programs are two tiered and in that case, the only way that you will make money from the second tier (if you are in the first tier) is if your second-tier colleagues sell something. Additionally, there is no membership fee in an affiliate marketing program if it is on the level. If you come across an affiliate marketing program that says that there is a fee for setting up or that offer to sell you a website with which to market. If you are considering getting involved in one of those programs, please don’t. They aren’t on the level. Bear in mind that it is very easy to be fooled by scammers.

Degree of difficulty

When it comes to affiliate marketing, you absolutely have the potential to be successful. However, that doesn’t mean that your success will come to you with very little work or effort involved. You will have to work at it in order to be successful. Also, even if you work hard at becoming a success and in maintaining success, you have to be careful that the business with which you are getting involved is offering you something genuine and worthwhile and is not merely playing on your emotions.

Beware of empty promises

One of the most common ways in which people fall into affiliate marketing scams is by being convinced to buy tools, systems, and/or information products. They buy these items because they promise that if someone buys them, that they won’t have to do any more work. A weight-loss pill is a perfect example of this. The marketers promise that if you take the pill, you will never have to diet or exercise a day in your life and the pounds will just melt away. There isn’t a person alive who would prefer to work hard in order to lose weight rather than just swallowing a pill once or twice a day. Of course, the marketers support their claim with graphic evidence. They show you photographs (before and after) of people who have taken the pills and have shed numerous pounds as a result.

Ignoring the hype

The best way to never fall into the trap of scams is to make sure that you thoroughly understand what to look for when it comes to red flags. If you educate yourself on the basic principles of affiliate marketing, the scammers will not be able to scam you. After you have become educated, you can think in terms of those principles that you have learned and you will be protected. There are some common red flags that you should watch out for to start:

A promise of money without doing any work
Photos of fancy cars and other outrageously expensive luxuries
“Fool proof” anything
Photos of earnings with no details attached to them except for a mention of affiliate commissions

The true potential of affiliate income

The best way to avoid scams is to remain calm when hearing about some affiliate marketing program that seems too good to be true. The fact is that you can make a successful career from affiliate marketing. On the other hand, it is not a large percentage of the people who actually become tremendously successful from affiliate marketing programs. It is critical that your expectations are realistic and that you don’t allow yourself to distance yourself from the reality of the situation.

Conclusion

Many people have gotten involved with affiliate marketing programs and have become tremendously successful. However, it is very important to be knowledgeable to recognize legitimate from bogus affiliate marketing and to protect yourself when you thing that something might not be right. If you are unsure of a particular program, don’t make a decision that you will regret afterwards. Having your own business can be wonderfully rewarding and satisfying. A lot of people can potentially benefit, if done correctly. However, you must go into it with both eyes open and make decisions from you head, not your heart.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. For a free assessment of your online presence, let's have coffee.

You might also like:

The Science Behind Email Marketing

Michael Cohn — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 09:00:00 +0000

When it comes to marketing to customers, especially through Emails, there is a solid concept behind which days are the most effective and why. Many people have different approaches and what works for one business may not work for another.

When it comes to Email, different groups of people read messages at different times, depending on the circumstances of that particular business. One that you must understand clearly is how your clients think and what their needs and wants are. If you truly understand them, you will be able to pinpoint the best time to send them Emails that you are confident they will read and respond to.

If you aren’t sure exactly when is the best time to send Emails to your clients, it is worth the investment of time to do some research to find out the optimal timing. Whichever days you determine are the most effective, make sure that you stick with those days consistently. If you happen to have a business that deals with clients exclusively online, this is even more critical. It is important to remember; however, that you may have to adjust your strategy along the way. Also, there are many factors that go into making your social media marketing campaign successful.

There are some useful tips that may help you to figure out your perfect formula when it comes to Email marketing to your clients.

Look at historical patterns

If you take a good look at your own business of the past, you will learn a great deal. If you want to really understand if your strategy is working, you should look at your own business experience and try to identify patterns and issues that occurred before.

Take advantage of tools

The analytics tools that are available online are extremely important for you. The tools will help you to identify the successes and failures after each Email blast. You can then take that information and customize your online Email marketing strategy accordingly.

Landing page

You want to be very specific when it comes to influencing your recipients in your Emails regarding where you want them to go next and what you want them to do. Of course, you need to make sure that your landing page is everything that it should be (both in design and functionality).

Emails during business hours

If your Emails are being sent to people who run their businesses during the week, your optimal days upon which to send them Emails are between Tuesday and Wednesday. You will want to steer clear of the days at the beginning and the end of the week (in general).

Emails to clients

If your Emails are going to clients, the best days to send them are Thursday through Sunday. The reason for this, of course, is because they are otherwise occupied during the week and won’t be able to concentrate on your Email.

Lapse time

You should find out if there is any lapse time from the hour that your Email is scheduled to go out until the time when your recipients actually receive it. That is an important thing to know.

Compartmentalizing your list

It is very important to divide your list into some sort of logical sections that work for you. It is critical that you reach each person on your list in the most effective way possible.

The personal touch

People love to be remembered. Even though you have a business relationship with the people to whom you are sending Emails, it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t remember their special occasions (birthdays, anniversaries, etc). They will remember that you have been kind and considerate.

Give your recipients a choice

If you are in a position to allow your customers decide when they receive Emails from you, you should try to make that happen. It can make a very big difference in your rate of success.

Conclusion

Email marketing may seem random but there is a definitely well-thought-out method behind when the Emails are sent out to the list of people. If you try a certain approach and it doesn’t seem to be working the way that you would like it to work, try something else. At the very least, you want to get people to skim your Email enough to want to continue reading. If you focus your Email efforts properly, there won’t be any result that you can’t achieve. There is a science behind Email marketing but it isn’t necessarily an exact science.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. For a free assessment of your online presence, let's have coffee.

You might also like:

Writing Content and Tweets That Market

Carolyn Cohn — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 09:00:00 +0000

The content that you share online is informative, educational, and valuable. However, it can also come from a marketing angle. Although your interactions with other people through social media are all about building relationships, ultimately, people will buy from you.

Nowadays, there are several different ways in which you can reach other people. Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter are three of the most popular social media channels. On Facebook, you can write as much as you like, although other people would probably prefer shorter (rather than longer) messages. LinkedIn has a lot of possibilities when it comes to sharing content as well. In this case, the relationships that are shared are business oriented. With Twitter, the messages must be short (140-character maximum). However, that doesn’t mean that they can’t have a subtle promotional spin to them. There are several effective approaches that you can take in order to write effective marketing content and tweets. Your success depends on not only using Twitter but also writing well. The quality and the precision of the writing should be quite specific.

The system that you use for this particular type of communication is social networking and shared messaging
Communication is your medium
The form of language is language itself
Your content should speak about branding and marketing
Your interaction is the call-to-action that you choose to give to the person with whom you are interacting

Promotional copy

Promotional copy is very different than it is when it is in print. The way to make promotional copy successful through social media is by sharing a great deal of it and sharing it very often. By doing that, you are doing several things at the same time. You are increasing your reputation. You are building your credibility. You are positioning yourself as a subject-matter expert (SME). And you are building your credibility and trustworthiness. These are all ingredients without which you have no chance at success. There is a viral element that comes with all of this. The more your word is spread by others, the more popular your ideas will be and the more people will pay attention to you. They will tell their friends, who will tell their friends, who will tell their friends, etc. The success of your business is very dependent on word of mouth. In that way, it differs greatly from other forms of promotion. With social media, you rely on other people’s willingness to engage with each other and their willingness to share your information with others.

Promotional copy and social media

Your content and tweets must reflect the way that people communicate and interact through social media. In this case, the relationship that you are trying to promote is between prospective clients and your brand. If you succeed at having people form those relationships, you will succeed at getting those people to buy what you are selling. Of course, social media is an extremely personal medium and the messages that you are giving to others uses the various social media channels as their vehicle. The delivery of the communication is direct and instantaneous. The way that you make your offerings appealing to other people is through words. You create images and ideas through your words.

Conclusion

Writing content and tweets that market your offerings will give you a great deal of mileage. You should think about it as an extended form of speech. The success of your content depends totally on how creative and how vivid you are able to make your ideas. You can design your content in whichever way you feel works as long as your promotion is subtle and in good taste. Just remember that above all, it needs to be informative, valuable, and educational. Most importantly, it needs to solve the problems of the people with whom you are interacting.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. For a free assessment of your online presence, let's have coffee.

You might also like: