It is not good enough if you just have good ideas. You need to be able to express those ideas well. The expression is a close second to the ideas themselves. It is generally a good idea, if possible, to have another person edit your content in addition to you. As good as the writing may be, the writer will inevitably miss something in his or her blog content because he or she knows what the content is supposed to say and may miss errors.

The following are important reasons why you need to edit your blog postings:

• Correcting typos: Correcting typos is obvious for most people. If you leave typos in your blog content, you will start to lose a large percentage of your audience and you will also lose your credibility with those visitors who don’t leave right away. Those visitors who decide to stay and thus, remain loyal to you, deserve better than content that is less than perfect.
• Writing with your readers in mind: Once you have written your blog post, step back from it for a day and then read it again. There are always ways that you will be able to improve upon what you wrote yesterday.
• Adding more images: Sometimes it is difficult to find the perfect image for your content. Images are really inconsequential when it comes to rankings in the search engines and thus does not really affect your volume of traffic. However, images really help to make blog postings attractive to visitors, which will make them want to keep reading.
• Only regenerating old blog postings: It is understandable that constantly writing original (and fresh) content can be difficult, depending on how often you post. It is acceptable to recycle content sometimes (of course, you need to make sure that the articles that you are recycling haven’t been used in several months) but you also need to make the effort to come up with new ideas to incorporate into your blog postings.
• Optimizing search engine visibility: It is probably safe to assume that one of your goals in business is to drive more traffic to your website. That certainly is a great argument for editing your blog postings before you publish them. You can track the reason why people visit your blog through analytics. Your keywords are essential and if you have errors, the visitors will not be able to find you.
• Incorporating feedback from your visitors: If you write interesting and quick (and error free) blog postings, you will eventually get comments from some of your visitors. You may want to include the comments that you receive from your visitors in subsequent blog postings. Sometimes, your visitors’ comments may inspire a whole new blog posting. In other cases, you may want to incorporate visitors’ comments into already-existing blog postings.
• Creating permanently valuable blog content: Once you have created blog content, it will exist forever. Although online content can be edited or tweaked as much as you like, if well written, it should have a lasting effect on those who read it. Enticing visitors to visit your website is the most difficult part of the process so you want to make sure that once the visitors decide to spend the time on your website; their visit is as wonderful as possible. Additionally, it is very important to make sure that your visitors see relevant content if they are directed to any material that has been archived from links on your website.

Conclusion

Hopefully, you now understand why editing your blog postings before you post them or going back and carefully editing older blog postings is so important. It strengthens your credibility and reputation online and makes a strong statement on how much you care about the quality of what you are sharing with others.

Please remember that editing is necessary for all writing. It doesn’t matter if you are an experienced writer or a new writer. It doesn’t matter if you write technical papers or novels. All types of written word must be edited.

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.

Facebook fan pages can be seen by people who are not registered and are indexed accordingly. Facebook groups can only be accessed by people who are accepted members of the group. Facebook groups permit you to send out mass invitations. Facebook fan pages will inevitably force you to send out some invitations manually.

Thus, if you are trying to do viral marketing, Facebook groups are definitely a better way to go.

Let us compare Facebook fan pages with Facebook groups in more detail.

Facebook fan pages are usually better for long-term relationships with your fans, customers and readers. Facebook groups are usually better for leading a quick and active discussion, which will attract a lot of quick attention.

Because of security reasons and limitations of size (only Facebook groups of under 5,000 members can send out Email blasts), Facebook groups are set up for more personal interaction. They also help you to focus on your interests. Facebook groups are also directly connected to the administrator of that particular group, which means that whatever goes on in the group could potentially reflect on you personally. Facebook pages don’t list the administrators and are considered as a single entity, an extension of your personal actions.

In Facebook groups, as long as the group has fewer than 5,000 members, the administrators can send messages that the group members will receive in their inboxes. Facebook pages administrators can send messages through “Page” to fans. Those updates will appear in the Updates section of the fans’ inboxes. You can send updates to as many fans as you wish, without limitation.

There is no automatic way to post content (photos, stories, or video) to Facebook groups. It has to be done manually. If you happen to have a blog and want to display the content of the blog, Facebook groups do not have the capability to pull the feed. With Facebook fan pages, you have more freedom as far as content generation is concerned.

With Facebook fan pages, you have the discussion board, video and photo uploads, and wall that the Facebook groups have. Additionally, you can import a blog feed, which gives the impression that your content is fresh. There are also many applications that you can add to your Facebook fan page, such as quizzes, for example.

Conclusion

Facebook groups are wonderful for organization on a personal level and for small interactions around a specific cause. Facebook pages work better for brands and businesses that want to connect with their customers without their being connected to a personal account. Both Facebook fan pages and Facebook groups are valuable and whichever one you choose for your business, make sure to get to know them as well as possible and use them to their full potential.

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.

Twitter is actually difficult to describe. It doesn’t have any tangible product direction or primary use behind it. Although Twitter is extremely relevant as a business tool in this age when social media is all the rage, it is not easy to explain. Twitter doesn’t have too many rules; however, one rule that it does have is that your tweets (messages on Twitter) cannot be any longer than 140 characters each.

Twitter is a great way to share thoughts, news and other interesting tidbits of information. It is perfect if you want to engage a whole group of people and give them the benefit of what you are saying. A great way to share your ideas and other valuable information is by adding links to your tweets. Because of the limit of 140 characters, you can put in shortened links, which will allow you to post a longer tweet. There are services such as tinyurl.com, cli.gs and bit.ly that can help you to accomplish this.

Twitter is an amazing source for people connections, unifying those with similar interests who want to bring about social change and work on worthy causes. Twitter has tremendous search capabilities. It not only searches the text of tweets but can also scan (or crawl) the links that are included in the tweets and index the results.

The Twitter search results include millions of web pages. Twitter also has the same capability as Google with regard to indexing pages. However, the one difference is that Twitter is faster than Google because tweets are sent so rapidly (as opposed to web pages, which take time to build).

Twitter search capabilities are very sophisticated. Twitter has a reputation of being a ranking system, among other things. That is to say that when the Twitter user searches on a popular topic (one that has its own link in the Twitter.com sidebar), Twitter considers the reputation of the author of each tweet and rank search results are based on that, in part.

Twitter is customizable. In other words, Twitter is whatever you want it to be. When people express that they are still trying to figure Twitter out or trying to adjust to it, it is because of this intangible concept. Once you create an account on Twitter, you are, unfortunately, left with the task of trying to figure out how to use it to its full potential.

There are many things that you can do with Twitter that won’t cost you anything.

• Provide updates on your products and services for your Twitter followers
• Offer your Twitter fans valuable information
• Offer scheduled information. You can send it out daily, weekly, or monthly
• Follow other experts in many different industries so that you can provide fresh information to your followers
• Post last-minute promotional deals to your fans on Twitter
• Have your tweets retweeted by organizations that have very large numbers of followers.

When you first look at Twitter, it seems as though it is just a large bunch of random thoughts. It is actually much more than that. Some of the positive ways that you can use Twitter are to:

• Allow clients and colleagues to get to know you as a person
• Show your intelligence, wit, charm and charisma
• Open up communication channels between the public and your organization
• Seek out and find new partners, members, clients and volunteers

One of the most important reasons to use Twitter for business is that you can learn what people think. You can receive instant feedback on anything and from anywhere. You might want to look at Twitter as a social news channel where you can gather news from everyone. Your news will come directly from the source in real time.

You choose who is important to you and your business. You choose whom you want to influence you. You can choose to follow people who give something of value to you. Remember, you need to listen before you speak. A great deal of listening is very beneficial when it comes to Twitter.

You might ask why other people use Twitter. Some people use Twitter to find information that they don’t feel they can find anywhere else. Sometimes, the search results are incredible. People use Twitter to continually learn new information on a variety of subjects that interest them. Twitter is also used to build relationships.

Another thing to remember is that when you use Twitter, you are greatly increasing your chances of being found by the search engines.

Twitter is used for commercial and personal reasons. Now that Twitter is in the mainstream, with all of its tentacles reaching as far into society as it does, it is not going anywhere anytime soon.

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.

Getting people to trust you is one of the biggest challenges that you will ever have in your business. It isn’t uncommon for you to have many meetings before a level of trust is established. It takes a very long time to build trust in relationships but without it, you will not get anywhere.

Once you have initially connected in face-to-face networking meetings, you should use social media to build on those relationships that you have established. In the past, there were many networking groups that only allowed one person from each industry.

You would build relationships with the network members and give them referrals. That allowed you to remain in the group. The way that you acquired referrals was by contacting the members of your online communities.

Now, with social media having such a strong presence, your network and your group of friends are often in the same industry. This allows you to learn from each other and to share common interests.

As you work on growing your networks and groups of friends, some of the people whom you include are leaders in your industry. If you read the blogs of industry leaders and follow them, you are strengthening your knowledge and, at the same time, you are anticipating that the industry leaders are going to notice you and will want to connect with you on a more personal level.

If you expect to build relationships, you need to get to know people and allow them to get to know you. Bear in mind, of course, that you need to accomplish this in a way that is not overbearing and also benefits their network and yours.

There are many ways in which you can build better relationships.

• Hone your listening skills: If you don’t listen, you will never be able to place yourself in the other person’s shoes. The first step to being able to do that is to really listen to what they want and need.
• Provide feedback: After you have listened to the needs of the other person, you can provide him or her with valuable feedback. Communicate that you understand how he or she feels. It may be helpful if you tell a story that demonstrates a similar experience that you had.
• Make sure that you are available: If you let people know that you are available, they will want to come to you to solve their issues. Give them the understanding that your door is always open and always take the time to hear what they have to say. This builds trust and strengthens the relationship.
• Look at profiles: People put information in their profiles that they feel is important to them. Make the effort to really pay attention to what they have in their profiles and comment on it when you speak with them.
• Be where they are: If you want to connect with certain people online, make sure that you frequent the same places that they do. The only way to truly evaluate whether they fit into your network is to be connected to them on the social media sites that they are a part of. You want to be able to know what they are sharing with their followers. Form a group and make them a part of it. Show that you are interested in what they have to say.
• Share other people’s information: If the people with whom you connect write blog postings, repost them. If they have links to other articles in their blog posts, make sure that you read them. If you feel that you have something worthwhile to say, comment on their posts. Your comments don’t have to be long. They just have to be meaningful. If you have a question that will open up a good discussion, ask it.
• Reach out to others: You don’t need to spend hours online to have meaningful conversations. If one of the people with whom you want to build a relationship needs help with something that you know something about, respond to them. Try to help them as much as you can.
• Be interesting: Try to isolate your own distinction. Communicate what makes you and your business special and different than everyone else. Make people want to get to know you.
• Meet people face to face: If one of your connections is giving a presentation at an event, try to attend the event. Wait to speak with him/her after the crowd has died down at the end of the presentation. He or she will appreciate you effort of waiting to connect in person.
• Demonstrate respect for his or her space and time: You can theoretically be connected to social media 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Having a strong sense of when the people you want to connect with are around is very important. If you notice that they are more active earlier in the day, it is probably best to try to reach them during the time when you know they are active.
• Be sincere: Understand that not everyone is going to like you. Never pretend to be someone you are not just to try and fit in. It takes time to build relationships. You need to be patient. Your patience will pay off and eventually you will have a solid relationship with those whom you pursue.

Social media allows you to reach out to people and build relationships with them. Sometimes you even build relationships with people whom you have never met in person. You get to know them online and form a strong bond over time.

Relationships are nothing more than two people relating to each other as people. Remember that people do business with people and of course, they will want to do business only with people they trust.

Relationships don’t happen immediately. You build them over time. You also need to be selective about your relationships. Your instincts will let you know if something doesn’t feel right. In this day and age, there are so many great ways to build relationships that are meaningful and fulfilling. Take the time to explore 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.

A proper social media marketing strategy must have a solid foundation, just like any marketing strategy must have. You must be wholly committed to the marketing initiative and the values that you have in your business will either cause the success or failure of your strategy. The values of your social media marketing strategy must include transparency, commitment, a sense of value, relevance, and honesty.

Social media channels are not only intended to self-promote. The content that is posted on social media sites does not have to originate with the website of the person doing the posting. They can post content from other sources as well. Pieces of information can be contributed from all over as long as it is considered valuable and helpful to others.

Remember that social media sites are just that. They are for social purposes, not selling purposes. If you try to give a hard sell, you won’t be successful. People will be put off by you. If you talk about what you are doing with your products and services, people will take an interest, perhaps offer advice and maybe even buy something from you.

There are ways in which you can use social media effectively and ways in which you may not be using it effectively and don’t even realize it.

• When trying to self-promote through social media networks, be ethical: Even if self-promotion is the first and most important reason why people get involved with social media, they must still follow certain rules of behavior. First of all, spamming is always a bad thing. You need to have a unique identity that lets people know who you are as a person and that you are trying to help them by furnishing them with useful, high-quality information.
• Never have more than one profile or identity: If you have more than one account with the same IP address, you run a high risk of getting your profile banned. Of course, that will stop you before you even get started.

The proper way to use social media is not only to take from your readers, followers, etc, but also to give to them. It is not a bad idea to find someone who is really using social media successfully and mimic what they are doing. You will need to give it your own brand (or flavor) but you can use their foundation. You can apply this concept to any niche.

If you are not really making a proper effort to take advantage of social media, you are missing out on valuable insight about your customers. You should be a part of the discussions that are taking place between your customers and others. Get to know them well. One of the most effective ways to have credibility and to be regarded as a subject matter expert is to be an integral part of the discussions that are being generated.

If you are using social media effectively, that means that you are employing an intelligent strategy that is closely connected to real objectives that you carry out consistently over a long time period.

You need to look at your marketing campaign and figure out if what was discussed here is relevant to what you are doing in your business. Some minor adjustments can go a long way in improving how you are leveraging social media and how you are effectively marketing what you have to offer.

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 businesses don’t properly leverage their thank you page to build relationships with their customers and to reinforce their brands. The relationship between a business and its customers goes beyond the website and its content. It continues onto the thank you page and all of the way through to the delivery of the product and/or service to the customer.

Many business people who sell their goods and services forget to say thank you after someone has made a purchase from them. It is a simple gesture that goes a long way. We know that we must say thank you in our personal lives so why do we forget to say thank you in our professional lives?

The customer comes across your website, takes time to look around at what you have to offer and makes a decision to buy something from you, sign up for a whitepaper or register to one of your seminars. What then pops up is an unbranded, somewhat generic default thank you page that leaves the customer feeling rather empty.

Your thank you page is an extremely important tool that you should make full use of when you are trying to connect with your customers.

Re-engage your customers

You should use your thank you page to re-engage your customers by letting them know about your new products and services. You should discretely entice them to indulge in your new offerings and encourage them to return to your website with a coupon for a future purchase.

Because the customer already trusts you enough to buy from you, it will be easy to introduce them to your new products and services. You need to make it very attractive for them by offering some sort of promotion. At the same time, take the opportunity to tell them about offerings that will be available in the near future. You might also want to run a contest or event. You can provide them with a link so that they can participate.

Reinforce your brand

Your thank you page is a wonderful place to reinforce your brand. You can also use the page for marketing messages, commitment and education of your customers. You can provide them with helpful information that they can apply to their own business. You can also offer a free gift. This offering will let your customers know that you have something of increased value for your customers.

The main goal of your thank you page is to leave a lasting impression on your customers. If you make it really unique and very connected to your brand, it will absolutely achieve that goal.

If customers are sent to a thank you page that has the same look and feel as the rest of your website, they will have a feeling of continuity. They will not experience that warm, fuzzy feeling if they are taken to an impersonal, generic thank you page.

A common mistake that many businesses make is that they have a great and extremely effective website, which has great and valuable content and successfully convinces people to sign up for what they are offering. However, their thank you page totally falls short. You should take this opportunity to stand above your competition and leave a strong and long-lasting impression on your customers through your thank you page.

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.

An important occurrence was the building of the bridge between business and traditional marketing practices and social media technologies and communication vehicles. There is much to be learned when reflecting on the various topics surrounding social media.

The value of awareness

There are many people who believe that any publicity (good or bad) is worthwhile. The goal of marketers is to gain brand awareness. That means that the brand is discussed in a positive and complimentary manner. Social media is a tool that reaches out to and serves many.

Building relationships

It is very important to build solid, trusting relationships. The way that you build trust in a relationship is by having a good rapport and by giving valuable information to others. You can deliver value to an entire target audience or you can deliver value one on one. You need to be committed to your audience and when you promise something to them, it is imperative that you follow through.

Brands and social media

Social media has a tremendous impact on consumer and corporate brands. Branding begins as a marketing initiative. A company establishes the image that they want to project to the world. If the brand is accurate, there is a good chance that it will succeed, as long as the business supports the brand consistently with all of its messages. The business needs to live and breathe the brand. Over the years, marketing has not change (conceptually). It is only the tools that have changed.

Social media ROI or social media measurement

Social media is a marketing tool. Marketing and sales are not the same. Marketing strengthens the probability of sales by creating brand awareness and by generating qualified leads. While this is still controversial, the success of marketing should not be tied to the amount of sales that are accomplished.

There are tools to measure the effectiveness of marketing. A sales organization wins sales. However, they need the support of marketing to be successful.

Measuring the value of social media

Measuring the value of social media is the same as measuring marketing. Again, marketing is not equal to sales. Marketing doesn’t result in sales. Marketing increases the number of potential clients (qualified leads). Marketing also increases the probability of closing a sale, while reducing sales cycle time. Before social media existed, people would measure results such as the number of hits to a website, response to a specific call to action and the number of call ins.

Making social media simple

The KISS principle (keep it simple stupid) is an effective one to use when it comes to social media. If you go by the following three concepts, you will find that it works out very well:

• Listen: Listen to what your target audience wants and give it to them, if at all possible.
• Conversations: Once you understand what your target audience wants and how they relate to others online, get them involved in discussions.
• Relationships: Once you have established relationships with your target audience, work on strengthening those relationships. Give them useful information and follow up with them to keep the relationship going.

Social media is all about building relationships with people who value what you are offering. Those relationships may ultimately lead to more business. Social media allows you to have a socialized sales channel.

What companies are looking for in social media

Companies need to leverage the strength and power of social media so that they are able to communicate and converse in a more effective way with their target audience. There are many times when the marketers in a business really understand the importance of being involved with social media but have a difficult time convincing the executives in the business of how important it is that the business buy into it.

If you are nervous about getting involved with social media, just remember that the greatest risk lies in your not getting involved. Your business will eventually become socialized. You should be the one to influence the socialization as much as possible. It is better for the risk of getting involved with social media to be a calculated one.

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.

Not setting up your Twitter profile correctly

Make sure that you have a decent photograph that people can connect with. It is usually the first thing that people look at when they are checking out your profile. Use your real name in the name section. People like to address you by your actual name when they are reaching out to you. Your Twitter profile should contain searchable keywords. This will make it easier for other people to find you.

Not following up

Make sure to follow up with people who tweet you. It won’t take you more than a few minutes a day and it is well worth it because you will be building relationships. If someone retweets your tweets, thank them. You should try to retweet their tweets whenever possible also. That will help to strengthen your relationships.

There are certain words that you should never put in your profile.

• “Guru”: You should never advertise yourself in that manner. Humbleness is a much wiser way to go. People will respect you more in the long run.
• “Social media expert”: Very few people can actually call themselves a social media expert. The field is too new. There is a small percentage that has a lot of knowledge of social media. The rest of the people know how to use Twitter and have acquired a lot of followers. That doesn’t make them experts.
• “Affiliate Marketing”: Affiliate marketing is a great online strategy for making money. However, most people would not be inclined to follow someone who has “affiliate marketing” on their profile.
• “Make money online”: The main reason that people are on Twitter is to communicate with other people. It is not right to push the hard sell on Twitter.
• “Increase your number of followers”: People generally are annoyed by being told who to follow or to follow random people. People choose to follow other people with whom they have some connection, whether it is that they share the same niche or they have some common interests, etc.

Not connecting with people

You need to connect with people. A good way to start connecting is by asking questions. Make sure that you also pay attention to the answers to your questions. Another good way to connect with people is by answering their questions. People will appreciate your answers and you will gain credibility in their eyes. You should try to retweet whenever the opportunity arises. Remember, of course to give credit to the source when you retweet.

Go beyond only answering the question “What are you doing?” in your tweets.

Nobody has an interest in when you get up to use the bathroom, when you have a snack, what movie you are watching, and which piece of furniture you chose to sit on today. If that is all you tweet about on Twitter, you probably won’t have too many followers. The subject matter is not all that interesting. You should tweet about things that would interest you if they were coming from someone else. You should share interesting tidbits.

Don’t exclusively promote your blog or your business.

You can feel free to discuss your blog and your business but you should tweet about other things too. If people are following you, they are interested in what you have to say. However, just watch the intensity of that. You need to mix up the discussions to keep them fresh. Inundating your followers with links means that you are thinking of yourself instead of them. You want to avoid that.

Don’t tweet the same thing more that once a day

If you tweet the same thing more than once a day, there is a good chance of your followers (or at least some of them) reading it more than once a day. It can get very annoying very quickly.

Don’t tweet private or sensitive information

Never assume that what you tweet won’t be seen by any one and all of your followers. In fact, assume that it will. If you want to keep something private, keep it far away from social media.

Don’t auto follow

You are under no obligation to follow someone just because they follow you. You should follow people who interest you and who you feel you have a connection with. Auto following is a good way to end up with a list of Twitter connections that is totally out of control.

Don’t tweet without checking for typos and grammar and punctuation errors

People are very put off if you constantly have mistakes in what you write. It demonstrates a lack of focus and inattention to detail, which can translate into other areas. A simple way to avoid most mistakes is to use spell check. Your followers will thank you.

Don’t use Twitter like Facebook

You need to pay more attention to Twitter than you do to Facebook. You can check your Facebook account once a day and it will probably be sufficient. Twitter, on the other hand, needs more tender loving care than that. If you are really interested in using Twitter to its full potential, you should tweet as much as possible. It is important to keep your followers engaged.

Twitter is a great social media network with a great deal of potential. The more you use it, the more adept you will become at getting the most out it. It truly has a great deal to give.

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.

Incomplete profile

Everyone knows that if you want to be a part of social media, you need to create an account. Additionally, you need to complete your profile. Leaving your profile incomplete is a huge mistake.

An incomplete profile not only makes you look unprofessional but it also takes away the possibility of other business associates being able to know you and your company better.

You need to make sure that you complete your profile and take advantage of all of the features that are offered to you. Make sure that you attach a photo to your profile and add appropriate links so that your visitors get a good sense of your company’s branding.

New content

If you just let your social media accounts sit and don’t continually contribute fresh ideas by way of content, your followers will lose interest in your website very quickly. That is the best way to be crossed off of a visitor’s list of people and businesses to pay attention to.

You need to understand the appropriate frequency of posting new content to your website. The frequency depends on several factors. It depends on how strong your followers feelings are for your company, how appealing your offerings are and how much credible content you are posting on your website.

Not having a blog

Having a blog is very important because it generates a lot of valuable content and it promotes discussions between you and your followers. Blogging is a very important way of engaging your followers and getting them to learn more about you. Make sure that you pay close attention to your followers and respond to them when they ask you a question or make a comment.

Your blog is a wonderful way to connect business relationships that hopefully will lead to more business for you. The exchange of business ideas can be very fruitful.

Not having a consistent image or branding

Your branding is totally a part of your social media platforms. Your social media platforms need to communicate your brand image at all times. Your image needs to have a consistent look and feel and it needs to be memorable to your clients (current clients and potential clients). The style that you communicate needs to be consistent with your overall online strategy.

Although each social media strategy is different, the foundation of what you are trying to communicate should be a constant. Each social media platform is different so you need to make subtle changes in each one without losing your overall message.

Separation of business and personal accounts

Your clients certainly are not interested in your personal life. You can have many accounts on each social media platform so please take advantage of that. Make sure that there is a clear delineation between your business and personal accounts.

Large quantities of friends

One of the most exciting aspects of social media networks is that you can be connected to so many people. You need to pace yourself when it comes to acquiring friends. You may come across as insincere if you try to connect with too many people at once.

You should choose only people who have a business connection with you and only people with whom you have a genuine connection (whether you have met them online or in person). Always choose quality over quantity.

You should choose people who believe in what you are offering and will tell others about it. In turn, you should treat them the same way. You should make a huge effort to help them by telling others about their offerings. Solid relationships are just as important in business as they are in your personal life.

Personal opinions in your business accounts

You should never post political opinions, or any personal opinions, for that matter, on your business account. Your business account is certainly not an appropriate forum for you to make your political feelings known.

Those types of subjects have the potential to offend others and ultimately, that can hurt your business. Consider that if you wouldn’t bring up certain subjects when you are with your clients, you shouldn’t post them on your social media platforms.

Being aggressive

You need to regard every person who is following you online as a potential client. In other words, you need to be discreet about how you promote your products and services to them. Before you can market directly to your followers, you need to build relationships with them. They need to trust you and feel that you are credible.

It is never a good idea to directly ask your followers after they have just become your followers to buy what you are selling. You won’t have any relationship foundation yet and there would not be a reason yet why they would buy from you.

Posting and deleting

If you post something that you feel you shouldn’t have posted, don’t delete it. You really can’t make it go away anyway because the search engines have a record of it the second you post it. If you try to delete it, you may be drawing more attention to the post than you wanted, which defeats your purpose.

The best approach is to leave it as is and post a new comment clarifying what you meant to say or correcting the original post. Of course, the best thing to do is always to think before you post so that you avoid this situation.

Spamming

Never spam. If you inundate your followers with unwanted or automated messages, they will become annoyed and you may acquire a reputation as a spammer. Some of the social media channels allow you to send updates to your account automatically.

That is great; however, you need to be cognizant of the impression that you will be creating if those are the only posts that you have. You may come off as impersonal, which will completely defeat your purpose of trying to create a warm atmosphere of valuable information and stimulating discussions.

Not measuring your impact

Since you have put such a great deal of effort into your social media strategy, you will certainly want to measure the impact that it is having on others. You should decide up front what sort of a return you want from your social media strategy.

Maybe you are looking for increased buzz about your products and/or services. Maybe you are looking for increased brand awareness. Maybe you are looking for increased traffic to your website.

You should decide exactly what you want before you implement your strategy and monitor it closely.

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 start to look into why your website is ineffective, you start to discover that not only are you not increasing website traffic but you are actually losing traffic, losing potential customers, and losing the opportunities of establishing new relationships. In fact, your website may be failing to attract visitors at all.

How to get your website to become effective and remain effective

You should have a balance between graphics and text on your website. The website should definitely be aesthetically pleasing but should have valuable content that is easy to download at the same time.

You should always test your website on more than one browser. What looks fantastic on one browser make look terrible on another browser. Many people still use text-only browsers at this point in time.

You should always remember to be meticulous with your website; keep it clean and up to date. You should look for ways to update your site at least once a month. If you let your visitors know that you are doing this on a regular basis, it will be an incentive for them to return to your website often. Even if they visit your website only because they are curious, they are still visiting.

You also need to make sure that you are reviewing your website analysis on a regular basis. Otherwise, you have no way of knowing for sure if your website is totally doing what it is supposed to do.

Issues with your positioning and branding

Website conversion rates: Differentiating and clearly articulated value propositions have a profound effect on website conversion rates. The conversion rate is a measurement of visitors who fulfill your intended outcomes. Those outcomes could include contacting you directly, buying a product from your site, signing up for a blog feed or newsletter, etc.

Your value proposition, which should be the centerpiece of your homepage, should answer the question “Why should I choose to do business with you instead of your competition?”

That is the most important question in business. People struggle with it all of the time. If you are missing an opening message that really grabs your visitors, it can seriously have a negative effect on the ultimate success of your business.

If your website visitors go to your home page and leave quickly, something isn’t right. Your content is not enticing them enough and it is not answering the fundamental questions “Can this company fulfill my needs” and “Should I explore this website further?”

An area of your website that can prove to be problematic is your landing page. The landing page is the first page that a visitor sees. The reason for this is that you generally have some well-indexed content that your visitors have found in a search engine.

It is key to understand how the visitor thinks here. Visitors come to your website to find something specific. It is irrelevant how they may have found you (on purpose or by accident). Initially, they may have absolutely no interest in you and possibly no idea of who you are at all.

It is critical that the first page that they come upon on your website engages your visitors instantly and communicates a solution to their unfulfilled needs. Additionally, your content must be compelling enough to attract them to other areas of your website. You need to make them want to learn more about you. It is not sufficient to merely give them a lot of good information. Otherwise, they will take all of that in and then they will leave.

Hopefully, your traffic reports are detailed enough to communicate to you which keywords are effective at bringing visitors to each page of your website. This helps you to understand where your visitors are coming from, mentally.

If your website visitors are reading the page and leaving, you have succeeded at giving them what they want but you have failed at drawing them to the rest of your website. This can be fixed. You need to improve your navigation and make it more compelling and you need to have calls to action on your website pages.

There are many websites that offer great information and compelling content and that’s the end of it. It is so important to guide visitors to the next step that you wish them to take. If you count on your website visitors to do this by themselves, there is a great chance that they will either make a different choice than the one that you want them to make or they will just leave your website altogether, which can impact how much business you do.

Issues with building your credibility

Testimonials that are authoritative, powerful and specific can have a serious impact on your website’s conversion rates. You must ask yourself the question “Am I potentially losing business because my website does not adequately establish my credibility and value?”

A great way to get in touch with this is to review your website for credibility by building content, for example, testimonials, case studies and client lists. You should distribute your testimonials throughout your website, using one- or two-line excerpts that are appropriate for the content on each page. The testimonials can be about a product, a service or the value of subscribing to your blog or newsletter.

Be sure that all of the content is linked to and from other pages so that your visitors can find it very easily. If, after that, you start getting more phone calls or Emails, you will know that you have done something positive to make your website more effective.

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.