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
Thanks to our good friends over at the social media networks, individuals can create personal brands better than ever. Though you may not know it, your actions on social media accounts give the public a certain image of you. This is probably most true for those who are very fluent in social media—continually connecting and commenting with others on the web who enjoy similar websites and articles. However, a personal brand works just like anything else in life: having one can be very beneficial; not having one can be damaging, and vice versa. A good way to think about a personal brand is like a resume. In a sense, a resume is a document that explains why you are one way and not another—you’re good at math because you studied it in college; you’re a loyal employee because you stay at your jobs for over one year, etc. In other words, creating a personal brand through social media is becoming – Read the full article
Small businesses have a daunting task as they compete with larger companies that boast more resources and staff. How can a small business compete for a share of the search engine market with so much stacked against them? Here are some tips on creating an SEO strategy for your small business: Learn from the Competition Promodo’s SEO specialist Anna Moseva suggests starting your small business SEO strategy with a thorough analysis of the competition. You’re probably familiar with piecing together keywords on Google in order to figure out what people are searching for and what’s already out there by way of content, but Moseva advises that you take the top 20 results in Google and analyze their Alexa Rank with the SEO Quake plugin for Firefox. Once you know the top sites among your competition, you can analyze the kind of traffic they generate and which keywords and adwords are linked to their sites at SEM Rush. This technique will – Read the full article
From humble, open source beginnings, WordPress now powers over 61 million sites worldwide. The extent to which it has grown in popularity not just for bloggers but professional designers and developers is evidenced by Smashing Magazine recently launching an extended, dedicated WordPress section. I’m currently one of these working in web design in Chicago. The Project I recently had a very simple project of launching a blog with a small shopping cart installed in time for the 2011 Rugby World Cup held in New Zealand. Wait-of-Nation.com went live a little over two months ago. The Client With a background in PR/Advertising my client was well versed in getting himself out there, which in a country of 4.5 million people really isn’t that hard to do. He had a good product (sports blog of the most popular sport in NZ), with a niche message/ slant (“Home of New Zealand’s crushing expectation” – that the All Blacks – the National team – – 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
What’s the difference between a Mobile Website and a Mobile App? A good marketing strategy ensures your business is represented on the media your customers use. Since people are increasingly interacting with mobile devices such as smartphones, you should consider if a mobile website or a mobile app would be an asset to your business. So why do mobile users need special treatment? Smaller monitors and touch screens mean that presentation and data entry for traditional computers may seem awkward and cumbersome to a mobile user. Furthermore, mobile devices have hardware such as a camera, GPS, and compass that offer more opportunities if software can effectively use them. There are two approaches for designing content for mobile devices: creating a mobile website and creating a mobile app. Mobile Website A mobile website is generally cheaper to build since you can use the content management system (CMS) of your main website. You can develop a mobile theme for your site to – Read the full article
What’s the difference between a Mobile Website and a Mobile App? A good marketing strategy ensures your business is represented on the media your customers use. Since people are increasingly interacting with mobile devices such as smartphones, you should consider if a mobile website or a mobile app would be an asset to your business. So why do mobile users need special treatment? Smaller monitors and touch screens mean that presentation and data entry for traditional computers may seem awkward and cumbersome to a mobile user. Furthermore, mobile devices have hardware such as a camera, GPS, and compass that offer more opportunities if software can effectively use them. There are two approaches for designing content for mobile devices: creating a mobile website and creating a mobile app. Mobile Website A mobile website is generally cheaper to build since you can use the content management system (CMS) of your main website. You can develop a mobile theme for your site to – Read the full article
If you’re planning an online business or e-Commerce site that will sell products or services, or require membership fees to access content through the website, you must have a way to accept credit cards. You simply won’t be successful if you expect your customers to stop using your site, write and mail a check, and wait for it to clear before they can buy something from your website or access content in membership areas. Indeed, consumers have come to expect instant access and ordering through the use of their credit and debit cards. But how can a small online business or startup company accept credit cards affordably and securely? Two Credit Card Processing Options for Small Businesses With an Internet-based business, you have the option of getting a merchant account or working with a third-party processor. For most new businesses, particularly those selling exclusively online, a third-party processor is the ideal method for getting started. Once your business is more – Read the full article
