For the travel industry, at least, social media is seen as more valuable than pay-per-click advertising. The World Travel Market 2011 report says that travel professionals see social media as one of the key revenue-generating channels over the next five years. As proof of this, the study found that eight out of ten travel-related businesses use some form of social media. Not only that: the World Travel Market 2011 also expects that in five years, half of all travel-related companies would be generating income and bookings on social media, rising from the current 22%. Out of those using social media marketing, around 50% do not even invest in PPC advertising, while 1 out of 5 of those who do use PPC aim to stop or reduce their spending in the next few years. It is very apparent that the travel industry loves social media. So if you are in the travel business, it is time to amp up your social media activities. Blogs – Read the full article
Twitter helps companies build their brand by introducing a new method of audience communication. Engaging, brief messages build interest and customer loyalty. In 140 characters or less, a company can inform their audience of their latest products or trivia knowledge. Any useful information will propel companies towards this goal. Tweeting and Marketing Companies can write Tweets that are automatically posted three to five times per day. Experts recommend frequency to keep customers interested. From a single article, companies can probably extract 10 or more tweets that represent the main points of the article. Only 25 to 30 minutes a week is required to generate daily Tweets for an entire week. Successful companies engage in a concept called mutual branding. This concept engages both employees and the company on a mutual page. The employee’s photograph and the corporate logo both exist on the page. The better the employee performs, the better the company looks. Feeds and Retweets Retweets and feeds will – Read the full article
Magento is an ecommerce script which is said to be more authoritative for ecommerce and was developed by Varien. Magento uses Zend PHP and MYSQL databases and is said to be an open source program. It is said to be more flexible in nature along with the modular structure and is totally capable of being scaled and also possesses a vast range of management options which most of the users of magento are fond of. Magento is more superior in nature and presents your products in a very powerful manner. You can create your products catalog easily and also manage it. Varien previously worked with osCommerce and they intended to diverge osCommerce but then decided to redraft and rephrase it and hence it resulted in the formation of Magento. Magento was started to develop in 2007 and in the month of august in the same year, a public beta version was announced and in 2010, Magento mobile was made available – Read the full article
It seems that competition for valuable branded keywords is reaching an all time high, with a recent report by eMarketer, “Brands Go Head-to-Head in Competition for Search Terms,” estimating that US marketers will spend a massive $14.4 billion USD this year on search advertising. Why should you care? Because it’s your brand’s keywords that they’re bidding on. The Battle of Branded Keywords We all know that search engine optimization is based on attempting to reach a top ranking position on a search engine for a given keyword or keyword phrase. We also know that the introduction of Google’s Adwords and Bing’s adCenter offered companies a major opportunity to feature on page one results for a search term without bothering with all this; they could bid on a term and grab traffic without engaging in the arduous process of link building and on and off site optimization. Recently, however, things have developed one step further and brand managers have started to – Read the full article
So, you’ve got a valued product or service, a clean, professional website with a strong domain name, and you’re ready to launch an online marketing campaign. Well, get in line because every day millions of business owners are doing the same. Thanks to the Internet, the old analogy of the little fish in the big pond no longer holds water. Today it’s more about a tiny grain of sand on a very large beach. But don’t get discouraged because when it comes to online marketing, most business owners are doing it badly. And being that all great business owners learn from the mistakes of others, here are 5 surefire ways to kill an online marketing campaign which should be avoided at all costs. 1. Start with a muddled marketing message: You know who you are and what you do. That’s why you started your business, because you recognized needs and realized that you could effectively meet them. The challenge is – Read the full article
With all of the commotion that goes along with a business, sometimes the easiest things are forgotten. Even worse, sometimes the easiest things can become complicated because after all—is anything about your company really easy? As it turns out, creating a logo is one of those rare things about your company that will turn out great results without a ton of work. Just ask Google. A logo is part of your company’s branding, which consists of everything a company does and everything a company is involved with including mission statements, customer guarantees, Internet marketing efforts, and taglines. If you have creative people on your side, you should be able to come up with a logo or tagline that is ready to hit the Internet in successful, viral fashion. I dare you to try and think of a major company that does not have a logo. Everyone is reaping the benefits of logos because they have proven to be potentially very – Read the full article
Starting an online marketing campaign can be a difficult and confusing proposition for many small companies. Which sites should you have a presence on? Is a “group” better than a “page”? Should you take support requests via social networking sites, or keep them all funneled through your website? These questions could be answered easily if you were to enlist the help of an online marketing company or social media agency. It’s easy to make the mistake of assuming that all an online marketing company does is throw up a few pages and produce flow charts with pretty buzz-words on them. In truth, an Internet marketing company or social media agency does a lot more than that, and can help you to make sure that your promotion efforts are not wasted. What will an online marketing company do that I can’t do myself? While it’s true that setting up accounts and making a few friends on social networking sites is easy – Read the full article
FourSquare is an emerging social network that specifically joins consumers with local businesses and local, regional and national brands. Consumers can determine what FourSquare providers are in their area and discover discount coupons, reward programs and heightened FS status, all of which lead to more discounts, rewards and status advancement. Local Businesses Let’s say you own a dry cleaning business. You advertise effectively in the terrestrial world with newspaper ads and even a billboard or two. You have sales regularly, and you are located in a very convenient section of town. You even have a terrific website through which you have a loyal email list to which you send periodic notices, information and yes, sales pitches. However, you want to do more. Enter: FourSquare. If a potential customer finds you among the local FourSquare businesses, and the discounts you post in your business profile presents a lower price than that customer’s usual cleaner or you offer a service the other – Read the full article
