Social media marketing can be very effective in driving traffic to your blog and website, as well as in enhancing the visibility of your brand and business. But if you’re looking to improve your results, here are some great tips and tricks you can follow: Target the right sites There are literally hundreds of social media sites you can use. However, no one has the time to effectively use all of them. The first thing you need to do is locate a few sites which will fit well with you and your audience. Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon and Digg are some of the obvious popular choices since they send generally large traffic volumes, but to find sites that can send you high-quality, highly targeted traffic, look out for niche-specific and geo-relevant social media sites. Targeting general news and social bookmarking websites like Reddit or Digg can also be useful; once you have established a prominent profile, you can promote all manner – Read the full article
Paid search is a wonderful advertising platform because it gives you clear-cut analytics for ROI decisions. Twitter, on the other hand, is a wonderful advertising platform because it is still natural and fun. Both paid search and Twitter advertising differ in scope and functional use in the marketing mix; however, Twitter recently announced a tool called the “Follower Dashboard”, which, in conjunction with geo-targeted ads, makes Twitter a very attractive advertising medium. Twitter announced the ability for companies to pay for “Promoted Tweets” earlier in 2010, where Coca-Cola garnered 86 million impressions with a single promoted tweet. Holy! Okay, sure Coca-Cola probably paid out the “Wah-Zoo” for that tweet, but even if they paid half a million dollars (ex: cost-per-engagement, or CPE, at $.10 & $6.06 per 1,000 impressions) for that promoted tweet, it would still be competitive with a paid search of $10 CPA. Okay, Twitter is great, we know. But up until now it was only great for – Read the full article
Have you ever thought about how to get your website or blog included in Google News? Well, you wouldn’t be the first. Business owners, Internet marketers, online reputation management and public relations (PR) professionals, and SEO specialists all recognize the value of having their content show up in one of today’s biggest online news aggregators (and search engines). Why get listed on Google News? If you’ve never given a thought to getting listed, consider these benefits and key features of Google News. Millions of people use it to keep abreast of what’s happening. (It cannot be a bad thing to be able to tap into that, right?) These users access Google News using a variety of ways: via search, personalized Google News pages, regular E-mail alerts, mobile device or a tablet (like the iPad), RSS or Atom feeds, and more. Get listed and immediately you have a multitude of ways to reach out to an audience (search engine marketing, mobile – Read the full article
Now that your website is up and running, it’s time to start working on your Google PageRank (PR). My what? What is PageRank? PageRank, in simple terms, refers to the value given to your site by Google. Sometime ago this value was measured by link popularity, or the number of links pointing back to your site. (It was thought that the best and most relevant pages attracted the most links.) So the more links you have from other sites, especially those sites with a higher PageRank, the higher your website will be ranked by Google. And what does the high ranking do? Well, a number of experts consider PageRank to be the most important factor in establishing the relevance of a website or page, for each particular phrase, keyword, or search term entered on Google Search. Nowadays it has changed. Search engines like Google no longer rely solely on the quantity of links. They’re taking link quality and reputation into – Read the full article
When you are marketing a brand name or product – online or offline – it is essential for you to acquire the know-how of writing a brochure effectively. The contents of the brochure will either be ignored or call potential customers to action. Information must be helpful to the reader so that they will feel a need to contact you for further assistance. Brochures have been used in marketing for years and the fact that they are still around – and have taken several new forms on the Web as online promotional literature – is testament to their inherent value in contributing to sales. Below are some useful tips on the process of writing a traditional or online brochure effectively: Keep it Brief The contents of your brochure must be brief and to the point. It is possible that the brochure may have several pages but the information therein must be relevant. Readers mostly scan through the brochure to check – Read the full article
Sometime last year, social networking giant Facebook launched an online Q&A product called Questions. It was thought to be a feature that would rival Yahoo! Answers or the much buzzed-about Quora – in that Facebook Questions would be a similar online database of knowledge, built by hundreds of millions of users – but the product eventually failed to gain traction. Few people used it. Now, Facebook Questions has been revamped and made more “social”. It’s probably less ambitious than its first version, but it’s certainly better and more useful this time. In a March 25 announcement made on the Facebook blog, product manager Adrian Graham explained the Facebook Questions update: “Friends are often the best source of advice when you’re trying new things. Friends know your tastes, and you have confidence in their opinions. Over the summer, we began testing Questions with a small group of people, and today we are beginning to roll it out to everyone…. There are – Read the full article
According to a study by Forrester Research, 71 percent of online shoppers read customer reviews before making a purchase decision. That’s close to three out of every four! Enough for us to have to seriously take this insight, one that serves as yet another proof that, when it comes to winning new customers (and bringing in new business) a satisfied customer or a loyal fan just might be your most potent sales rep. Oh, and it’s also probably a good idea to start soliciting customer reviews and testimonials. Why? More than techniques to manage your online reputation, reviews and testimonials can act as the worms that bait the fish. (Worms: a funny word to describe that which persuades shoppers to buy and mere visitors to become customers.) Need advice on soliciting – and maximizing the potency of – customer reviews and testimonials? Here’s a quick guide: Soliciting Reviews Ask for it. Your customers may never know that you want their – Read the full article
Most businesses and websites that invest in Pay-per-Click (PPC) campaigns know the basics of running one. They’d also know that the most important element of any PPC campaign is keyword research: spending time on finding out what phrases will be the most useful for your website when set against the cost of the most commonly used phrases in your business sector. Keyword research and keyword selection make up the single most important job for any website, and finding the balance between the most commonly used phrases and value for money when competing with your rivals can often make or break the performance – and value – of your campaign. Once you have mastered the basics of keyword research, it is possible to dig deeper into the more sophisticated arts of Pay-per-Click and hone your PPC strategies and skills even more. One way of doing this is through Pay-per-Click tracking. PPC tracking allows you to evaluate the Pay-per-Click campaigns you have – Read the full article
