Archive for the ‘Tips & Tricks’ Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Entrepreneurs: Leverage Your Products and Services With Social Media

Tuesday, January 22nd, 2013

Since ideas are like elbows (everyone’s got them), finding new and creative ways to connect with a wider audience and target the right demographic will get your brand out there and increase your numbers in sales and client conversion. In a recent article on Clickz.com, CEO of TopRank Online Marketing and author of “Optimize: How to Attract and Engage More Customers by Integrating SEO, Social Media and Content Marketing,” Lee Odden offers several ways in which entrepreneurs can use social media to target the audiences who need their products or services most.

Socia Media MarketingAs a marketing expert, Odden advises new entrepreneurs to use social media to search for the audience that will benefit most from what you are offering, to learn more about what fans are talking about and what terms they use and to also find influencers who will spread the word about your product or service. Creating a Twitter account or Facebook fan page is a good start, but if you want to reach the right crowd of users, read on and learn how you can use social media tools to jumpstart your company’s marketing engine.

Be a Social Listener

Before you reach out to groups and individuals on a social network like Twitter or Facebook, take a moment to see what your competitors are doing and what is working and what isn’t. Odden says being a social listener means researching what your prospective audience is talking about and understanding what is trending in their world and why. If you are planning on building a used car dealership that sells only hybrid and electric vehicles, visit other Facebook fan pages or Twitter pages that belong to local car dealerships. Follow and like their pages and check out what their fans are saying and learn about who their customers are. Researching a Chapman Ford AZ fan page, or following a used car dealerships’ Twitter feed can give you some ideas on how social media works when it’s done well.

Get Connected

Being an entrepreneur is a profession that relies so heavily on sharing ideas and networking. Mashable.com’s Dan Schwabel suggested his top social networks that are made for entrepreneurs, like Cofoundr, PartnerUp, and StartUp Nation. Cofoundr is particularly nice, because it offers exclusive deals and discounts for entrepreneurs and connects them with their niche groups. LinkedIn is a good way to connect with audiences and other entrepreneur professionals, but there are other networks out there. Young Entrepreneur caters to the younger startup crowd and The Funded, a review site that helps entrepreneurs connect with sources for capital to really get the ball rolling.

A Rewarding Experience

Everyone likes a deal or a reward for doing something, even if it’s the gratification of getting a coupon for clicking “like” on a fan page. Startups like Buzz Meditations, an online jewelry store that focuses on selling to the younger crowd of yoga enthusiasts, got off to a good start for their social campaign by offering special gifts and rewards to the first 100 fans of its page. Facebook fan pages go on this model, offering special coupons and offers that only their “fans” will know about if they visit and like their page. The same is true for Twitter followers who can get deals that are exclusive to Twitter followers.

While your fans are grinning ear to ear about the reward they earned for liking or following you, tell them more about why you are the better choice to go with, out of the sea of other services and products out there. Once they’re hooked on your brand, keep growing your services and improving your products, so your base will never stray.

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Guest Post, small business, Tips & Tricks | 1 Comment »

Goal Setting As An Entrepreneur

Wednesday, January 16th, 2013

Every entrepreneur has a vision. Some visions are better than others, but even bad visions can turn into something special. If the entrepreneur pays attention to market conditions and measures the company’s progress compared to the vision, many opportunities will be created.  This explains why entrepreneurs must be flexible. The ability to adapt to the marketplace is an essential ingredient in entrepreneurial pursuits.

As Naija Ecash explains in a recently published post Who is the Boss, a large number of baby boomers are retiring from their present jobs and starting new businesses with the knowledge they accrued as an employee. This makes for a competitive environment where the most fit entrepreneurs will survive and flourish.

As diverse as their personalities may be, all successful entrepreneurs share certain qualities; a vision, a plan and research. These three considerations are interwoven into the culture of the endeavor and can serve as pillars for many years.

But, there is one more quality that successful entrepreneurs share. That is the ability to set ambitious but attainable goals. Having a dynamic vision, a solid research-driven business model and the commitment to reach goals is the measure of success and is the quality that makes some enterprises durable for many years.

Proper goal setting is a positive activity that can right the ship, maintain the current profitable course or expand the business. In a small business, goals are often set by the owner. In medium businesses, company goals are often set by a committee with the founding entrepreneur’s input.

According to Entrepreneur.com, at its simplest, a goal is just something you aim for. But goals are powerful contributors to successful business growth in several ways. To begin with, the process of setting goals forces you to think through what you want from your business and how growth may, or may not, provide that. This process helps suggest directions for pursuing that growth, which can greatly improve your chances of achieving those goals.”

When setting business goals, the entrepreneur should follow the following disciplines:

Specificity – Set specific, quantitative goals, not general goals. Selling more widgets is no a specific goals. Selling 10,000 more widgets than last year is a specific goal.

Be Realistically Optimistic – Being positive is a quality that encourages the entrepreneur’s staff. Being optimistic means setting goals that will increase profitability and efficiency. Follow up with a means to the end.

Set Short and Long-Term Goals – The reason we set goals is because we want to improve operations. Set your long-term goals, identify the milestones needed to get there and define them as short-term goals.     

Set Action Steps – For the driven entrepreneur, short and long-term goals should be reached through a series of company milestones. After you have identified the milestones, set a course of action to accomplish each step on the road to long-term goals.

For establishing realistic, attainable goals, there are several considerations and practices for which every entrepreneur must consider.

Keeping An Accurate Scorecard – Your short-term goals will be accompanies by your action plan. Be diligent and disciplines about tracking your progress. If the numbers are ahead of schedule, don’t be afraid to raise the bar. If the numbers on your scorecard are lagging, you have some work to do. Never give up on a goal as long as it is part of a larger plan. Never forget your quantitative target.

Visualize Your Goal – Successful entrepreneurs visualize the business after the goals are achieved. This visualization is often shared with co-workers and employees. Good workers respond to a visual, quantified challenge.

Verbalize the Goal – The entrepreneur should be able to verbalize the goal and the process to get there. If you cannot verbalize the goal, how can you present it to employees.

Entrepreneurs realize that success comes at a price. Very often the entrepreneur’s biggest investment is their time. When setting goals, be realistic about the time required to accomplish to cross the goal line.

Author Bio:

Lewis Edward is one of the owners of The Office Providers. He loves writing on various online publications about serviced offices, general business matters, office space for rent and much more.

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Entrepreneur, Guest Post, small business, Tips & Tricks | No Comments »

Video Marketing: How does it enhance the credibility of your brand?

Friday, November 23rd, 2012

Video marketing is the best marketing media in internet era. In web, advertising a product produces multiple clicks and likes through social media and the frequency is more if the advertisement is done via visual effects. Let us see some of the video marketing tips we can use to enhance the credibility of brands.

Locating the right place to post videos can increase more business.

YouTube is the favorite entertainment site in which one can become popular easily and get continuous opportunities just by posting their brands. Online teaching, counseling etc., all are getting success via video marketing. All sites provide additional features for making the people to post their new innovations via video. Power is more via video marketing rather than text effects.

Periodic rich video content with amazing information brings more business

Once brand is established via video marketing, the blog or site has to get sustained in the market. Only way is to periodically change the rich video content but at the same time the content has to get matched according to the requirement.

Audiences are the magic promoters of business

Branding gets enhanced by means of targeted audience. Creativity is very much essential in making video content. Short and crisp information with rich video needs to be reached by all age group. E.g.: Youtube is the site accessed by all and hence while posting video content there, the artists playing the role of advertisement should be in multiple age group and the content should cater the needs of all. For educational sites, students are the maximum audience. Hence video content need to be prepared with the latest dress fashion, environmental specific nature etc., That will motivate audience to visit the site often and sustain the branding created.

Common forums and group discussions

Feedback of audience is very important and for sure as the expression from video content creates different effect in visitor, to enhance the site better, common forums need to be placed and owner of site should be responsible for taking all kind of criticisms. Group discussions help additional impact in minds of visitors and the ultimate benefit is the branding is increased more.

Video marketing – Ultimate way to showcase a product

Credit always goes to good video. It should suit the age group of audience. Learning sites should have more animation, favorite cartoon characters especially if it gets prepared for preschoolers. Next level is kids level. Actually they are the magical power in the houses. Hence a site developer can easily promote his business via video marketing by capturing the kids first and by sustaining the brand can easily cover the teenagers and kids. This is called as step by step branding also.

Conclusion

Video marketing is the profitable element in internet industry. But at the same time it has easier ways to make the business to go down if the message in video marketing reaches the visitors in uninteresting ways. Perfect study and timing is very essential for making a good video content. One can surely enhance the credibility of the brand by mind reading the audience, their views through open forums etc., Kids, corporate, house wives etc., are all the judges for making a product to get success in the market. Their ultimate choice is videos only.

About the author: Margaret is a blogger by profession. She loves writing, reading and travelling. She contributes to World Financial Group

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Guest Post, small business, Tips & Tricks | 1 Comment »

Why SEOs Fail In Social Media

Friday, October 19th, 2012

Few years ago, website owners who desire quality and consistent traffic of targeted consumers will naturally turn to a professional SEO (Search Engine Optimizer – that is a professional who practices search engine optimization of websites).  Well that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. The trend has suddenly changed because webmasters have noticed that SEOs are not as successful with Web 2.0 media environment as they were with its predecessors. Why are the SEOs failing where they formerly succeeded? What is the implication of this to webmasters and small business owners seeking for customers online.

SEO

The simple answer is that SEOs fail to adapt to the new Web 2.0 media environment and attempt to apply rules of the older Web to the new situation. Human beings are dynamic. What they like today, may not necessarily be what they will like tomorrow. So, a strategy that worked yesterday, may not deliver a good result tomorrow. Let’s look at some reasons why SEOs tend to fail in Web 2.0 media environment.

1) Preference to automation

It is an established fact that SEOs love to automate. On the contrary, social media encourages conversations among people. This tendency of encouraging automation makes SEOs a failure in social media. After all one prefers engaging conversation to an automated conversation. Your website must not place priority on the search-bots over human visitors.

2) Improper marketing strategy

SEOs believe in highlighting their services without caring if the people are listening. This strategy does rarely work as people care only when you ensure that you are caring for their needs. SEOs rarely do market research and instead go about bloating about their services. One converted social media user can do a lot of free marketing for you in his or her social media circles.

3) Materialistic approach

SEOs have become more materialistic with changing times. Their sole interest lies in increasing their brand value and earning more money. They lag behind on promoting social issues and rarely pay attention to social values and issues impacting our daily lives.

On the contrary social media has become a face of youth with a range of options available to showcase concern on issues affecting ones lives. Be it environment, culture or degrading social values, social media has risen to the occasion. SEOs are increasingly busy in minting money and hardly pay attention to this fact, thus making them perform miserably in social media.

4) More attention to keyword stuffing

Keyword stuffing seems to be a mantra of success for those in SEO business. They hardly take pains to ensure that the work becomes an interesting read. This makes their task even more difficult as a common reader only wants engaging content. This is possible only if thorough research has been conducted. Repeating keywords in order to attract search engine bots produce a negative result with human visitors. Someone coming to your site for information on meeting a particular need will simply get irritated when he or she discovers that he was lured to a page that cannot meet such need. Social media scores a point on this account, thus leading to devaluation of SEO when it comes to sharing information when it comes to SEO sharing their information via the social media way.

5) Focus on page rank

SEOs still live in the past. They pay much attention to page rank. Page ranking was an imperative few years ago but changing scenario over the last few years has brought about a radical change in this thinking. A website may be having Page Rank 9, but it might still reflect at 1 position on Google. It’s all about quality content and fulfilling the aspirations of new tech smart generation. SEOs seem to be lagging on this front, thus making their task difficult when it comes to promoting services in social media.

6) Sneaky enough

Instead of building upon their brand through quality content promotion, people in SEO segment believe in quick gains. They fail miserably on social media as the audience is smart enough to smell a rat in this haste.

As webmaster or a small business owner, you need to consider the facts discussed above you part with your hard earned cash engaging the service of a self-acclaimed SEOs. Don’t get someone who will simply splash some keyword rich content on your website to attempt luring the search engine bots to position your website on page 1. Getting to the first page of the search engine result is not the goal, staying there and attracting consistent visitors who will become paying customers is the goal of every business website. So, there is need for your SEOs to understand your target market so that he can know how best to engage and keep their attention with dynamic content on your website.

When SEO tactics are over-used, they may end up harming rather than benefiting. Make sure you use SEO tactfully so as to maintain your readers’ loyalty without compromising quality. Many weary business owners have been burned by SEO firms who promise the world and then never REAL results. It might surprise you but it is a fact that SEOs have failed to make an impact when it comes to adapting to the rapidly evolving world of social media. It is unfortunate that many search engine optimizers still follow SEO 1.0 and have failed to adapt to web 2.0 media environment.

SEOs need to rethink and rework their strategies in order to make a worthy appearance in social media. Times are changing and the one who adapts to changing scenario will emerge victorious.

About The Author: Carol is an internet marketer. She loves writing and marketing. She is a big fan of Latest technology. These days she is thinking about latest technology used in upcoming iPhones.

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Blogging, Guest Post, small business, Tips & Tricks | 1 Comment »

Top Ways to Have Stress Free Blogging

Monday, October 8th, 2012

Blogging is an excellent online business to make money. But, it is not a funny job, unless you are creative and posses the passion to post your blog on the top of the list. To run your blog successfully, your blog content must be unique and natural. To achieve this, you may sometimes feel placed in a stressful environment. By indulging in this activity, sometimes you may forget or may not find time for social activities like outing with family and friends. Here are some of the top ways to have stress-free blogging.

1. Planning your activities

Planning is the first step that is essential for a successful blogging. Don’t attempt at doing things randomly. Some people begin with a task and before completing it they simply jump on to the next one and end up without completing any of them. Though they are found busy working for the whole day, they end up in having pending tasks. You should plan well before performing any activity. Planning helps you to allocate time for different activities. You must also take care in seeing that each of the activity does not overlap with the other. It is of no use, if you just make a plan and do not follow it. By sticking on to the parameters of a schedule, you will be completing the task more easily. Hence, you are left with more time to enjoy.

2. Make use of the available tools

No business achieves success without using its related tools. Blogging tools like SEO help you in producing and promoting quality blogs. It improves your chances of getting exposed on searches for a particular thing and therefore eases your work and saves your time. So, you must not forget to incorporate SEO in automating your tasks.

3. Limit your expectations

You need to be realistic in this blogging domain. You should not think of becoming rich overnight. If you think so and fail to achieve the goal, you may end up in stress. By limiting your expectations in this career, you can expect a bright future.

4. Think positive

Negative thoughts tend to wreck your mind. These thoughts don’t have any role but only cause you to develop stress. If you remain positive in your thoughts, you are going to achieve success in the right direction. If you happen to encounter some negative thoughts in your career, you can simply overcome them by not concentrating much on the results.

5. Sharing your work

You can choose a person of similar interest and take him as you partner in sharing your work load. He may be assigned with activities like site designing or marketing. His social network also promotes increased traffic. Therefore, sharing your work load greatly helps in leading a stress-free blogging life.

6. Make time for family and friends

When you feel stressed, you can try reading other blogs. This way you will be educated, entertained and relaxed. This method also equips you with new ideas for your blogs. You can also spend some time with an outing with family or friends. This gives you a small break from the stressful activity and those happy moments will energize you to work with extra passion.

Hope you learnt something with the above tips that would be helpful in developing a stress-free blogging life.

About The Author: Margaret is a blogger and internet marketer. She loves writing and travelling. Blogging is her passion. Recently she did an article promoting Local rank tracking on Google. These days she is working on rank tracking tools used by SEO companies.

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Blogging, Guest Post, Tips & Tricks | 3 Comments »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »