Social media advocates are often quoted as claiming that social media is the greatest form of advertising because it is free. At Silicon Beach Training we use social media in a big way; we use it to increase exposure for our training courses. We use it to build relationships with key influencers and our customers. We also use it extensively to promote and share our flow of content generated to inform and inspire our existing customers and potential clients. One of the most important paybacks for all of this activity is it seriously improves our ranking. I believe that Google is going to up the stakes on this one, too; social shares are going to become even stronger signals that affect page position. In order to sustain these benefits, however, we need to employ people. We employ full-time people and we need to tap many external sources for content generation, paid for in currency and in back-links. Time and people – Read the full article
If you want to make sales without chasing customers or making cold calls and do it in a way that is pleasing for you as the marketer and comfortable for the prospect, there are strategies that you can implement so that people will be calling and lining up to do business with you. In this article we will discuss 9 Strategies on How You Can Achieve Expert Status In Your Niche. We’ll begin with: Article Marketing: Writing articles and giving well-researched information to your niche and placing them on your website or social media platforms will be a great way to get started in positioning yourself as an expert in your niche. You can also distribute them in article directories as long as they are of quality such as Ezine Articles or trade publications in your niche (online and offline). Write a book: The book can be in the form of an E-book that is downloadable or it can be – Read the full article
Raising funds online isn’t easy. Thank goodness there are useful social media marketing platforms like Kickstarter and Twitter. (Check out our tips for fundraising on Twitter and our coverage of some of the most successful social media fundraisers!) But if these tools aren’t flexible enough for your charity organization, political advocacy, or religious community – and if you think you’ll need a bigger Web presence, like a website or a blog – then you might as well create your own WordPress site. WordPress is Lakeshore Branding’s recommended content management system (CMS). Why? Because it’s focused on aesthetics. Because it’s built on evolving and upcoming Web standards. And because it’s so easy to use. To help rally your cause, we compiled this list of 15 WordPress themes sure to strike at the heart of your online audience. These WordPress themes are great for non-governmental institutions, public sector groups, charity organizations, environmental organizations, fundraising events and committees, advocacy groups, political aspirants, churches, – Read the full article
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
Interested to write guest content for Lakeshore Branding and expand your readership? Do get in touch! We’re looking for high-quality blog articles on: Internet marketing, social media, search engine optimization / marketing, e-commerce, web design, and other Internet-based businesses, technologies, tools, and applications. Lakeshore Branding is a PR 4 blog, with thousands of backlinks (per Alexa and Majestic SEO). Published guest blog articles are also shared via the official Lakeshore Branding Twitter account. If you’ve written the article, just E-mail it along with links and images you’d like to accompany the text with. We’ll proofread and spell-check it then let you know immediately when the article is going to be up on the site. If you haven’t written the article, kindly consider the following guidelines we have for guest blog posts: Guest blog posts must be original and may not have been published elsewhere online already. All submissions will be verified before publication. The post must be grammatically correct and – Read the full article
If you are hoping to increase the traffic directed to your website as well as your positioning in Google’s rankings, putting an effective and well-structured link building campaign together could work wonders for you. Increased traffic to your website can come from a number of benefits that link building can give you. If your ranking increase in the eyes of search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and Bing, your website will undoubtedly receive more traffic from organic searches (simply clicking through to your page via the hyperlink displayed on a search engine results page or SERPS), alternatively you can hope to see extra visitors landing on your website from the links you have established on other sites. Search engines are now users’ main tool for internet navigation and ranking high for some well-targeted search terms should be your ultimate goal when assembling a link building strategy. After being presented with a list of search engine results, a user is far – 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
There are ways to monitor changes and updates to your favorite websites, blogs, social networks, classifieds, and local business listings (including Google Places pages) – without having to watch the Web 24/7 or pressing the Refresh button every minute. And while RSS is today’s most popular way of syndicating content automatically, not all websites have it. (And not all users prefer it.) That’s where this list comes in: to be able keep up with what’s happening (in real-time) on any place across the entire Web; to monitor what customers and competitors alike are doing and saying; and to listen and respond to reviews and feedback as they are generated. Here are some of today’s best tools for monitoring changes to any website. Page2RSS Page2RSS is a free service that lets you create feeds for web pages you wish to follow or monitor – pages, specifically, that are static or don’t offer any RSS/Atom feeds. Page2RSS also serves as a way – Read the full article
