Who knew the power of blogging would explode like it has? It seems like everyone has a blog now, from stay-at-home moms to chefs to local business owners. Blogging is a powerful Internet marketing tool for local businesses as it gives you a new, yet subtle way to promote your company. Think of a blog as a way to communicate to the local community without all the business jargon. The point of a blog should be to put out information only. Write about relevant topics that relate to your business and give important facts that people want and need to know. Avoid being a salesman in your blog or people won’t read it. But provide an invaluable resource that people trust and you will build credibility within your community and generate more traffic. 5 hidden benefits of blogging for local business Change your perspective. Blogging forces you to examine your industry from all angles, not just as a provider of – Read the full article
Is your company making use of a Facebook Fan page? Now with more than 300 million users currently registered, numerous companies have set up Fan Pages fundamental to their advertising labors. People are looking for the most interesting and one-of-a-kind pages to “like”. But what are the best ways of getting maximum number of page likes? Here are the top 5 suggestions for the same: Make your own username – The username or URLs for your Facebook pages are, by default, lengthy and unattractive. Select a different domain name for your page and advance it to your Facebook page. If you by now have a web portal you can make use of a sub-domain, for example name.facebookfanpage.com. Put forward incentives – Users should know the reason to join your page. Present a rebate on your products, or make certain declarations on your page if you have something new about your business. Give these users a bait to like your page. – Read the full article
It is quite common to open your email inbox and find pages of unsolicited emails. Putting an E-mail address out there on the Internet usually results in unwanted mail filling your inbox before you have a chance to delete and block it. Sorting through this spam mail is not only time consuming, but is an aggravation most of us will agree we could do without. Here are some tips to help a savvy domain owner and email user utilize the tools at their fingertips to reduce the amount of spam mail received, and possibly eradicate it altogether. Identify Spam Mail Using SpamAssassin Offered as part of the cPanel interface and available for Windows and Linux through the Plesk interface, this weapon against spam is often overlooked by users. Although disabled by default, you can put this tool to use by choosing to enable SpamAssassin in your mail settings. It is possible to configure SpamAssassin to blacklist and block a sender’s – Read the full article
With more than 500 million active users, Facebook is the most popular website in the world. No matter what niche you’re in, it’s highly likely that your target audience is chock full of Facebook users. So, how do you create a Facebook page that’s really going to boost your traffic and sales? By following these 5 tips: 1. Keep it fun For many people, Facebook offers a great way to relax after a long day. If your page offers fun pictures, cool links, and interesting status updates, people will enjoy spending time there. And the more people you have on your page, the more likely they are to come back – or to use your services when it comes time for them to spend money. 2. Turn it into a community If you make your fans feel like they’re a part of the group, they’ll start to think of your less as a “company” and more as “friends”. And let’s face – Read the full article
Blogs have increasingly become valuable multimedia hubs where personal bloggers and companies provide information through all types of media in various categories of interest. When bloggers write posts and get them published, they expect readers to find them. The fact, however, is that your blog is one among millions of others – probably even hundreds of millions – existing in the Web universe. Instead of waiting to be discovered, you need to find a way of telling the world that you exist. The best way of doing this is to promote your blog to social media sites. Once your post is published at your ‘hub’, you should let your followers and fans find the post where they hang out. With more than 200 million Twitter users and about 800 million on Facebook, having your post promoted through social media is crucial in giving your blog much needed exposure. There are several major platforms where you can publish and enable people – Read the full article
According to Email Marketing Reports, there are 1.4 billion online users today, and “according to research conducted by the Direct Marketing Association, E-mail marketing was expected to generate an ROI of $42.08 for every dollar spent on it in 2010. As such, it outperforms all the other direct marketing channels examined, such as print catalogs.” If this is appealing to you, it’s time to begin this money-making process known as E-mail marketing. A large part of email marketing is finding the right software. If you know what different softwares have to offer in terms of features and installment, then you will be able to make the right decision for your company. There are three types of software you can choose from: Hosted software: The company you purchase the software from will host the software for you. In other words, all you have to do is login on their website and manage your email lists from there. Self-hosted software: You are – Read the full article
Small business owners often rely on leads in order for them to keep their business afloat. The only problem is that online lead generation can be a very difficult thing to master, especially when the goal is not just simply to come up with a huge list. The quality of the leads is something that owners need to consider as well. Trying to hit both goals can be very tricky. Most people assume that the numbers are all the matter in online lead generation. But what is the use of a big list if it consists mostly of unqualified leads which cost not just money but time as well? Online lead generation is a tool that allows business owners to make attractive offers to prospective buyers. In order to keep you from engaging unqualified leads, wasting both time and effort, here are a few tips. 1. Conversion Mechanisms Should Be Consistent with Purchase This is a very simple concept which – Read the full article
So you’ve e-Commerce’d your site up. (Hopefully with Magento, our favorite.) And you’re ready to roll. The homepage is ready. The product shots have been Photoshopped to perfection. The design and the color schemes look very cool (ahem, an aesthetic term) and you’ve set up your checkout process with a secure third-party payment gateway. That’s it, right? Well – not if you haven’t dedicated as much effort as you already have to your product pages. Here’s a list of awesome tips for turning your product pages into awesome sales magnets: Optimize it. This, really, is a given, since you want the search engines to find you as easily and as often as the human visitors do. Great ways to make your product page SEO-friendly include: avoiding duplicate content and duplicate URLs; writing up unique and compelling text descriptions for each product (don’t just copy the manufacturers’ descriptions); and editing this content in a way that makes it relevant to your – Read the full article
