Foursquare: what is it and how do you use it for business? Foursquare is a social media channel with tremendous potential to attract customers. It is very effective for your business and will definitely contribute to your business’s success.

Foursquare allows you to know where your customers are at any given time. This deepens the connection that you have with them. This connection gives you deep insight into your customers. It can also help you to identify the thinking of your customers through their visiting patterns.

Additionally, Foursquare will allow you to track what your customers are saying about your brand. This is vitally important because you gain customers through word of mouth connections and the people who are paying attention to your brand and your business will tell their friends, who will tell their friends, etc.

Engaging your customers

Foursquare helps you to engage your customers, especially those customers who are on the go a great deal of the time. It is much easier to communicate about all of your offerings if your messages reach your customers wherever they may be instead of having to wait for them to read your messages at the end of the day or at the end of their business trip. We are now in the age of instant gratification and instant information. Foursquare really helps make that easier for you as a business owner.

Enticing your customers

The Foursquare premise is based on checking into places around the neighborhood and within your online communities. When your customers check in, they are rewarded. The concept is often referred to as a game.

The following are some tools that will allow you to connect easily with your customers through Foursquare:

• Mayor specials: These specials can only be released by the Mayor of that particular community. The Mayor is your most loyal customer (you determine this by identifying the user who has checked in the most in the last two months). Once you have identified the Mayor, you should reward him or her with a special little gift.
   
• Wildcard specials: Wildcard specials are always available. However, your customers have to qualify before they can take advantage of those specials.
   
• Check-in specials: The specials are not released to the customer until they check in a certain number of times (you can set that number).
   
• Frequency-based specials: These specials are released every certain number of check-in times.

Communicating with your customers

When you are reading the customers’ comments, you will be able to glean a lot of value that you can apply to your business. It is very important for you to interact with your customers after you have become aware of how they are thinking and feeling. However, before you do interact with them, it is essential that you really listen to what they are saying.

That customer feedback will contain information on what your customers want and need from you. The more you pay attention to the needs and wants of your customers, the closer they will feel to you and the stronger your relationships with them will become. You can use Foursquare as your vehicle to keep in touch with your customers and to continue strengthening your relationships with them.

Measuring the success of your business on Foursquare

You can monitor the total amount of people who check in, the users who share updates on Twitter and Facebook and the number of unique visitors. Also, you are able to track the demographics of the users on Foursquare.

Once you are armed with that information, you can use it to reward your loyal customers. When you reward your customers, they want to be in a relationship with you. Everyone loves to be rewarded. The stronger your relationships become with your customers, the more those customers will tell other people about your business and recommend that those other people also become your customers.

Foursquare gives you a very good opportunity to increase the visibility of your business online, to strengthen your credibility, increase brand identity and awareness, and give your customers the feeling that they are important to you.

Exploring the neighborhood

With Foursquare, you are rewarded for checking into your community. As people build their communities on Foursquare, the interactions become more and more interesting. The more they check in, the more they are rewarded. The incentives make them want to keep interacting. When your customers check into a certain location, they will see which particular promotions you are offering. Everyone loves to get something for nothing or at least for doing very little.

Conclusion

Foursquare is an effective way of doing business and it is a great way to get your customers excited about your business and your business offerings. Your customers will find the Foursquare approach fun, interesting and entertaining. Because you have their attention, they will be connecting with you on a regular basis.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

You own your own business and you offer products and services. How do you get people to buy what you are selling? That’s easy. You create a buzz about your offerings and you communicate through your social media marketing strategy.

Accomplishing this has absolutely nothing to do with magic. There is no fairy dust that you can sprinkle to cause the members of your target market to automatically start coming in droves to your website. In fact, what works well for one business may not necessarily work for another business. Creating a buzz involves social media and marketing that is spread by word of mouth.

When you first start designing your social media marketing strategy, there are several tools that you should include to make the strategy successful. In our article Developing Your Social Media Marketing Strategy, we discussed the importance of a strategy and how it is key to the success of your business. In this article, we are discussing the tools that you should consider using to implement the strategy.

The following is a list of some of the more useful and effective tools that will help you create a buzz for your business:

• Social media networks: Social networks are an excellent way to offer and share your knowledge as well as to build and maintain relationships. There are many popular social media sites that you can take advantage of and at List of Social Networking Websites, you will find a list of some of the most popular.
   
• Photos: Sharing photos as part of your social media marketing campaign has a similar, positive effect as videos with regard to the visual aspect of it. People like to be able to connect the name with the face. Some great photo sharing websites are Flickr, Memeo and Photobucket.
   
• Videos: Online videos as part of your social media marketing campaign have become very important. Videos are an effective tool in a social media marketing strategy because many people react more favorably when they are able to see you and listen to what you have to say than merely reading what you have written. Also, a lot of people don’t have the patience or the time to read a lot but when they are watching a video that you have made, it is received more easily. Two of the more popular video-sharing sites are YouTube and Vimeo.
   
• Blogging: Blogs are a wonderful tool when it comes to social media marketing. The reason that blogs are so effective is that, if they are optimized properly, they can drive a high volume of traffic to a website. An effective blog will be instrumental in creating internal links, content that is always fresh and appealing, active community, and website traffic that has nothing to do with the search engines. Always ensure that the content that you offer is enticing to your audience and that they find it helpful and informative. Some of the more popular and more widely used blogs are WordPress, Blogger and Typepad.
   
• Microblogging: In the same manner that blogs allow huge opportunities to promote your business, microblogs do the same thing. Those opportunities are a result of both consistent content and good-quality optimization. Two popular microblogs are Twitter and Posterous.
   
• Bookmarking: Social bookmarking is a social media marketing tool that allows online users to search, organize, share and manage bookmarks of resources on the web. Some of the more widely used bookmarking websites are: delicious.com, Digg, Diigo, Fark, Mixx, MyBlogLog, Newsvine, Reddit, Propeller, Slashdot.org, Yahoo!, StumbleUpon, and Buzz.
   
• Presentations: Another excellent way to get your brand noticed is by offering presentations on interesting and informative topics in your niche or industry. Presentation-sharing websites are becoming more and more popular these days. Some of the best ones are: SlideShare, Scribd, MyPlick and AuthorSTREAM.
   
• Forums: If you are looking for a new way to market your products and services, as well as a way to interact with other colleagues and customers/potential customers, use an online forum. You will see very valuable results if you engage your online audience for your brand and your business.
   
• Podcasts: Podcasts are a social media marketing tool that is used to promote your brand and your products and/or services. If you are interested in podcasting, you should check out Blip or RadioPodcast.
   
• Wikis: As I am sure you know, wikis are online encyclopedias. Wikipedia, AboutUs, Pbwiki (PBworks.com), Citizendium and Wetpaint are all informative and useful.
   
• Monitoring your brand: It is extremely important for you to understand the positioning of your brand in the market. Some great websites that you can use for this are: Buzzlogic, ReputationDefender and Radian6.
   
• Ratings and Reviews: One of the best ways for you to find out how your website is viewed by other people is through ratings and reviews. You can go to Yelp or GetSatisfaction to help you with this.
   
• Widgets: If you are trying to promote your own brand, you can create personalized badges using unusual widgets on Twitter, Facebook and other social media channels by using SpringWidgets or WidgetBox.

Conclusion

The various tools that have been discussed are important for the success of your social media marketing campaign. Bear in mind that in order to really create a buzz around your brand and products and services, you also need to publish your content on business directories such as EzineArticles, eHow, Google Docs, IdeaMarketers and Yahoo Articles Group. If you do this, you will be gaining even wider exposure and creating even more buzz. Remember that it is important to choose the mix of social media channels and business directories that work the most effectively for you.

Always remember to be proactive in your marketing approach rather than reactive. It is important to constantly let people know that you are not just a brand and some products and services. You are a human being who has their best interest at heart and you have a solution to their problems.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

Many people try to avoid using Facebook to market their business. They don’t really know enough about Facebook and how effective it can be for marketing purposes. Some of the more popular myths will be dispelled here.

If you are looking for a great way to really increase your visibility and reputation online, Facebook is an excellent way to do it. It has a phenomenal number of users and they are growing in number all of the time. When you think about that in terms of growing your business, it makes no sense whatsoever for you not to get involved (as a business person) with Facebook.

The following are some of the myths that people have bought into about Facebook.

• Only kids use Facebook: Many people believe that Facebook has no benefits for business because the largest part of its demographic is young. That has actually started to change. The older demographic (35+) of Facebook has grown dramatically and is still increasing to this day.
   
• You are too old for Facebook: At the other end of the spectrum from the myth above, in addition to the demographic now being older, age has very little to do with your successful use of Facebook. All that really matters is that you have something to say that is valuable and interesting to other people with whom you connect online. If anything, older age can be an advantage because with age comes wisdom and insight.
   
• Using Facebook is too time-consuming: Regarding the amount of time that is necessary to make Facebook work for your business, it all depends on how you manage your time.

  If you put yourself on a structured schedule and you really are committed to sticking to that schedule, the amount of time that you devote to Facebook does not have to be overwhelming and all consuming. The benefits that you will receive from spending the time and effort far outweigh any disadvantages that you can think of.

  In order to get the most out of your Facebook time, it is best to have a strategy in mind before you even start. Ask yourself what your strategy is and which goals you hope to achieve by interacting with people on Facebook. It is very important to have a clear understanding of why you are actually using Facebook to interact.
   

• All you need is Facebook to get clients: We all wish that this were true. However, it usually takes more effort than that to build up your business and acquire new clients. Unfortunately, many people believe this myth and are so disappointed when it doesn’t happen that way that they totally give up on Facebook after that. Facebook should be a part of your overall marketing strategy. It cannot be the entire strategy. Facebook is a great way to demonstrate your credibility and expertise. As you start to build relationships through Facebook, people will come to trust you and to turn to you for answers to their questions and solutions to their problems because they will consider you to be the expert.
   
• If you have a personal profile on Facebook, you don’t need anything else: This is a myth that many people accept as the truth. You should have a personal Facebook page that includes friends and family and a Facebook Fan Page that you use solely for business purposes. It is very important to separate the two. You certainly don’t want your business associates to know about the details of your life that is personal in nature.

  Facebook fan pages are public whereas Facebook pages are private. Because fan pages are public, the search engines can detect them and can rank them accordingly. You can also use your fan page to spread the word (virally) about your business offerings and your brand.

Tips to help you to get a lot out of Facebook without putting a lot into it

• Turn off most of your alerts: Based on your schedule, your goal is to spend a specific (and relatively short) amount of time on Facebook. If you leave all of your alerts on and you receive frequent notifications that tell you when someone has reached out to you, you will become very distracted and you will end up spending more time on Facebook (most likely for non-business purposes) than you should or than you intended.
   
• Ignore meaningless applications: Facebook has a great deal of applications that are fun but that serve no purpose for you when it comes to business. It is different if you want to get involved with them in your “play” time.
   
• Update your status on a regular basis: You should choose regular intervals to update your status and if something significant changes in your status in between those intervals, you should update it as it happens also.
   
• Peruse your newsfeeds: You should pay regular attention to your news feeds, which consist of the status updates of your Facebook connections, and if something is of interest to you, either share it with others or make a comment on it.
   
• Respond quickly: If someone has placed a comment on your wall, respond in kind with a comment of your own. You should respond as quickly as you can.
   
• Announce your events: If you are involved with an event, share the information with other people. You should try to get as many people as possible involved.
   
• Share your blog: Use the NetworkedBlogs or Notes application to import your blog postings, which will subsequently in your Facebook fans news feeds.

What do you do next?

• Continually update your page with fresh content: An effective way to accomplish this is by posting blog articles on a very regular basis.
   
• Pose questions that require answers from other people: It is very important to engage your readers as much as possible. The more engaged you make them; the more discussions will be generated.
   
• Be good to your fans: Allow your fans to take advantage of your business offerings, including special promotions, events and free giveaways.
   
• Communicate: Let your fans know what you are up to in your business and allow them to interact with you regularly.

Conclusion

After reading this article, you have hopefully been convinced that what you might have been feeling and what you believed about Facebook for business are not true. You can use Facebook for your business and all that it has to offer. So, jump right in and start connecting.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

Many people have websites (for their businesses as well as for personal use) and many people have blogs. The issue is whether people truly understand the difference between a website and a blog. They certainly are not the same thing.

The following explains the basic differences between a blog and a website:

Blog

• Content is regularly updated.
• Not formal.
• Interactive.
• Informative and educational.
• Interactivity about industry/customer issues.
• Some people have a blog.

Website

• Content is static.
• Formal/professional.
• Interactivity does not exist. There is only one-way communication.
• Transactional.
• Communication about products and/or services.
• Almost everyone has a website. In fact, it is almost a requirement in business today.

A good way to think about a website is in terms of it being a virtual store that sells products and/or services. A website is the perfect forum to self-promote and advertise. Promotion and buying and selling are exactly what people expect when they visit a website. When they are at the point of making a purchase of some kind, they go to a website that will satisfy their needs.

They can either purchase something online directly from your website or they can use your website to find out exactly where your bricks and mortar store is located so that they can come and purchase products and/or services from you in person. Once a customer has bought something from you, there is a very high likelihood that they will not return to your store again.

It is also basically impossible to build relationships with your potential customers and existing customers on your website because the website is static. Once a person has purchased something from you, there is no potential for interactivity so the relationship will never have a chance to develop and grow.

Blog

A blog; however, is constantly supplying potential customers and existing customers with interesting and useful content and the blog enables them to interact with the blogger and the discussions that they have together can be potentially unending. Not only can you and your customers have discussions but they can also ask questions that you can answer.

Also, a blog provides a dimension to the content that you can’t get from your website content. Through your consistent and regular blog content, you will eventually be regarded as a subject matter expert in your niche and people will turn to you for answers. This will promote more and more discussions.

What is really being done in this case is that relationships are being developed and strengthened. Some of the people with whom you interact on your blog will never become your customers. That is perfectly acceptable. They can interact with you as much as they like and do not have to worry about any pressure to buy anything. A very important fact is that the people with whom you interact are getting to know you as a person, which includes your level of integrity, your passion for what you are doing and offering and your knowledge, knowledge that you impart to them.

Blogs have a lot of useful features that are very helpful in promoting interactivity. Blogs enable visitors to subscribe to them so they can receive updates on a very regular basis. They will always be informed when new content is added or there has been some update to the social media profiles of the people with whom they interact.

In order to really be effective, blogs should have new postings at least once or twice a week. Fresh, original content is very important. The content is exactly what attracts and retains people and many of those people will eventually become customers.

The true purpose of a blog is to provide helpful, valuable, informative and interesting content that helps other people and that they find interesting. A blog’s purpose is definitely not to advertise or to do a hard sell on anyone. If you try to use your blog in that way, you will be very disappointed with the results. You will not be able to build relationships with anyone and you most likely won’t sell very much. People don’t buy from people whom they don’t trust. The only way that they will trust you is if they get to know you.

All in one

One approach that has proven very effective is building your website with blog software, such as WordPress. Blog software has the capability of providing you with both static web pages (pages) and blog pages (posts). Since both are necessary for the success of your online exposure, this allows you to design a web presence that contains a traditional website and a blog using one tool. Among the other benefits are:

• One homogenous look and feel.
• Ease of optimization for SEO.
• Sharing of add-on plugins between the pages and posts.
• Ease and speed of designing and developing the web presence.
• Ease of maintenance and updating of content since the entire web infrastructure is based on a content management system (CMS).

Conclusion

Blogs and websites work in very different ways, serve very different purposes and produce different short-term results. However, they are both necessary to increase your online exposure and to strengthen your online business reputation. It is important to have both as part of your online presence. They function well together and undeniably, you will see positive results over the long term if they are a part of your business online.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

Since November of 2009, LinkedIn has been integrated with Microsoft Outlook, which allows you to keep a careful watch on your LinkedIn contacts, including the last time that you sent them Email, scheduled a meeting and all other activities.

As a part of the integration, your LinkedIn connections show up in your Outlook contacts as a LinkedIn folder, which includes the photograph and contact information of your contacts. After you send Email to your LinkedIn contacts, the activity appears on the bottom of your Email stream so that you can easily access the recent activity of your contacts as well as their latest status updates and what they are reading.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc0On7Wl-0I

It is simple to integrate LinkedIn with Outlook:

Adding LinkedIn to Microsoft Outlook

• Download and install the most current version of the Outlook Social Connector from Microsoft (you will need either Microsoft 2003, 2007 or 2010).
   
• After that is installed, you need to download and install the LinkedIn Outlook Connector.
   
• Finally, restart your Outlook and follow the instructions on how to connect your LinkedIn account to your Outlook account. Outlook will prompt you about which network you would like to connect with. You would then click on the LinkedIn icon and login to your LinkedIn account.
   
• If the LinkedIn information doesn’t appear automatically, you need to click on “View social network providers available online” for manual support.
   
• The LinkedIn contacts will then appear in your contacts folder as a separate folder.
   
• You will see a green + and the LinkedIn icon beneath your contacts photos. The green + will allow you to add your contacts to your other social media networks and will take you directly to those networks.

Advantages

One of the wonderful advantages to connecting LinkedIn to Outlook is that it will help you to keep all of your business connections in touch and up to date with what’s going on with you and your business. Of course, that will definitely serve to strengthen your existing business relationships as well as help you to cultivate new relationships.

Another great feature is that a history will be retained of the Emails in your inbox from related contacts and you will be able to see the attachments that you have received from them as well as calendar events related to that particular contact.

As simple and convenient as it was to grow your network of connections on LinkedIn before, it will be much easier if you have tied LinkedIn to Outlook. As I am sure you are aware, LinkedIn is one of the best and most used professional social media networks all over the world. Most people use Microsoft Outlook for their Email needs. Linking the two together is a brilliant move and it will make the communication aspect of your business that much easier and efficient, which will, in turn, lead to greater business success.

Conclusion

If you follow the steps that have been given here, you will find the connection between LinkedIn and Outlook to be very useful. It is great that you can now go between LinkedIn and Outlook and the increased ease and speed will really make your time much more efficient and productive.

You save a great deal of effort and many steps by doing it this way. Another great thing is that if someone else wishes to connect with you, that person’s profile information will appear in your inbox and all you have to do is either add them or click on their profile before you connect. By doing this, you have completely eliminated having to go to your LinkedIn inbox to accomplish the same thing. Start connecting as soon as possible and keep growing your business and your connections with other people.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

You have heard the term “bounce rate.” It is the percentage that represents how many visitors leave your website directly from the page on which they entered the website. A high bounce rate usually means a low conversion rate.

There are several reasons why you might be experiencing a high bounce rate, such as

• It takes too much time to load your web page
• Your landing page is too complicated to navigate. It is not user friendly
• The wrong sorts of visitors are being drawn to your website

With that said, there are several ways in which you can lower your bounce rate significantly, which will be good for your business.

Website and layout design

Your website design is one of the most important factors when it comes to bounce rate. Your website should have colors that are pleasing to the eye and you should try to avoid graphics that “pop out” in the middle of the page because those are very distracting. Your website content should be arranged in a manner that is logical and there should not be an over-abundance of words. You absolutely should have your website designed by a professional. Also, you need to make sure that the HTML of your website is valid so that similar results show up in all of the search engines.

Strong headline

Of course, the headline is the first thing that people are going to read when they land on your website. If the headline doesn’t entice the visitors, it will be all over. Your headline must communicate what the visitor will gain from visiting your website (What’s In It For Me [WIIFM]). In other words, the visitor needs to know that you have the solution to his or her problem.

Well-written text

You need to make sure that your title, headers and meta-tags of each of your web pages are relevant to the rest of the content. You might want to have an abstract in the first paragraph of your text or try to answer questions in your opening paragraph that your readers have asked. Optimizing your content is, of course, extremely important so that the search engines will give you high rankings.

Friendly language

The language in which your content is written should be friendly and human. You should never have content that sounds like you are a corporation instead of a person, no matter which business you are in. Short sentences are definitely recommended. You must speak to your target audience in their language.

The size of your web pages

It is very important to make sure that the sizes of your graphics are appropriate. You also need to make sure that the text/HTML code ratio is as low as possible. Try to keep the loading time of the pages as short as possible. This is important because the users will be more inclined to visit your website again and again if it is easy and quick for them.

Easy navigation

Your website must have a menu that is easy for users to navigate. When people visit a website, everything has to be simple for them. If possible, your website menu should not be on the bottom of the screen. You should have the content arranged in categories and keep important pages a click away and no more, if you can. Another sensible thing to do is to suggest relevant products and/or services on your web pages and to put links in logical and strategic places so that they can benefit your visitors.

Optimize your website for the best keywords and key phrases

When considering search engine optimization (SEO), always remember to optimize your web pages for the most relevant keywords. You should have 1 to 2 terms on each page. Your keywords should appear in important parts of your website, such as your titles, headers and opening paragraphs.

High-quality links

We all know that links are extremely important when it comes to increasing your exposure online. You need to make sure that the links that are pointing to your website contain anchor text. The links should always be relevant to your offerings and they should lead to content that is interesting and informative.

Conclusion

When it comes to your website, you need to successfully lead people to what you have to say and what you have to offer. You must consider many different things. Not only are traffic generation and website views important but bounce rate, the average amount that a visitor spends on your site and conversion rates are also extremely important and are strong contributors to the success of your online marketing campaign.

Remember that when the visitor comes to your site, they must always find what they are looking for. If they don’t find what they are looking for within 8 seconds, they will move on. That is all the time that you have to make a really strong first impression. Your content must always be clear and concise, you should never have distractions on your web pages and you should always allow your visitors to have the option to search and you should make suggestions for other pages that they might find interesting and helpful.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

You have a social media campaign for your business and you feel that it is unique and much better than the campaigns of all of the other businesses around you. What makes your campaign special and successful?

There are many possible characteristics that can contribute to the success of your campaign. When you are involved with social media marketing for your business, you are creating a buzz about your offerings and more and more people will want to buy what you are selling. Please see some valuable tips below:

• The viral quality: Successful social media campaigns spread very quickly. If your campaign is not spreading quickly, it is not effective. A good way to gauge the potential success of your campaign is to try a micro campaign. It is much easier to test the effectiveness on a small scale than to jump in with both feet in a grand manner without testing the waters first.
   
• Value: An effective social media campaign is one that provides value to other people. There are several ways to provide value; among them is sharing important and useful information that solves the problems of the people with whom you connect.
   
• Quality: It is extremely important to not only share information but to make sure that the information that you are sharing is of high quality. Remember to continually share original content. It is a very bad idea to keep recycling the same content over and over again.
   
• Good branding: Your campaign should “sing” your brand. You should use your logo, tagline, colors, and any and all other aspects of your brand in facets of your campaign. If you should happen to include videos in your campaign, make sure that your brand is on them also.
   
• Metrics: It is critical that you keep track of your social media campaign efforts and the results that they produce. It is very important that you pay close attention to the analytics on a regular basis. You should constantly strive to improve upon what you have to produce better and better results.
   
• High-quality content: You need to make sure that the content that you offer is always very well written and grammatically sound. The most sensible approach is to have the writing be simple and to use short sentences.
   
• No hard sell: The point of your campaign is not to sell your products and/or services. It is to establish and maintain relationships and to provide valuable information to other people. Others will start to trust you and feel that you have strong credibility if you use this approach. Interacting with others is the way that you will strengthen those relationships and eventually, your business will become more and more successful.
   
• Innovation: In order for your campaign to be successful, you need to get people to notice you and your business. If your campaign is dull and boring, nobody will pay attention. You need to make sure that your social media campaign has your unique voice, which is genuine, exciting, creative, and touches them in some way.
   
• Listen hard: Feedback is essential to the success of your business and your social media campaign. A lot of people have something to say that is valuable for your business and you have a responsibility to listen to them. It is an important part of your relationships to express appreciation for the feedback that people go out of their way to give you. If you are not able to respond to them immediately, you need to acknowledge their feedback and tell them that you will get back to them soon with a more comprehensive response.
   
• Good organization: Even before you start your campaign, you need to plan the strategy. You should know your entire strategy before you start step 1 of the process. You must go in sequential order and not skip anything. You originally created the plan in a certain order for a reason. Deviating is not a good idea.
   
• The human touch: When it comes to marketing through social media, it is not a good idea to count on automation. You are building and maintaining relationships with humans, not robots. In order to successful continue to do that, you need to be directly involved. Your relationships will not grow themselves.
   
• Consistency: Your campaign must always be consistent. It is vitally important to publish content on a consistent and regular basis. Whichever schedule you choose, it is important to stay with it consistently.
   
• Enticement: In order to convert visitors to customers, you need to convince them that you have something that they need. You can lay the groundwork with incentives such as free eBooks, free products, white papers, free vouchers, free samples, etc.
   
• Blog: Before you do anything with your campaign, it is a good idea to have a blog for your business. Your blog should be the focal point of your campaign. It is helpful if you have social media sharing buttons on your blog so that other people can share your blog content.
   
• Discrimination: It is very important to be discriminating when it comes to your campaign. If you are connected to too many social media channels, your campaign will not be successful and you will get burned out.
   
• Different types of marketing: Social media marketing plus traditional marketing work together to make your business more and more successful. Just as you have put your brand everywhere possible, you can put your brand on products such as t-shirts and mugs. The more exposure your business gets the better.
   
• A Call to Action: Another extremely important element to a successful social media campaign is the Call to Action. The Call to Action is the way for your visitors to connect with you on a deeper level after reading what you are offering initially.

Conclusion

More and more businesses are involved with some sort of social media campaign nowadays. One of the most important reasons is that there is no cost involved. Traditional marketing, on the other hand, can be quite expensive at times. Additionally, social media marketing allows you to interact easily with your potential customers and existing customers. Businesses are experiencing an extremely high return on investment (ROI) for the effort that is put forth.

As you know, there are many different elements that are involved in a successful social media campaign. If you feel that your campaign is not working as effectively as you would like it to work, use the tips that are mentioned here and you will see that more people will be drawn to you and your business and you will start to enjoy greater and greater success.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

"Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life.” — Rachel Carson. Social media has made sure that people will never be alone. There is always a way to connect to others.

Many business people regard social media as unexplored and mysterious territory. There is a vast volume of content that is being offered up online on a very regular basis. It may seem difficult at times to sort through the massive amount of content in order to find the gems that are really valuable.

The actuality is that social media marketing is a lot more straightforward than you might think. Basically, social media takes ideas that have already been presented to the world and presents them in a new way. The ideas are not new. Only the method or approach is new. In essence, social media is based on some very simple activities or techniques. They are:

• Listening: When you listen (really listen), you are embracing information that will keep you on top of what is happening in your industry or niche. You pay attention to what your competitors are doing, which trends are important to follow, which new products and services might help you in your business, what is going on with pricing, and of utmost importance, what people are saying about you and your business.

The concept of listening is certainly not new. Business people have been listening since the beginning of time. They have used a large number of tools to help them listen more effectively and efficiently, such as conversations with vendors, reading trade publications, analysts’ reports, trade association newsletters, seminars and other sources.

With the popularity of social media, your listening skills have become better because it is now easier to talk to people about your business and you have many more and newer tools with which to listen.

One very effect that social media has caused to happen is the elimination of a great deal of the negative feelings that existed in communications with customers. In the old way, people would write and mail letters to companies if they had a complaint about a product and/or service. That took a great deal of time and effort. However, with the advent of social media, it is much easier and quicker for customers to express their opinions, as well as people being able to reach many more people.

• Networking: Business people have been networking forever. Networking has always been an extremely important way to meet people and start to build relationships for business. For a very long time, all of the networking was in the form of face-to-face meetings, at conferences, forums, seminars and a myriad of other industry events.

Face-to-face networking should not be replaced with online social networking. Both types of networking are important and one complements the other. Everything that is connected to social media seems to happen much more quickly than when it is real time. The beauty of establishing and maintaining relationships with people through the Internet is that you are not limited to a specific geographic area. You can interact with people anywhere and everywhere.

Regular networking etiquette applies whether you are networking online or in person. You introduce yourself, ask the other person what they do, try to contribute something interesting and valuable to the conversation, etc. Just don’t try to give them a hard sell.

Also remember that your approach to social media networking is not the same as your approach to your social media marketing strategy. Your marketing strategy is something that needs to be well thought out and executed carefully. The results will not happen overnight but they will happen. Social media networking will give you immediate gratification but your social media marketing strategy will not.

• Interacting: After you have successfully networked, you will want to interact with your fellow networkers. When people interact, they are starting to get to know each other better, gathering more information about one another and asking questions. Interacting used to be done over the phone traditionally. Over the last two decades, the phone has been replaced with Email.

Social media makes interacting with other people easier than in the past. It is very simple to answer questions from customers and potential customers and customers who haven’t even reached the stage of being potential customers yet. When you respond to questions, you are providing many people with instant gratification. When people interact, they discuss matters that are important to them and topics of interest to them. Many times, that includes speaking about products and services that are on the market, including yours.

• Engaging people: Engaging people online is a vital part of your success with social media channels. An excellent way to engage people is to end your content with a provoking question. You can even be the first to answer your own question to get things moving. You will see that people are interested in the discussion and everyone will want to give their two cents.

Conclusion

It is critical for all businesses to keep up with social media and what people are saying, feeling and buying. Any business that chooses to ignore social media and connectivity with other businesses will not be around for a very long time. Social media isn’t really mysterious at all. It is exciting, highly effective, and wonderfully compelling but it is not mysterious.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

When you are choosing your online marketing strategy and executing that strategy, you need to make sure to really give it a fair chance at succeeding. The success or your strategy and marketing flow won’t happen overnight.

There are numerous online marketing strategies that you can use to grow your business and to attract people to your website and to what you are offering. You need to remember that the secret to making a success of any strategy that you choose is persistence and consistency. A very positive aspect of online marketing is that your customer base is much larger than it would be with traditional marketing. You must keep in mind that whichever online marketing strategy you choose will take some time until you see results.

Just like all forms of marketing, Internet marketing takes time before you start to see results. There are many elements that go into a successful online marketing strategy (article marketing, social networking, blogging, etc) and they are all very important and essential to the success of your online marketing strategy.

The following steps, which are easy to follow, will help you to increase your marketing flow, assist you in increasing your website traffic and will help to convert your business prospects into customers.

It is recommended that you choose a few Internet marketing techniques that work best for your business and make sure that you use them consistently. You will need to use them on a regular schedule (a specific number of times each week). If you aren’t yet sure if the techniques that you have chosen are the most effective for your business, it is recommended that you try them out for three months and then decide whether you will go with them on a permanent basis.

At the end of the three-month period, you should analyze the results in order to identify which strategies were most effective and successful. If they were successful and effective, you should continue with them and also add others that you think might add to the success of your online marketing strategy.

• Driving traffic to your website: In order to drive traffic to your website, you should be do article marketing, social networking, blogging, podcasting, etc. You will need to get involved in techniques that will result in more traffic being driven to your website. You must ensure that whatever techniques you use are effective in communicating to your readers that you are the one who will be able to solve their problem(s).

  It is recommended that you choose a few Internet marketing techniques that work best for your business and make sure that you use them consistently. You will need to use them on a regular schedule (a specific number of times each week). If you aren’t yet sure if the techniques that you have chosen are the most effective for your business, it is recommended that you try them out for three months and then decide whether you will go with them on a permanent basis.

  At the end of the three-month period, you should analyze the results in order to identify which strategies were most effective and successful. If they were successful and effective, you should continue with them and also add others that you think might add to the success of your online marketing strategy.

• Enticing visitors to continue visiting your website: Once you have gotten visitors interested in your website, you need to keep the relationships going. A good way to entice your visitors is to have a box on every page where they can sign up with you. You can offer them an incentive, such as a free item (product or service) in exchange for their name and Email address. It is vitally important that you automate this process.

• Converting your visitors into customers: After your visitors have agreed to sign up on your website, you need to continue to maintain contact with them. A great way to accomplish this is to send them a newsletter that you publish on a regular basis. A good format to follow for your newsletter is:
  • A personal note from you
  • The promotion of a new event or product
  • A feature article (this is the main section of your newsletter)
  • A section titled “About You”
  • A section where you make recommendations and/or a section titled “Market Place”

The majority of your newsletter content should be valuable content and a small amount should be reserved for promotion of your business’s products and services. It is imperative that you send out your newsletter on a very regular basis. There may be other ways in which you would like to stay in touch with your prospective clients, with the hope of converting them to actual clients at some point in the near future. Whichever methods you choose, the newsletter should also be included.

Conclusion

The few recommended steps that have been discussed here will help you to attract visitors to your website, compel those visitors to want to become loyal to you and your business and eventually take the leap from prospect to customer. Networking with other people is a tried and true form of human communication. Social networking offers endless possibilities for relationships and for education.

The more buzz you create surrounding your offerings, the more successful you and your business will become. Another benefit is that once you have turned your prospects into loyal customers, they will tell other people about your products and services and those people will also become loyal customers.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

People think that a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) consultant can get you top rankings in the search engines because you pay him or her to do so. There really is no guarantee of that. Blogging, however, can make a difference.

Increase your search engine rankings

A much better, less expensive and more effective thing to do is to blog to increase your SEO rankings. An SEO consultant will basically get you started with getting to know the appropriate technology and/or he or she will help you to identify the most effective keywords that you should be targeting. You can just as easily learn how to do all of that on your own.

When it comes to learning the technology, if you begin using a good-quality blogging and content system and you add a few popular plugins that will enhance the basic system, you will be on your way to creating effective and useful content that you will be able to share with many other people and that will increase your rankings in the search engines.

Give of your time

The most significant investment that you will be making is your time. If you are able to set aside a few hours a week to post some helpful news items or your opinions on timely and relevant subjects in which you are an expert and do it on a consistent basis, you will see positive results before you know it.

It is not necessary to post lengthy blogs, in fact, other people often have no patience or time to read long pieces. The more relevant the material that you post, the greater your chances will be of moving up in the search engine rankings.

Whatever you are selling, people will always appreciate tips and advice that they can relate to and that will help them to solve their problems. A good way to start to reach out to people in an effective manner is to search online for questions to which you know the answers.

Blog commenting

When you search, you should look for mentions of problems on other people’s blogs, Facebook and Twitter pages and message boards. When you post a comment that addresses one of the problems, you should always include a link back to your blog. Make sure that your comments are well thought out and always try to contribute as much value to the conversation as you can (above and beyond merely posting a link).

The more you comment on other people’s blogs and the more you encourage them to comment on your blogs, the more valuable content will be generated and the more traffic will come to your website. This, in turn, will positively contribute to increasing your rankings in the search engines. When you are looking for blogs on which to comment, you should go with blogs with a high volume of traffic with relevant content that will, in turn, give you a large amount of traffic right away or strong PR blog comments that will allow you to leave SEO optimized anchor text. You should use your blog comments to increase website traffic as well as offsite SEO back links.

Helping others

Remember that you should always put the needs of the people with whom you are connecting online above your own needs. Connecting online (through blogging or in other ways) is not about direct self-promotion. It is about finding ways to help other people, building new relationships and maintaining relationships that already exist and interacting with people on a consistent and frequent basis.

Another very positive way in which blogging will help increase your search engine rankings and your website traffic is by providing fresh content on a regular basis. When you do this, you are keeping your readers updated on everything that is going on and you will be creating an interest in them that will hopefully last for a very long time.

Conclusion

If you always show people that you are more interested in helping them than you are in helping yourself, they will want to continue to build a relationship with you and eventually, they will also be interested in buying what you are selling. Your blog articles should always offer useful and meaningful information that tries to satisfy the needs of your readers. As the relationship develops, your readers will trust you (because they have already gotten to know you well) and find you to have impeccable credibility.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.