Whether or not you’ve been following this Internet marketing blog (which we hope you’ve been), it has now become obvious how huge a role online presence plays in helping businesses succeed. Increase web traffic, generate more sales and opportunities, and increase profits: it’s a simple equation. But it’s also one that can be solved using countless methods and formulas. Keep in mind, though, that not everything has to be done online. SEO, online advertising, and social media management are great ways of enhancing your web presence, but there are offline ways, too, of achieving just that. In fact, one can go so far as to say that in order for your small business, store, restaurant, civic community, etc. to succeed, you should close the loop between online and offline. Remember: you can get away from the computer for awhile and still be able to take action. Wonder how that’s done? Here’s a list of the top 5 ways to promote – Read the full article
Do you find yourself always on the go, having to work – literally – from your Apple iPhone? Don’t worry. Running around doesn’t mean you cannot accomplish the tasks needed to manage your SEO campaign – as long, of course, as you have one of today’s most sought-after mobile gadgets. We’ve talked before of great apps for small business owners. Now it’s time to list down great iPhone apps for those looking to continue working on optimizing their site, even while out of the office. Ego Ego for iPhone is a stat-tracking application that lets you check out the numbers and figures that are relevant to your SEO and search engine marketing (SEM) campaign. With support for Ember, Feedburner, Google Analytics, Mint, Squarespace, Tumblr, Twitter, and Vimeo, the Ego app lets iPhone users view things like daily, hourly, monthly site visits, subscriber count, number of Twitter followers, and even feed subscription totals. Ego is particularly useful if you’re managing multiple – Read the full article
Social media marketing is an essential part of many businesses and organizations today – regardless of size. The Internet has grown so much more community-focused, so much more social, that if one were to truly establish and enhance the online presence of a company or brand, there’d be no way of doing it without social media marketing. Sure, to some people, sites like Facebook and Twitter are just a complete waste of time, but without social media sites like these it would be next to impossible to keep up with everything that’s happening online. This is why companies are beginning to recognize the importance of hiring social media managers, social media agencies, social media consultants and strategists. The titles vary, but one thing is clear: if – as a small business owner or an Internet marketer – you want to be able to engage the right way with an online audience and steer the conversation about your brand to the – Read the full article
An E-mail marketing campaign is a great, cost-effective way to communicate your messages to a target audience – but only, of course, if you get them to actually open the E-mails that have come from you. Which isn’t guaranteed: sometimes you spend hours crafting a message for your campaign and when it finally gets to the inboxes of your mailing list and subscribers, they just delete it without ever reading. The wasted effort! The lost time! The missed opportunities! Don’t worry. There is a solution, and it comes in the form of a great, irresistible subject line. While it’s easy to think that your recipients will hardly care about it, the text you write out in the subject line is one of the single most important factors in the success of your E-mail marketing campaign. It separates the kind of E-mail that goes straight to the trash bin and the kind of E-mail that grabs the attention and tickles one’s – Read the full article
Unless you’ve been living under a rock or haven’t touched a computer at all for two years, you would know by now that Microsoft has rebranded their MSN search engine to a product called Bing. It’s the company’s answer to Google, the search giant that owns a large part of the market share and which continues to lead over Bing, Yahoo, and its other search competitors. Microsoft has shown, however, that it is willing to invest and make Bing a better search product for its users. It has also spent a huge amount of money in heavy marketing spending in order to gain a bit of Google’s portion of the search space – a move that has helped Bing consistently inch upward every month. While comScore recently reported that Google still has 64.4 percent share of core searches, Bing continued to gain in April 2010 and upped its search share to 11.8 percent. Which leads to the question: should search – Read the full article
One of the more interesting trends in Internet marketing today is the idea of outsourcing content creation and copywriting. Here’s how it works: you run a small business, you become too busy with work, and on top of that – as though your calendar wasn’t crazy enough, as though you actually had time – you find yourself having to refresh your website or company blog with new, engaging content. You have to meet the demand for new, diverse information about your product, your brand, your industry. And you’re not even a writer by profession. One can only do so much, right? If only you can leave the writing to those who do it for a living. Enter your team of freelance writers, eager to develop content and copy for your site. They may be regular readers of your blog, looking to contribute their own content; they may be freelancing neighbors from just around the corner; or they may come from – Read the full article
It’s one thing to get a lot of followers on Twitter; it’s another to be able to retain them and keep them engaged and interested. To be followed is not enough, especially if you’re a small business owner looking to maximize the long-term value of the social microblogging site for your company or brand. You’ll want people to eagerly await your tweets, and to have them “retweet” whatever you have to say. You’ll want them to keep asking you for more. Of course, this doesn’t mean you should suffer from tiny little panic attacks whenever someone decides to un-follow you. But retaining followers on Twitter can be one of the most crucial parts of your social media strategy. So here are the top 7 tips on how to keep them once you have them: 1. Quality over quantity Twitter users follow you not because they want their home page cluttered with meaningless minute-by-minute updates, but because they assume they’re going – Read the full article
It’s great to have your own blog to support your main website: you can keep updating it with new content and engage with a community of readers. But what if that community isn’t growing or responding as you had hoped, no matter how great and fresh your content is? Don’t worry: an increase in engagement is not impossible. Facebook Connect is one of the most popular ways to reach out to members of the social media community through your blog. This Facebook API (or application programming interface) is currently being used by all kinds of third parties: from websites like the Huffington Post and Mashable, to gaming consoles like Xbox Live and Sony PS3, and even mobile applications on the Apple iPhone. Basically, what this tool does is integrate Facebook into your blog, so that you can tap into the social networking site’s 400 million active users worldwide. Facebook Connect also allows you to help your blog readers connect with – Read the full article
