In light of the current recession and housing market downturn, real estate agents have to turn to new ways of creating and running their businesses. Social media marketing is one of the best, if not THE best way to do just that. The National Association of Realtors has a whole section of their website focused on social media for the real estate professional. The Field Guide to Social Networking for REALTORS® has eBooks, videos, and a ton of other resources to help you along the way. Facebook Ask around and you will be hard-pressed to find someone who hasn’t heard of Facebook. Even if they don’t use it, they probably saw the movie last year about it! And it’s likely that most people you know are using Facebook and have hundreds of friends. A word of caution on catapulting yourself into this too quickly: mixing personal and professional can be a very slippery road. Keep your personal Facebook profile and create a Fan Page – Read the full article
These days, you can’t call yourself an entrepreneur or a marketer without any knowledge of how to use the Internet to drive your business. That’s why we here at Lakeshore Branding keep pushing WordPress – because it’s an awesome tool for anyone wanting to establish themselves online. It’s a semantic personal publishing platform with focus on aesthetics, Web standards, and usability. So, whatever your title is – small business owner, online retailer, Internet startup founder, online marketer, social media guru, new media advertiser, affiliate marketer – you’ll find something valuable and unique in the way WordPress works. But to change the way WordPress looks? That’s what this list of WordPress themes is for. We picked out a number of the best business and marketing WordPress themes so that you won’t have to. With this list, we also hope you’ll be able to enhance the ease and efficiency of your WordPress experience. If you find a favorite business or marketing WordPress – Read the full article
Last week we published a guide on how to monitor Google Places reviews, Web updates, and content changes. It was well-received by our readers, so we’d like to build on the post and share info this time on tools for online reviews monitoring and management. Hopefully, this list will help you track online reviews of your brand, product, establishment, service, or business – and enhance your reputation as more customers talk about you on Google Places, Yelp, online directories, local business listings, and social media sites. Or, if you’ve used any of the online reputation management tools below, do let us know by leaving a comment below and sharing with us your experience. ReviewPush Texas-based ReviewPush markets itself as an “online review management tool for small to large businesses”. It offers a dashboard for monitoring / tracking reviews, protecting your brand and reputation, engaging with customers, and enhancing product offerings and promotions (such as coupons). ReviewPush features include: Continuous social – Read the full article
It’s not uncommon for businesses today to use social networks – namely, Twitter and Facebook – as a platform for engaging with customers and managing customer relationships. This development has given rise to an increasing number of social media solutions and dashboards, each promising to streamline all tasks and bring a new level of ease in customer engagement. Let’s take a look at the best of these solutions and their features. MediaFunnel MediaFunnel is a social media suite for businesses and enterprises, with a host of features designed to make Twitter and Facebook accounts easier to manage. One of these distinguishing features is Multiple User Roles, or the ability to assign Administrator, Publisher, and Contributor roles and grant various levels of permission to review or publish tweets and Facebook posts (for greater editorial control and efficiency). Apart from monitoring Twitter and Facebook for mentions and tracking the performance of links via Bit.ly and BudURL, MediaFunnel also enables you to – Read the full article
In order to create a successful sales page, you have to make sure not to include things that will turn off your potential buyers. Most sales pages that have the things that shouldn’t belong there will face the bad consequence of low sales, or no sales at all. That’s why you should carefully examine your sales page before you decide to publish it. Here are things that should not be there: Wrong focus Your entire sales page should focus on addressing your potential customers’ problem — without hard-selling the product. No matter how great your product, don’t boast about it until the last line. You have to educate and give information about how to solve the problem of your potential customers first. Let them know about the product once you’ve done this. And don’t forget to let them know about how to get the product. Criticism and insult You know that your product can solve people’s problems. Now, for example, – Read the full article
We believe that there is a WordPress theme for everyone, no matter if you’re using the platform as a tool for managing your creative portfolio, your personal blog, your e-Commerce site, your online magazine, or your business / corporate website. Today we have handpicked a bunch of WordPress themes, with a variety that’s wide enough to meet your needs. (You’ll even find that there are themes here for mobile users – of smartphones, iPads, and other tablets and devices.) They do, however, stand out for a common quality: it’s a list of 52 easy-to-use, elegant, and simple WordPress themes. Yes, usability is the name of the game this time around, and we hope you’ll be able to find the theme that’ll make your WordPress experience a breeze. Love this post? Found a favorite? Don’t hesitate to let us know by leaving a comment below. And do feel free to spread the love by tweeting the list, sharing it on Facebook, – Read the full article
Search engine optimization is not a new idea in online marketing. It has changed and evolved a great deal, especially over the past five years. Those in the market for a new SEO company as well as any business that hopes to continue running its own in-house SEO should understand the same thing that every successful SEO marketing company does: that failing to keep up with changes in SEO means being unable to conduct successful SEO. Two changes in the past year, Google+1 and Panda, demonstrate the pace at which search engine marketing evolves and the dramatic nature of changes that can take place. Google+1 Although it may have lost some steam since its initial wave of success, the Google +1 feature continues to have a powerful impact on the company’s search rankings. More than one search advertising expert has claimed that “search will never be the same.” Beyond using saved cookies and search history to tailor search results, with – Read the full article
YouTube as a free hosting site offers a wide array of handy tools for marketing Internet video content. What YouTube also offers is a quick route to Page 1 placement in the Google search engine rankings. The following article explores the six essentials ways to use YouTube’s features to benefit your Internet marketing and search engine ranking efforts. 1. Put Keywords and Phrases In To Your Video Titles & Tags The titles and tags on your video are perhaps the most influential pieces of information for search engines. Search engines frequently use titles and tags to find videos and bring up videos of a similar nature. By optimizing these fields and filling them in with appropriate keywords and phrases relevant to your brand, business, or niche you can help Google pick up your Internet video content in its regular search results. 2. Use Your Video Description Field To Your Advantage Descriptions are there to give information about your video. Use – Read the full article
