Social Media Marketing: Building a Strategy

An increasing number of businesses are making their online presence felt on social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ being the contenders. With today’s generation spending a huge amount of time on these websites what could be a better platform to showcase your products and expand your business.

The key to utilizing this platform completely is in having an effective strategy. The first step should be to identify your goals. It should be very clear as to what exactly do you want from this platform. Is it attracting more customers, reducing marketing costs, brand awareness, providing better service, it’s an extensive list. Set realistic targets for your business. Adopting a pragmatic approach in achieving business goals.

The next step should be to identify your target audience. Once you discover your audience, it will become easier to plan your content for these websites as the different demographics demand different content. Also identifying potential customers and their locations can help you focus on specific locations to get plenty of leads.

An important component in marketing is to know your competition. You can only attract customers if you are at level or ahead of your competition. It’s a good practice to keep a track of the strategies your opponent is adopting. One of the common trends is using the social media buttons on the website. This allows visitors to share your articles over a social media website which is a good promotion. Posting videos and adopting viral marketing strategies are becoming increasingly popular.

Investing in all social media websites is also not a good idea, especially if you have a small business. Once you are aware of the platform, invest in that only. Identify the package which will benefit your business the most.

Decide on the content you want to publish. This again depends on your customers and the kind of message that you wish to send across. Also the time on which you make your posts. There is no rule on the timing, however you will find that posting on certain timings receives better or more responses than the others. As you continue posting all these factors will play a vital role in getting maximum output from your advertising strategy.

The last but a very important step is to allocate a budget for your campaign. With an effective campaign you will receive an overwhelming response for your products. Decide on how much you want to invest, In the graphics, what kind of ads would suit your needs, which location and age group you wish to target and so on. All these aspects will help you formulate a plan and optimize your budget. There’s no point advertising in an area which doesn’t cater to your needs. The biggest advantage of social media is that everybody can afford it. You just need the right plan and you are all set to showcase your products to the world and promote your business.

The Importance of SEO For Growing Businesses

Now you have a new web site for your business, Now What? How will customers find you? The most common search engine optimization practices are:

Increased Traffic

Since SEO helps you to rank high in the search results, you attract more people to your website. When is the last time you clicked to the third page of the search results? The same thing applies to many people.

Since you will be on the first or second page of search results, many people will visit your website. Too increase click through rate, you should include optimized title tags and meta descriptions.

The sleek thing about the traffic; that you get traffic from many people who are actively seeking your products or services that you are selling or marketing.

Cost Effective

SEO is an inbound method of marketing which makes it very cost-effective as you only need to spend just a generous amount of money to generate more leads. For example, research studies had shown that when you use SEO in your marketing you spend 62% less than someone who used another form of marketing. Since the traffic that you get is more qualified, you end up spending less.

Easy To Track

Who doesn’t want something that he/she can easily track? SEO is easy to track with the right SEO internet marketing company services. Only the best social media marketing firms provide many detailed reports and keyword tracking tools for an all in one service. You can use an analytic tool from Google, which you can easily find online for free.

If you have an e-commerce site, you will easily see the paths that your users are taking to complete a sale. You are also able to see the keywords that the users are using to get to your site. Having this knowledge helps you to tweak your website and the content in it to attract as many people as possible.

Increased Usability

In addition to making it easy for search engines to find your site, SEO also increases the usability of your site. Since SEO helps you to make your site easy to navigate by rearranging the site’s architecture, your users/customers can navigate easily on your site without any problems. Your users are also able easily to find the content that they are looking for on your site.

Also one of the most important is Social Media Optimization. That is another article because of all the information to learn.

These are some of the many benefits that you will enjoy when you optimize your new website with a professional SEO social media marketing firm. While you can optimize the site by yourself, it’s wise that you seek the help of a professional SEO internet marketing or Social Media marketing company.

Why Your Start-Up Company Needs Digital Marketing

Your main concern when starting your business online is ensuring that you are reaching your target demographic. Without any visitors to your site, there is no way that you can hope to make any profit. Your online presence is what will determine your reach as well as convert those online visitors into purchasing customers. So how can one do this? There are two main strategies that will come into play: digital marketing and search engine optimisation.

Why your start-up needs digital marketing

It is cost effective

Most start-up companies will not have an unlimited budget when it comes to marketing. In fact, chances are you will need the most affordable means of marketing your business without putting your business at the risk of going bankrupt. Digital marketing is a cost effective method of building your audience without having to invest a lot of money into the conventional methods.

You get valuable analytics

One of the great things about digital marketing is that its effects can be measured unlike say television advertising. The different facets of digital marketing allow you to keep track of what works for your online brand, what does not, where most of your online visitors come from, when do online sales peak and much more. Applications such as Facebook Insights are a great way of garnering the feedback you are receiving online and learning what messages you post are resonating the most with your audience. Overall, digital marketing keeps you better placed at knowing how effective your marketing methods are.

You become one with your company

One of the greatest advantages of digital marketing is that you are now reaching actual people and connecting with them. Conventional advertising methods tend to leave your target audience and potential customers as a group of faceless people. This is not the case online. With digital marketing, your own personal brand becomes entwined with your business. The better you are at forming these human connections with your audience, the more they will view your brand at a more personal level rather than a corporate entity. This leads to brand loyalty for the simple fact that they will feel like they know you. Thus, the more your target audience recognises you as a thought-leader, the more your brand benefits from online sales.

It is the basis for future marketing

If there has ever been a time to invest in digital marketing, it is now. The entire world is moving forward on the digital platform. Be cultivating your brand online, you are ensuring that your start-up will not be left behind with the times. It is also crucial to start cultivating your online presence as soon as you can as more companies and other brands will be coming into the same space to compete with you. Thus, there is not time than the present to start growing your online audience.

Why your start-up needs search engine optimisation

All your competition is using it

A common misconception website owners have with search engine optimisation is that it is only necessary up until you achieve high page rankings. The truth is getting to the top pages is only the tip of the iceberg. SEO becomes even more important when trying to maintain your top ranking as your competition try to get to the top spot too. For this reason, you have to put in more effort in ensuring your content is relevant and fresh for the search engine algorithms.

Potential clients are mobile searching

The online traffic directed from smartphones is increasing at an exponential rate. To stay relevant, you need to ensure that you are reaching that customer base too. With SEO, you can ensure that your online business is easily located by traffic directed from mobile phones who are searching for precisely what you are offering. Mobile searching is increasingly becoming the norm so you have to use SEO to ensure that your business is taking advantage of this.

Guest Blogging: How To Do It The Right Way

Blogging is becoming very common in the online world as a majority of people either read or write articles online. The current generation of marketers has started incorporating blogging in the online marketing strategies of companies and businesses to attract the right visitors. Guest blogging is one such marketing strategy that has helped many businesses in expanding their customer base as it

offers mutual benefits to both the blogger and host website. just by featuring the posts of guest bloggers on your website you will not only be able to generate traffic but also help the blogger in expanding their readership.

Guest Blogging

Guest blogging is also known as guest posting where a blogger writes content for another company’s website. A guest blogger creates content for host websites based on their requirement which might be a challenge for them. Both you and your host website benefit with this guest blogging strategy in the following ways:

1. Attracting traffic to a company’s website so that they might improve lead generation and get new subscribers.

2. SEO ranking improves as links are built from high-quality sites. This helps in improving your website’s position in various search engine results.

3. The credibility and brand awareness also increase due to the fact that a third-party, the guest blogger, has written about their experience with your company.

If implemented correctly, guest blogging can be a great asset to your digital marketing strategy and increase your brand’s reach out within no time. Let us now look at some of the tips and tricks that will help you in implementing an effective guest blogging strategy:

1. Define goals:

Make sure that you and your marketing team have clearly defined and understood the vision and the goal of your company or brand. You can even create sub-goals that you wish to achieve by implementing this strategy. Some of the goals can be increasing website traffic, improving SEO rating, increasing subscriber count, creating product awareness, etc. Having clarity on goals will help you in creating crisp blogging content so that your target audience gets the message that you wish to pass on. Clarity will help build trust with your potential customers.

2. Find the right website:

A simple way to find a website that accepts guest post is through an online search engine. You can use keywords like ‘write for us’, ‘guest article’, contribute for us’, etc. to search the websites. You can also find websites where your competitors are guest blogging and approach them for the same. Your competitor’s newsletter or social media account will give you the links to their blogs. Alltop lists top websites in multiple domains. You can even start your website search from here.

3. Discussions with site owners:

When you start your discussions with a website owner, make sure that your content is updated and conveys your thoughts accurately. Poor content and

irrelevant pitch formats will disengage the interest of the site owners. It would be good if your proposal is in sync with their website and the content that is being published on it. A well-researched work will help you in forming a genuine relationship with the site owner and achieve goals at a faster rate.

4. Choice of topic:

Research the website that would be posting your guest blog in. Study some insights related to the target audience that you plan to reach out with the post. Use all this research in deciding the topic for your blog. The more popular the topic is more the number of hits you will get on the blog. Generally, the posts that share life experiences and life hacks are more popular among readers. Buzzsumo is a good tool to get an idea about the potential topics that will generate good hits.

5. Content quality:

The content that you wish to publish should reflect value addition qualities

for the audience that sees it. While writing the articles make sure that the tone isn’t promotional, else the audience will lose interest in reading the blogs. Some of the below points will help you with the content quality:

a. Include one relevant internal link to any of your company’s blog posts.

b. Write a concise, crisp, and clear bio for the audience to engage with.

c. Include popular keywords to attract more traffic to your blog post.

d. End the post with a call-to-action which asks the readers to share their thoughts and comments.

e. Use various available analytic tools to track the traffic on the guest blogs to get insights on further improvements.

6. Be Engaging:

Try to subscribe to the comments section on your guest blog if the website

owner allows it. Once your blog is posted and has started to receive hits and comments, then make sure that you respond to these viewer interactions. This will help you in connecting with your new audience and in return, you might earn subscribers in them. If you are responsive, then the website owner would also feel positive about working with you and this long-lasting relationship will help you both in expanding your online audience.

7. Promote the guest blog:

Content promotion will help you in reaching out to a wider set of audience and even the website owner will benefit from the increased traffic. You can use

the same channels for promoting the guest blog as you use to promote your brand and products. You can also post links to your guest article on various social media websites. Keep writing and promoting guest posts to reach your aims and goals that you have defined in the marketing strategy.

Older posts »