68% of People say a business blog can add credibility to your website
A business blog is a great way to not only establish a presence across the web, including your website as well as your social media channels, but it is also a great way to establish yourself as a credible authority in your industry. Social media is a great way to be in contact with your customers / followers on a daily basis, but you can’t always get your point across in one tweet or one Facebook post. A blog can allow you to expand on your social media presence with a quick teaser and a link to more information.
Why do I need a business blog?
There are two main purposes for a having a business blog. The first is to bring traffic to your website. The second is to create a conversation with your followers.
When someone goes online to search for a business within your industry, you ideally want your business to show up close to the top of the search results. In order to accomplish this, you have to have effective search engine optimization (SEO). One of the ways to create effective SEO, is to post consistently with relevant keywords and original, high quality content. A blog can help to accomplish some of this.
Because a business blog allows you to so easily share information about your business and industry, it can be a great way to create an online customer / reader/ follower base. Allowing your followers and customers a view inside your business can let them communicate with you in a more in-depth way. If your business website does not have a blog, you are missing a big opportunity to increase your company’s visibility, which could also correlate to an increase in your bottom line.
What needs to be done in a business blog?
The main goal of a business blog is to engage your readers / customers and build trust with them. There are a few ways to effectively do this.
- Have a clean, good looking design with a professional logo.
- Keep your posts short and easy to understand, but not too short!
- Share with your social media channels.
- Use correct spelling and grammar.
- Have good quality photos and graphics.
- Encourage customer feedback and reviews.
- Link to trustworthy sources and sites.
- Don’t write about your competitors.
- Focus on the positives of your company and products.
- Build relationships and establish links with affiliates who will promote your products as well.
- Make sure to use keywords that your customers might be searching for.
What type of content should my business blog have?
Setting up a business blog is a fairly simple task. The difficulty begins when it comes to maintaining it with original, unique content that your readers will find useful. It is necessary to keep your customer in mind, so that you can focus on writing content that is attractive to them.
You will only convert your readers into customers if you have engaging, relevant, credible posts. Therefore, you want to tell and show your readers why your products and services are unique and reliable. You also want to make sure you keep them updated with upcoming products, new services, future events, and any other relevant news within your business. Overall, it is a great forum for sharing relevant, reliable information about your business, products, services, and more.
Get Customers Talking About Your Business.
6 tips to create effective customer engagement and turn them into your biggest advocates
There is nothing better for your business than happy customers! Happy customers help spread the word about your business to their friends, family and anyone who will listen. Customers will only promote your business so much, so you have to make it easy for them to go that extra mile without realizing they are doing any work. On average, a happy customer will bring in 3 new customers! So how do you create customer engagement and encourage these happy customers to spread the word? Here are 6 tips for turning your happy customers into your business’ biggest advocates:
1. Turn your receipts into customer feedback questionnaires.
Receipts are a guaranteed touch-point with customers. They’ve already come into your stores and liked you enough to buy something, so why not ask them for their feedback? Use your store receipts to direct them to an online survey, or go one step further, and make the survey social with links to Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and other social media sites where they can spread the word about your business with reviews and promotions.
2. Get geo-social with Foursquare, Facebook and Yelp!
Take advantage of geo-social networks like Foursquare and Facebook by giving your customers the opportunity to check-in and share their location with their networks. With over 30 million people using Foursquare and the ability to sync it with their other social media networks, it’s a great way to get your happy customers to tell others that they are at your business. In addition, you can encourage check-ins and competition (think Foursquare Mayorship) by offering special promotions for only those that check-in or hold the Mayorship.
3. Start a feedback cycle.
Online reviews have become one of the most powerful forms of advertising. According to Nielsen, 92% of consumers around the world say they trust earned media, such as recommendations from friends and family, above all other forms of advertising. So take advantage of this, and open up the line of communication between you and your customers. Send a follow up message, text or letter to remind them to leave a review of their experience with your business on your social media networks.
4. Go mobile with social apps!
Encourage your customers to upload their photos via Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest of your products/services they use. This will help build a community around your brand, and fans can share their personal experience with your business, thus becoming an organic marketing strategy for your business.
Or go a step further and develop your own mobile app. Encourage your customers to write reviews, post content, and share information with their friends about your business all on your own branded app!
5. Automate the sharing process.
Make it simple for your customer to share your products/services with their networks by integrating Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest on your website. By doing this you allow your customers to have instant access to recommend, like and share your products/services with the people in their social networks.
Don’t have a website? What are you waiting for?! Get an optimized website developed that can be used across desktop, tablets and mobile.
6. Display your social properties with PRIDE.
Make it easy for customers to find you online. The more members you have on your online communities the more chances you will have to convert followers into customers. Feature links to your Facebook page, Twitter handle, Pinterest page and other social communities on things like:
- Receipts
- Storefronts and walls at your business location
- Menus and Napkins
- Websites
- Email Newsletters
- Any marketing images and videos
- Local Advertising efforts, such as newspapers, radio, billboards
If you promote your social networks make sure you are managing them effectively with unique and relevant content for your followers. There is nothing worse than following a business that doesn’t care enough to regularly post and manage their social media networks. So make social media management a top priority a your business.
Customer engagement and satisfaction should be the top priorities for your business. Encourage feedback and take action on all feedback, whether it’s good or bad. Helping customers spread the word about your business can be one of the most powerful marketing tools. Just make sure you do it right.
If you’re using social media outlets for your business, I bet that you are always on the hunt for the “magic formula” to creating the most engaging social media posts possible. As businesses, you want to capture the attention of your followers and get them to ‘like’, ‘tweet’, ‘pin’ and ‘share’ your post with everyone!
Sadly, there isn’t a “magic formula” of variables you need to have to ensure your post will be engaging. Each social media network operates a little differently, and every business has its own, unique customers with individual tastes and preferences.
One thing we can offer you though, are a couple of guidelines that can help you craft the best social media updates and posts possible for each social media network – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Google+. These basic tips will help you create more engaging posts and updates for your followers.
Facebook
Keep things positive.
Don’t be a Debbie Downer. Customers engage more with positive brands. Post a status that will help inspire and excite your followers.
Provide a link.
Include links to your website. Shorten your URL using bit.ly, which now allows you to edit the characters at the end of a link and gives you analytics on clicks. This will help your link stand out and increase click-throughs.
Include images.
Images can help you capture your customers’ attention and encourage them to share your content among their friends. It can be as simple as giving them a preview of a new product to entice them to come in to the store or visit your website.
Engage with users.
Simply posting a status isn’t enough. Part of what makes social media great is the instant two-way communication. Make sure you are engaging and building relationships with your fans through conversational dialogue when they comment on your posts.
Don’t forget to be mobile friendly.
Almost everyone uses their mobile phones now, for everything, so make sure the content you post can be seen on mobile devices.
Be available.
In today’s connected world, customers expect you to respond past the 8-5 workday. Be sure to post when you audience is most likely to engage, which might be during nonworking hours.
Twitter
Format.
Ask a question, give insights, and post facts and figures to capture your followers’ attention, and encourage a retweet.
Call to action.
Don’t be afraid to tell your followers what to do next. Be clear, and lead them to what the next step is with directions such as: “retweet this,” “share this,” or “use hashtag ‘x’.”
Mentions.
Use mentions to encourage influencers to engage with your business. This will help build your online creditability and online Klout.
Grammar.
Try to be as grammatically correct as you can. With 140 characters we know it’s sometimes a challenge to get your message across, but avoid abbreviations and use capital letters in the correct places.
Retweet.
Establish yourself as gatekeeper of great information and retweet relevant information to your followers. Also, don’t forget to thank people who retweet you!
Shorten URLs.
Bit.ly links generate more retweets than regular URLs. So don’t forget to shorten all URLs you tweet.
Pinterest
No Humans Faces
Images shared by brands without human faces are repined 23% more times.
Just a little background.
Try to keep your background under 40% of the entire image. When background is above that repins drop by 25-50%.
Multiple colors.
Keep your pins colorful! Pins with multiple dominate colors garner 3x more repins.
Light and colors.
By using a 50% color saturation on your images you can increase your repin rate by up to 4x.
Google+
Tag.
Tag brands and people that are relevant to your post. This allows for you post to get more exposure and increased engagement.
Use hashtags.
Hashtags help increase your audience size by allowing your content to be found easily. It’s a great way to not only meet people but for other people to find your post as well.
Use full size images.
Using bright, full sized images helps capture your viewers’ attention and increase the probability of +1’s.
Engage with users.
Just like with Facebook and Twitter, you have to take the time to reply to everyone who comments and shares your posts. You have to open the lines of communication so users keep coming back to your posts.
With all social media networks you must remember to always keep in mind what your followers want, and strive to post information that benefits them. Social media can be a great asset to every business, but you have to invest the time to do it right.
Online marketing has been growing more and more in popularity. This trend is very common among start-ups and small business owners that have minimal advertising budgets. Online marketing can be a scary venture for those who are inexperienced.
Where do I start?
How much should I pay for online advertising?
What websites / services should I use?
How do I get my message where my customers are?
These are just a few of the common questions business owners have when beginning online marketing. Grasping the full realm of the online marketing world is a process that can take years and is often ongoing due to its ever-changing nature. Getting started with online marketing is manageable, but there are a few tips you should remember when doing so.
1. You don’t accept the reality of time.
Setting up profiles on all of the various social media sites, building a website, and setting up and claiming your listings on all of the various online directory websites can be a daunting task, and now you are going to have to set aside time to effectively manage all of those accounts. It will take much more effort and time than you initially think to establish an online presence, build a following, monitor for negative & positive reviews, and keep your followers engaged.
2. You spread yourself too thin.
It is tempting to want to have your business listed and marketed on every single social media platform available, but the reality is that resources are limited, and if you spread yourself too thin across too many social media networks, you will end up with less than desirable results. Start with one or two that you think fit your target market, build your audience, perfect your engagement on those sites, and then start adding other networks, but make sure not to add more than you can handle with your resources.
3. You are not engaging your online audience.
You’ve gotten to the step where you’ve built a good base following, but you aren’t getting the results you want. The most common reason this happens is that you are not engaging your audience. You must always make sure to post content that is relevant to your business and products, but you do not want all of your content to be simple advertisement. Post content that your audience will find useful and valuable, so they want to comment, share and repost. Also, make sure to respond to each and every comment, question, tweet, or other social interaction that have been left on your pages. Show your audience that you care about what they have to say and that you are active online daily.
4. You don’t have an online marketing budget.
Although it can sometimes be a daunting task to determine where to spend money, how to spend it, and how much to spend online, spending a little bit of money can save you in the long run. If done smartly, investing a small amount of money in Facebook or Twitter ads can increase traffic to your website or physical location.
Marketing your business online can sometimes be a stressful and intimidating task, but if you avoid the most common mistakes outlined above, you should be more productive and feel much more confident in your efforts.
As a small business we know you have to be extremely creative with your marketing budget (that’s if you even officially have one!). Most of the time your best bet will be using a “free” source such as one of the many social media networks.
But having the first hand experience of parents who own a local business, I know it’s sometimes difficult (because of both monetary and time constraints) to integrate something new to the your business’ mix. So, I’m going to try to give you a short run down of exactly what social media is and what it can do for your small business.
The Basics
Essentially, social media is a virtual community where people and businesses can go to interact, share and exchanges information. The use of social media has exploded in recent years, and has proven to be a great way to interact with all types of potential customers.
There are a variety of social media networks, each having their own unique uses and audiences. For example, Pinterest is great if you want to provide image-based content geared more towards women (since 70% of users are women). For more information on this and other networks check out our past blog titled “Social Media Network”, explaining each network and its specific uses.
Using social media networks allows you to create pages about your small business and all its offering. Once you set up your pages you are also able to update your followers on a regular basis and help increase in your business’ awareness and exposure. As your followers grow, you will be able to use social media to update them on the latest promotions, trends or products that your business has to offer and drive them in-store and convert them into a long-term customer.
Social media has a lot of potential uses for small businesses, but as with everything it comes with its drawbacks. One of the biggest is the time utilization of being active on a variety of platforms. Over 25% of small businesses, that actively participate in social media, report spending more then 10 hours per week planning, engaging and posting content via social media. But don’t get discouraged by this statistic, the important things is that you get organized and plan ahead to ensure you’re posting engaging content consistently, and with hard work and consistency watch your followers and business grow.
If you ever find that your social media account has become too time consuming, over whelming or are worried that you aren’t using it to your business’ fullest potential we are always here to help! We can help you review, organize, plan and execute any social media plan or campaign you might need across all mediums.
It seems like social media is EVERYWHERE now. Everyone is using it now, consumers and businesses of all sizes alike. But as a business have you ever stopped to think which social media network is actually working for your business?
The process of using social media can be very time consuming, so you want to make sure you are using the best social network to achieve your goals and objectives. But do you know which social network will help you achieve your goals?
Today I want to offer you some quick insights into the top five social networks, Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn and YouTube. We will be looking at four main factors, customer communication, brand exposure, traffic to your site and SEO value.
Facebook
Everyone is on Facebook, right? Here’s how Facebook can help out your business.
Customer Communication
Facebook offers you an easy and efficient way to talk to your entire demographic. You can create and push content and help manage your business reputation to your current fans. The only downside is if you want to reach non-fans, or 100% of your fan base, you will have to run sponsored posts, which means having to pay for advertising and knowing how to effectively build a successful ad campaign.
Brand Exposure
Because of their huge user base, Facebook is one of the quickest and most cost effective ways to get brand exposure.
Traffic To Your Site
Thanks to that huge user base we talked about earlier, one new fan can lead to 20 new website visitors. These visitors are leads, or potential customers for your business!
SEO Value
As of right now, only shared links from fan pages matter for search engine optimization, but as things progress it is likely that in the future social media network sites like Facebook will play a bigger role in search engine ranking.
Google+
As the #2 social media network, Google+ has become a quiet contender among social media networks.
Customer Communication
As a the second place social media network, Google+ still lacks the reach of Facebook and Twitter. But even though it doesn’t have the same reach, it does facilitate communication with customers.
Brand Exposure
As Google’s social network, Google+ offers excellent brand exposure. Your account will appear in branded search results, which will add credibility and increased exposure.
Traffic To Your Site
Google+ helps to provide your site with new traffic, plus users tend to stay on the site whose links they follow.
SEO Value
Because the Google +1 button allows for users to search both public and private information, this gives Google+ a advantage at providing value for search engine optimization and search engine ranking.
Twitter
Twitter offers businesses a great way to keep your customers informed about your business’ latest news. It’s large user base and real-time element makes it one of the best social media networks a business can use.
Customer Communication
Twitter is one of the best channels for direct communication with your customers. It allows you to have real-time conversations with your customers.
Brand Exposure
Twitter offers an easy, widely used and cost-effective way to gain brand exposure.
Traffic To Your Site
Inserting links and call to actions into your tweets gives Twitter an
unmatched ability to drive traffic directly to your site.
SEO Value
The search engine optimization value on Twitter beneficial for businesses due to the fact that Google gives authority ranks for Twitter profiles.
Pinterest
As one newest social media networks, Pinterest has already established a huge following among women, showing that a picture truly is worth a thousand words.
Customer Communication
Aside from the ability to showcase your new product, Pinerest does not offer the opportunity for business to directly communicate with customers.
Brand Exposure
As visual content continues to grow and dominate social media, this makes Pinterest one of the most powerful tools for brand exposure. Visual content, such as images and video are viewed 70% more then written content. So if your business is visual, Pinterest is the place to be.
Traffic To Your Site
Most pinned images contain links back to a site, which tremendously helps drive traffic to your site. It is currently one of the top three traffic referral sites.
SEO Value
Although Pinterest’s Pins do not allow for links to be tracked by search engines, it can seriously increase your websites traffic and increase your brand awareness. In addition, as mentioned before things constantly get updated and revised so I would not be surprised if Pinterest becomes a huge asset to business search engine optimization in the future.
LinkedIn
One of the best social media networks for B2B brands. LinkedIn offers you a platform to connect and engage with industry professionals.
Customer Communication
LinkedIn offers an opportunity to connect with your customers through groups with specific interests connected to your brand.
Brand Exposure
Because LinkedIn is a professional networking site, it provides impressive exposure to the business world. This allows you to promote your personal and business brand to a variety of professional contacts and organizations.
Traffic To Your Site
One of the biggest drawbacks of using LinkedIn is that it is not a huge referral site. Though you can get a lot of connections, not a lot of them will end up at your site, because of this it is extremely important to properly manage and dedicated resources to increase traffic to your site.
SEO Value
LinkedIn’s profiles are some of the easiest and most frequently SEO-ranked social profiles on the web. So having your business on LinkedIn can help you end up on search engine result pages and strongly benefit your business’ search engine optimization.
YouTube
YouTube is now ranked as the #3 social media network. As visual content continues to grow, YouTube has become the place consumers go to get their video fix.
Customer Communication
Video has become a great way to get your customers involved. It provides unique ways to engage, entertain, and inform your customer. YouTube offers the prefect platform to do all these things.
Brand Exposure
YouTube offers a great way to promote your brand. As a visual medium it offers a great way to continuously keep your customer engaged with your brand and to share your content.
Traffic To Your Site
YouTube offers a great opportunity to drive traffic to your site. Entertain your customer or potential customer with a great video and
they will more than likely want to discover more about who you are as a brand.
SEO Value
Consistently using YouTube can seriously help bump up your search engine optimization. Just remember to integrate keywords, sitemaps, titles and robot text files to help judge relevance.
As you can see, your options for social media networks are diverse, and we only covered the most popular social media networks! When deciding which networks to use always keep in mind what your objectives are and what you hope to accomplish.
Lastly, don’t forget that in order to run successful social media campaigns you must be willing dedicate sufficient time and resources to ensure they are properly managed and maintained.
