Archive | September 2013

How to Get More from Your Business Blog

blog-icons-13899214Do you have a business blog? Do you want to find out how you can maximize it? Below are 10 tips you can use to make the most out of your business blogging:

1. Set ONE goal for each blog post
2. Share: ensure that your content is sharable
3. Get content from important people in your industry
4. Got a list? Get one, and make becoming a subscriber a no-brainer
5. Revamp older posts: add action items, and calls to action
6. Integrate your blog with your website
7. Do more with popular posts
8. Persona-fy: target each blog post for a specific persona
9. Build a community around your blog (slowly)
10. What’s missing? Add images for added share-worthiness

To find out more about this, please head to: 10 Easy Ways to Get More out of Your Business Blog Today

 

Importance of Branding

brand-your-business-28624968The online marketing landscape is changing every day. Thus, it is important to stay updated as the idea of being consistently recognizable through branding applies everywhere. These days, your company/products/services have to stand out among all the other similar companies out there. You do this by properly branding your goods and services that you offer to people.

One of the things that you need to do is to be consistent with your brand. This way, people will know your identity and won’t confuse you with something else. How do you do this? Well, proper market research must be done first. Know your niche. Develop your brand.

To find out more how you can do this, please head to this post:  How to Brand Your Small Business – The Basics

 

Monetize Your Free Downloads

money-down-drain-waste-24782834As a web marketer, it is common practice to offer free downloads to your readers. But first, what is a free download?

A free download can be any electronic item — PDF, video, audio, Word document (or Google Doc), etc.

But did you know that you can also monetize the freebies you give on your blogs and websites? Here’s a summary of how this can be done:

  1. Offer a discount.
  2. Invite people to contact you for a free consultation.
  3. Include a short bonus informational product.
  4. Set up an autoresponder with offers.
  5. Use the confirmation page to offer a discount.
  6. Seed your free download with client stories.

The goal here is to simply offer your free downloads in such a way that it makes offers without being too sales pitchy. Once you’ve captured the attention of your target market and they’ve given you permission to contact them, via email, for instance, then it will be easier for you to build a relationship with them.

To find out more about this, please head to: Turn your free download into a cash machine with these 6 tips

 

Awesome Web Marketing Tools

mechanic-tools-15681947 (1)As a web marketer, there are a lot of tools you can use online to make your life easier. These tools will help you manage your day-to-day responsibilities and in so doing, become more productive, successful and fulfilled. If you haven’t used some of them yet, now is the time. Take a look and give them a try:

  1. Mavenlink – It’s basically an all-inclusive project management tool and it integrates with Google Apps
  2. Basecamp – a client-based project management tool that allows you to share files and conversations on a project-by-project basis
  3. Trello – somewhat like  Pinterest but instead of photo pins you have task cards.  It’s easy to learn and easy to use.
  4. Optify – for tracking and generating leads for your clients
  5. Moz – an SEO tool that’s super easy to use and navigate

These are just five. For the complete list of tools, please head to: 17 Online Marketing Tools to Boost Productivity and Make Your Life Easier

The Importance of Web Marketing

d-illustration-internet-browser-phrase-web-internet-marketing-29704422Web marketing simply means “marketing products and services using the Internet or the world wide web.” This  includes websites of course, mobile marketing,  email marketing, social media marketing (like Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Twitter), and many more.

Web marketing changes every single day, hence, it is always new. It is what’s “IN” these days and it looks like it’s going to stay for a long period of time. So if you are a business owner, it is  a must to jump into the bandwagon to keep your business thriving. If no one in your company knows how to market in the web, then it is just wise to hire someone with the necessary skills and experience to do the job right. Doing so will spell success for your business.

To know more about this and how web marketing can be the smartest move you can ever make for your business, please head to this link:  What is Web Marketing?

How to Get More Buyers?

bonus-icon-18531451Giving discount offers is how marketers do it when they try to make their customers buy a product from them. But there is another way which is to try to provide more products for less. So which one is more effective? Which tactic do customers buy the most? Do customers prefer getting a discount like 33% off a regular priced item or 50% more of that item for the same price?

In the post Try wording your offer differently to get more buyers–discount or bonus?, internet marketer, Ellen Finkelstein, notes that  “economically, a bonus pack of 50% more free is equivalent to a price discount to 33.33% off”. It will all boil down to how you will reword your promotion in such a way that people will get interested enough to buy from you.

To know more about this, please head to: Try wording your offer differently to get more buyers–discount or bonus?

 

 

 

 

5 Easy Steps to Business Blogging

traffic-lights-city-24870535Would you like to find out how to do business blogging in 5 days? “Why?” you might ask. Well, if you have a website for your business and would like to drive more traffic to your website, then blogging is the way to go. Companies who blog 15 or more times per month get to have more traffic than those who don’t. This is according to Hubspot, an internet marketing software provider. And aside from the traffic you get, your company will also be seen as a leader in its industry. So, below are five easy steps you can follow so you can start blogging right away.

1. Find Writers

Find someone in your company who can write 600-800 word blog posts. That’s about 6 paragraphs each post. Take into consideration that not everyone is a writer. You can outsource if you have to. As for the editor, it should be one of your company’s managers who can assign topic, edit and approved the written post.

2. Develop a list of blog titles and create an editorial calendar

By coming up with blog titles, topics and scheduling the posts, your company’s blog can come across as an expert in its field.  Some topics you may wish to include are:

  • answers to your customers’ questions
  • how-to articles
  • industry developments and trends
  • stand on controversial issues

3. Structure your blog articles so that they’re reader-friendly.

Readers these days have short attention span. So make your posts reader-friendly, meaning, short, concise and sweet.

4. Make sure you have lead generation offers in your blog articles.

It’s not enough that your blog is considered a thought leader in its field but it should help generate leads for your company as well.

5. Analyze blogging metrics to optimize results.

There are analytics software out there that help track the performance of your blog like  HubSpot or Google Analytics. Through their help, you can optimize the results you’re targeting.

Summary

By doing these five simple steps, you target to bring something useful to people.

For more information on how to go about this, please head to: How To Start Business Blogging In 5 Easy Steps

 

Why Learn Basic HTML?

html-coding-19596661For this post, let us assume that you have a WordPress website. And because WordPress sites use widgets or modules appearing in your site’s sidebar, HTML is a must. For some of these widgets, they are easy to add to your website. But what if you want to add something that is not provided by these widgets? Then you would have to write your own HTML code for it.

Learning basic HTML can be easy. There are templates you can use for HTML links. The most common  is this: <a href=”http://www.yoursite.com/page/”>The text that you want to link.</a>

Another template you can use for linking images is this: <a href=”http://www.yoursite.com/page/”><img src=”http://www.yoursite.com/folders/filename.jpg”></a>

To know more about basic HTML, head to: Why you need to know basic HTML

How to Improve Engagement in Facebook?

consumer-engagement-13176434Do you want to make your Facebook posts more fun, interesting and engaging? The goal here is to garner more likes and shares. Below are 8 tips you can use to achieve this:

#1: Solve Problems With Photos
#2: Give a Shout-out to Your Customers
#3: Involve Customers With a Question
#4: Let Them Fill in the Blank
#5: Crowdsource Photo Captions
#6: Share Quotes
#7: Gather Votes With Like vs. Share
#8: Use Hashtags

Do these eight tips and see your facebook posts get more likes and shares. To know more, please head to: 8 Ways to Improve Your Facebook Engagement

Test Your Website with Multiple Browsers

what-s-browsers-your-network-today-20327205When posting videos on your website or blog, you have to make sure that it is working on all screen sizes, various devices and different browsers. How do you do this?

One solution would be to try and zip it and then upload it. This way, the browser downloads the file first instead of automatically playing it. Since some videos don’t easily play on other browsers, this problem is solved.

Another solution would be to ask your customers what their browsers are. After you have tested your video on various browsers then you’d know who to send the video directly and who to send zipped files to. The important thing is to make sure that your customers, prospects and audience won’t have a hard time watching the videos you post on your site.

To find out more about this, please head to: Why you need to test your website with multiple browsers and screen sizes