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.

These days, many people are beginning to understand the potential use of social media to create event buzz. Whether the occasion is large or small, it can be enhanced tremendously through online communication.

With the popularity of social media, everything is different now. Social media allows planners and the organizations sponsoring the events the opportunity to have long-term interactions with the attendees well in advance.

Events have become much more exciting and part of that excitement is the anticipation or buzz that starts to build around the event long before it ever takes place. There are many ways to create buzz, and several of them will be discussed here.

• Intrigue your attendees: The vast majority of events have a website. However, not very many take advantage of the event management opportunities and free listings that are available to them. At the very least, you should have event pages on your website:
  • Facebook events
  • LinkedIn
  • Eventbrite.com – Eventbrite allows you to sell tickets, if that is something that you want to do
  • Meetup.com
  • Upcoming.yahoo.com

  Granted, it is a little more work to watch over all of the pages, however, it will be well worth it for you and the people who are going to your website. Additionally, another distinct advantage is that the search engines will recognize the pages and rank them.
   

• Engage your attendees: You should reach out to your potential attendees very early on. A good way to effectively accomplish this is by sending out a survey and asking for their opinions on a venue that you are considering choosing for the event, speakers that you are thinking about inviting, etc. Another way that you might want to engage your potential attendees is by asking their opinions on content topics. After you have been able to gather several topics for the content, you can ask your potential attendees to vote on the topics.
   
• Inform your attendees: It is a good idea to allow your attendees to vote on certain aspects of your event. It is a great deal more efficient and “green” than using a lot of paper. Another type of document that you can offer online is the program evaluation. There is no need to put that on paper.
   
• Integrate information: Once you are on site, you will have a wonderful opportunity to leverage social media in a really big way. The impact will be huge and people will start to buzz about what you are doing. You will need a hashtag for your event so that people who will be attending can monitor the event on Twitter. The shorter the hashtag the better. After that, you should tweet about your event, which will start to get your attendees excited and really motivated.
   
• Syndicate: You should take all of the content from the event and syndicate it as much as possible. Your ultimate goal is to entice people who did not attend your event to want to come to the next event, based on reading your content. Of course, you also want to get those people who did attend to come back next time. You can syndicate all of the event presentations as well as giving Twitter transcripts to all of the event attendees. You can also post the content on your event pages (which were discussed earlier on).
   
• Propagate: It is a great idea to take photos of your event (or have someone else take them) and upload and share them with people who were not able to attend the event. As an incentive, you can offer a prize for the best photo taken. You can also do a podcast after the event has finished and interviews of the speakers, attendees and sponsors. You should try to learn from the event to improve future events and connect with even more people as well as interacting with people who had questions for you.
   
• Blogs: Get bloggers to blog about your event and you can syndicate their blogs using a blog widget.

Conclusion

There are so many ways to create buzz about your event. The harder you work on letting people know what you will be offering and how you can involve them in some of the decisions that will go into making the event interesting, exciting, and buzz-worthy, the more positive their reactions will be and the more attendees you will gather.

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.

“All the words I use in my stories can be found in the dictionary – it’s just a matter of arranging them into the right sentences.” Somerset Maugham. As a business person with an online presence, you write for the Web.

It doesn’t really matter which type of business you are in. If you have a website and/or a blog (which the majority of business people do nowadays), you either write the content yourself or you have someone else write the content for you. So, how do you get your web writing to stay consistent and compelling over time?

Which style guide should you follow?

The answers that you get to that question will vary, depending on whom you ask. There are several style guidelines to which web writers defer. Among them are the Associated Press (AP) Stylebook and the much newer Yahoo! Style Guide: The Ultimate Sourcebook for Writing, Editing, and Creating Content for the Digital World.

It is interesting to understand the differences between the style guides and the motivation behind why Yahoo felt compelled to release a style guide when AP has been considered the “gold standard” for such a long time, including the approach on a large number of commonly used online terms. The bottom line for you as a writer is that if you have integrity about the content that you are offering to others, you still care about editing, attribution and the assurance of reliable and credible sources of information.

Yahoo says that their style guide is different because it offers guidelines exclusively for writing on the web and that it discusses web-related topics, including topics on how to help people optimize web pages. The big question is whether AP and Yahoo can work together successfully to truly help people to write their web content and not confuse anyone.

The Associated Press and Yahoo style guides both offer useful guidance for everyone who consults them. The combination of the two books gives comprehensive advice on traditional writing as well as optimization for the web. People may be inclined to go to the AP Style Guide more often because it offers broader guidelines for the English language, grammar, punctuation and usage. The Yahoo style guide, on the other hand, targets a much narrower audience and focuses on the particular needs of certain writers.

Some people are of the opinion that the Yahoo style guide is not necessary because people have deferred to AP for such a long time. However, it is important to think in a more flexible and open-minded manner with the popularity of social media and peoples’ heavy involvement with online communications.

Which style guide should you consider the “gold standard”?

The AP Style Guide has established standards that, if followed, give the writing a journalistic voice, which also works well for the web. Short, clear and concise writing not only appeals to readers of print media but it also appeals to readers of online content. People don’t have the time or the patience to read long, complicated, involved content no matter how it is delivered.

Of course, there is some overlap between the two style guides. The most sensible approach may be to consult the AP style guide first and if there is some issue or question that has not been answered by AP, you should consult Yahoo. In other words, use AP as your primary source and use Yahoo as your secondary source.

Conclusion

Two reputable style guides have been discussed here. Both guides offer valuable advice, with one offering guidance that is more traditional in nature on the whole and one that is more contemporary. They are both essential to achieving consistency in your online writing and in presenting writing that flows, is well written and that appeals to the readers and makes them want to continue reading whatever you and your business offer them.

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.

My mother always told me (even as recently as last week), that if you lie, eventually you will get caught and if you lie often, you will start forgetting what you have said. I believed her when I was little and I believe her now.

"How to trick people into thinking you’re good looking" is a humorous video that illustrates how people can totally change what they really look like and pretend to be somebody that they are not. WARNING: video is for mature audiences only!

My mother's advice can be applied to both personal and professional situations. With the increasing empowerment and sophistication of technology and by leveraging social media marketing, companies are compelled to stay true to their word and their brand promise. If they don’t, the world will hear about it. Many celebrities recently have seen how quickly news spreads when their secrets or indiscretions are revealed. With social media, it is possible to create the illusion that you know what you are talking about and have the experience and expertise to back it up; however, you can’t get away with that forever. Eventually, people will catch on to you.

Social Media has completely changed the landscape in the world of business. It is imperative for business owners and everyone else in a company to understand the impact of these new communications technologies. If they don’t, and they are not completely honest about who they are or what their service offerings are, as soon as one person uncovers the truth, the negative publicity will spread like wild fire thanks to the power of the internet and social media.

The Internet makes it easy for anyone to portray themselves as anyone they want. The term “expert” is one that has been adopted by many yet not everyone is truly an “expert.” If you promote yourself as someone who you are not, rest assured – eventually – your deceit will be discovered.

Recently, it seems as though a large number of people are branding themselves as coaches. Coaching certification is relatively easy to obtain. However, merely by being a certified coach does not necessarily make you qualified and experienced enough to really help other people.

It might not be immediate, but if you are creating a perception, as soon as one person discovers that you are not what you say you are, they will share it with someone else, either online, offline or both. The next person will tell someone else and before you know it, the truth will become common knowledge.

In this age of transparency, don’t pretend to be someone who you are not because the real you will eventually become evident and you will be exposed.

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.