How to Improve Your Ecommerce Without Spending a Fortune

Getting your e-commerce business off the ground is not a walk in the park. The process is frustrating and expensive at the same time. No matter how hard you encourage online users to buy from your business, most of them still go for established brands in the industry. 

There is compelling evidence to show that even if you sell high-quality products and have impressive layouts, you have to put a lot of work to drive traffic to your online store. 

Luckily, there are multiple effective techniques for driving traffic to your website without spending a fortune. Here are some of them.

Leverage Social Media

Did you know that a third of the world’s population uses social media daily? Make better use of social platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram to generate traffic for your e-commerce. 

Post regular updates on all social platforms to keep your audience engaged. Besides convincing people to buy from your business, take time to express your gratitude to your viewers and people who comment on your posts. 

Frequently posting engaging content and images is essential. To make sure you close as many deals as possible, include a call to action at the end of every article.

Improve Your Ecommerce With SEO

Acquiring knowledge about search engine optimization on the internet is absolutely free. Mastering SEO and learning how to improve your ecommerce goes a long way in helping increase traffic to your online store using organic results in search engines. 

Although numerous businesses hire experts to handle this task, you can perform your keyword research, create blog articles, or publish guest articles on other people’s websites.

Liaise With Influencers

Influencer marketing has gained immense popularity in the past couple of years. Recent studies show that numerous shoppers are likely to be influenced by an actual person than a company name or a brand. 

 

For impressive results, reach out to bloggers, Instagrammers, or vloggers with a massive flowing. Sending a free sample or providing mutual exposure are some of the ways to work with influencers without spending a dime.

Request for Customer Feedback

Normalize requesting reviews from your customers. Reviews not only help you receive feedback on your product and customer service, but they also influence potential customers. A large number of millennials consider online reviews when making a purchasing decision. 

When you receive a bad review, start by owning up to the mistake and apologize to your customer. Then use the negative reviews to design a solution.

All these methods are free and can generate your online store as much traffic as a paid promotion.

Promoting Your Business Through Social Media

It is always hard for new businesses to break through the industry. There are brands that are already more established and more reputable. People need to be sure that they are dealing with brands that they trust all the time. 

There are moments when they would be interested to try out new brands but this is only because of the influencers who encouraged people to try out a certain brand.

As a business owner, what are you supposed to do to promote properly? There are still other things that you have to think about. You need to make sure that your federal tax ID application goes through. Even if you are not a resident of the United States, you can offer your products to the target market there provided that you have an EIN number.

You can refer to Gov Doc filing if you want to know more about how you can apply for your EIN. This is great because you will learn how your personal finances can be protected no matter what the current state of your business is.




If you have already fixed your EIN, you can focus on how you are going to promote your business and your brand through social media. How are you going to do that? These are just a few of the things that you can do:

• Make sure that you choose the social media platform you are going to promote on. There are some people that you can reach better through the social media platform that you choose. Expect that the generation would be younger if you promote through Instagram as compared to promoting through YouTube wherein the users will be more diverse. Your choice will depend on the people that you want to purchase from your brand.
• Find people who can promote your brand for prices that you can afford. You may be tempted to just contact anyone who will promote your business through social media but you need to be careful. The influencers are able to get people to try out your brand. They give your products and your whole company exposure in exchange for a fee or a price. 
• Choose influencers whom you believe can represent your brand in a good way.
• Plan how you are going to advertise your products and your services. You may want to create a social media page wherein you can place all of your items for sale. This will allow people to visit this page whenever they want to check if some of the items they want are still available.
• You can also work with other brands by doing a guest post on their social media page if they could also promote through yours. Businesses can form partnerships and help each other become better. The more that your business grows, the bigger the names of the brands that you will come across and possibly work with.

There are a lot of things that you can do to promote through social media. Do you think you are ready? With LLC forms properly filed, you have nothing to worry about.

Using Social Media as a Fertilizer for Your Startup

Small businesses have come to rely on social media marketing because it offers a level field even in competition with big corporations. It comes down to how well you connect with your audience.

Social Strategy

While there is inevitably research involved in finding the right audience, your social strategy should consist of something similar to the following steps:

1. Determine Your Goals: Before you do anything else, establish exactly what you hope to accomplish, whether it's promoting a new product or service or simply growing your most loyal followers.

2. Develop a Concept: This starts with a thorough understanding of both your own brand and how your target audience behaves on social media. Then you can come up with a catchy idea that relates intimately to both.

3. Provide Great Content: How will you express that idea? Video? Funny images? Slogans? Or a combination of approaches? Just be sure every post is original, interesting, and relevant to the campaign.

4. Generate Leads: The power of social media lies in generating new leads for your business. Be sure to make it easy for followers to connect with your websites, phones, chat, or other points of contact.

5. Build Relationships: Posting is only part of the solution. To grow brand recognition in a positive way, you must also interact with and listen to your followers.

6. Acquire Customers: Social leads are only the gateway to the customer journey. Craft a pleasant and efficient sales experience, as well, to make these prospects customers.

7. Experiment and Track Measures: Have the right digital tools to monitor progress on every concept you employ.

In an environment with a lot of competition and occasionally some brilliant ideas, this last step is very important. You need to make an effort to keep up with both your target audience and your competitors. 




One of the keys to success is having the right tools to monitor social activity. You want to know for certain which audiences are engaging with which posts. The tools you choose must make success measurable in plain numbers. These become your guide for optimizing your social skills.

A lot of experimentation and brainstorming may be involved before you hit on the right campaign, but don't get discouraged. There's always room for more great content on social media. 

The trick is to make it so engaging that that your own followers will spread the message for you. Often that's done by connecting them with the big trends that are happening now.

Here are a few examples of social campaigns that got it right at the right time.

Use the News

In the summer of 2017 when everyone was talking about a major solar eclipse that would be visible all across the U.S., Chiquita Banana took advantage. Their marketing campaign featured an eclipse's familiar crescent shape as the Banana Sun.

While they plastered the Banana Sun over other advertising mediums, they had fun with it. A brightly glowing yellow banana was a big hit on social media. The image was shared and retweeted by thousands in the form of .gif files, video clips, screen savers, and more. 

As a result, Chiquita's social media audience blew up with many thousands of new users in the space of three weeks.

Be Trendy

The Netflix show Stranger Things became a big hit with audiences. If you're a fan of the show, you might have noticed something delightfully odd that kept popping up: Kellogg's Eggo waffles, a favorite of the character Eleven. 

Although Kellogg's role was initially inspiration and not product placement, they exploited the popularity of the show in their own advertising, and by the second season had, indeed, negotiated a deal with Netflix.

The show was easy to connect with across social media content through plot updates, video clips, funny images, and virtually anything related to #StrangerThings and Eggos. 

Audiences couldn't get enough of the show or the breakfast treats. Kellogg's social media following grew dramatically over that second season.

Benefits of Social Marketing

How you market is more important than how much. It's a fertile environment because users aren't necessarily interested in the endless corporate advertising of brands they're already too familiar with. Perhaps best of all for entrepreneurs, social media marketing can also be done very affordably, for an ROI that can't be ignored.

Social users are always looking for something fresh and intriguing to connect with. Social networks are about communication, which means prompt responses and an authentic feel. 

These are things that you, as the guiding spirit of your startup, can manage better than a corporate bureaucracy.

All you need is a good idea to sow, and an effective social strategy will help your concept grow your market influence. 

Be consistent, interesting, and post regularly, and audiences will keep coming back to be entertained.

Jasmine Williams covers the good and the bad of today's business and marketing. When she’s not being all serious and busy, she’s usually hunched over a book or dancing in the kitchen, trying hard to maintain rhythm, and delivering some fine cooking (her family says so). Tweet her @JazzyWilliams88

What is PR and How Can it Help a New Business

Every business is crucially dependent on its reputation. It is not only customers that have an impact; so too do suppliers, investors, employees, and the media. Each of these will have an opinion regarding the business and it is this opinion that will determine how they interact with it, for instance whether they purchase from it, invest in it or work for it. 

The aim of PR is to manage that reputation in a positive way so that these stakeholders gain and maintain a viewpoint that is beneficial to all parties and that achieves the corporate aims of the business.
A PR campaign

There are many aspects to a PR campaign. The traditional approach is the press release, which is a succinct news item describing interesting information on a business or product and which is circulated to journalists for publication in the media. In our digital age this is now known as a news release, and it is likely to be published online.

Although news releases are still an important aspect of PR campaigns, over recent years social networks have become increasing important. This is a very different approach than the traditional one of just presenting people with information and hoping that this will elicit a response. It involves two way communications and can be very effective. Today many PR professionals spend much of their time getting involved in conversations within social media and news releases written for the social media are designed to encourage customer engagement, sharing and conversation. 

A PR campaign is often the best way to launch a new business

New businesses need to manage cashflow with care. Sales need to be generated quickly and there may not be sufficient funds for extensive advertising campaigns. In such circumstances PR is a highly cost effective way of getting the business message across; not only is it considerably less expensive than advertising, when it is done correctly it can have a greater impact. Just a simple placement in the media can have a significant positive impact on sales.

PR owes its effectiveness to a number of factors:

• People tend to respond more positively to a third party endorsement of a product or business than they do to a paid-for advertisement
• PR increases the general awareness of businesses and brands and increases their credibility
• Articles and news releases written as part of a PR campaign are found by search engines. Inbound links in these will drive visitors to the business website as well as increasing the rank of the website in search engine results. 
• People like to share interesting and engaging information with the result that audiences can grow at an exponential rate.

Going about it

There are two approaches to PR: do it yourself (DIY) or hire a professional PR agency. One problem with the DIY approach is that there are so many things to be done in a new business that few entrepreneurs are able to devote sufficient time to developing and pursuing an effective PR campaign, so budgeting for some help from a PR professional should form part of the business plan, you should always check out what an agency has done before too.

Whatever approach is adopted it is important to concentrate initially on the strategy. For instance you need to establish what messages you want to get across, the reasons why you do, and how they will deliver your business goals. Ideally PR will form part of your overall marketing plan, so you need to consider ways in which you can integrate it.

As already indicated social media can be very useful to PR, but it needs time to engage your audience; you (or your PR professional) will need to get involved in conversations and building relationships.
Finally

PR is so important to new businesses that it should be included in the overall business strategy. Although it is cost effective, there is a cost, so ensure that you budget for it; you might have only one chance to get it right.

Top Advantages that your Business can Enjoy from Blogging on a Regular Basis

Blog of the day once again (Photo credit: the Italian voice)

While there is a chunk of businessmen involved in blogging activities to take their business to the ;next level, there is also a section that believes that doing do is simply a waste of time and efforts. However, this is far from truth. Blogging has gained an immense amount of momentum in recent times and its popularity among the masses is commendable. Besides, the increased level of dependency on the internet has only worked immensely in the favor of blogging. The time that you spend blogging is far less whereas the results that you get from the same are monumental and one of the best things about it is the fact that it is available on a global platform. Therefore, if you are looking for a marketing platform like empower network for your business, you must certainly consider blogging for the following benefits that it is likely to offer. 

1.) The most cost-effective ways to market your business:

After social media, blogging definitely follows up as one of the most pocket friendly ways to promote your business on a global platform. There are several platforms that provide blogging services at absolutely no cost. However, if you wish to gain better control, you can opt for self-hosted blogs that are extremely affordable. Besides, the fact that this blog can be included as part of your website makes it all the more appealing as a marketing tool for your business. It is always advisable to have the name of your business as a domain name as it enhances the prospects of getting more customers and credibility.

2.) The business is likely to get more noticeable over a period of time:

When it comes to blogging for your business, it goes without saying that you need to be extremely regular in posting new and fresh content for increased credibility. Besides, when you use the right empower network and an SEO strategy, you are likely to get a better response in the search engines results page. Not just that, you may also get more linkbacks if your content is liked and appreciated by your customers and other site visitors. If you can pull off guest blogging and use high traffic sites to post content with a link back to your blog, you will get an immense amount of traffic to your blog, which eventually increases the possibility of conversion rates.

3.) Helps build a large network over a short period of time:

When it comes to any other methods of marketing your business and the business website, it is very common to invest a colossal chunk of your money to see the results. Blogging, on the other hand is a global medium that lets you connect with customers and other related companies at absolutely no cost or a very minimal amount. This network can help your business gain more customers.

4.) Increased emphasis on your products:

There are two ways in which your products can be the highlight by means of blogging. The first method is to write blog posts on the products that you sell. These blog posts should never be promotional but must offer information that will help the potential customers realize if they fit their needs. The second way to do this is by asking well known bloggers belonging to the niche that your business deals in to review the products that you have to offer. Well known bloggers are often also referred to as influential personalities as their views and opinions are highly valued. This is an excellent way to get your business and your products into focus.

Author’s bio:
Marilyn Osborne is the owner of a well known cosmetics line that uses herbal and naturally occurring elements to produce a wide range of cosmetics. She has recently worked to empower network and is offering several incentives for customers.

Why Is a Company's Brand so Important?

In the fast paced technological world of business, it is essential that your company understand the necessity for establishing a brand. You may be asking yourself "why is having a brand so important to the success of your business?".

In reality, a brand is what encompasses nearly every aspect of your business from your name, logo, and website to how you communicate your products and services. In short, it's what your company represents to your current and future customers.

Developing your company brand will necessitate participation from all segments of your company’s operation. One of the more effective ways to insure total cooperation is to develop a corporate incentive program to reward benchmarks achieved in your branding campaign.

Brand Image Creation

Gone are the days when a company could simply rely upon a TV commercial or a radio advertisement to simply showcase their product or service. The standard now is full scale exposure on social media and a company’s website. Update your website so that customers will have access to blogs that supply information on products and services that they want more information on.

Unleash Social Media

If your company is not involved in social media, then you are seriously handicapping your company’s growth and missing out on countless opportunities to expand your client or customer base. Downsize your company’s print and TV/radio advertising campaign and use Twitter and Facebook to reach more prospective clients in local and national markets. With Twitter alone, you can build the brand and image so that readers will follow updates in product or service and take part in an ongoing corporate incentive program that showcases seasonal deals or coupons.

Facebook is another brand development vehicle that must not be overlooked. By posting new services/products and inviting readers to “Like” you on your Facebook page, each Facebook friend will automatically receive all of your special deals and updates and posts. More importantly, they can link directly to your website as well.

Create Emotional Effectiveness

For the 21st Century customer, their whole experience is developed and even lived through interactions on the internet. This means that they will likely never walk into your business before they see your website or Facebook or Twitter page. This means you have to use your brand to allow them to feel and even visualize in a positive way who you are. So again, employees participating in community programs for the needy should be showcased on your social media pages as well as on your website.

Employees love being portrayed in a positive light and it is a great corporate incentive program for building terrific company morale. Remember, a brand is an image as well as a feeling that is imprinting on a prospective customer one click at a time.

Brand Recognition

You have succeeded when your company's brand is viewed as unique and has created a steady flow of attention to your website and social media pages. Improve your company’s valued place in the market by creating your brand as soon as you can.

4 Savvy Ways to Get Customers to Buy Your Marketing Materials

Free publicity is often the best publicity – but what about publicity the customer pays to spread around for you? Many businesses have had their logo printed on “swag,” items such as pens, tote bags, T-shirts and mugs, and give them away to customers (and potential customers) at trade fairs and festivals. Free swag is a great way to remind potential clients of your business every time they use the items. However, savvy businesses can get customers to actually buy swag and use it. Start with these four simple tips and your marketing material could be as sought-after as the products and services you sell.

Target the Audience

Before you begin, consider your target audience – which should be the same as the target audience of your products or services. Focus on how to make your brand appealing to your target audience and how to best get the word out about the products you intend to offer. Social media will prove an excellent way to make your marketing campaign more interactive. The more you ask your customers to participate in the campaign, the more likely they are to pay attention when you sell swag.

Use social media not only to spread the word about your swag, but in the swag design itself. For example, come up with a hashtag related to your brand, products or services. If the hashtag takes off in popularity, incorporate it into your design. When someone new sees the hashtag on a customer’s swag, she’ll be inspired to discover the buzz behind the word or phrase.

Design Something Marketable

Once you know who you’re targeting and how you’re going to get their attention, focus on your design. You probably already have a business logo; if you can’t or don’t want to change that, that’s fine. If you are open to a redesign, getting ready to sell swag might be the ideal excuse.

In addition to your logo, come up with a fun, cute or attractive addition to your logo that appears on your swag and the marketing material for your swag. This should be something your customers will want to wear or show off for aesthetic reasons in addition to a love of your brand. For example, if your target audience is elementary school kids and their parents, a cute mascot animal could prove popular on T-shirts, pencils and notebooks.

Support a Charity

Donate a portion of the swag proceeds to a charity related to your industry or the community. For example, if you’re primarily a local business selling products for seniors, offer to support local senior centers and programs such as Meals on Wheels. If your business is aimed primarily at women, choose causes especially important to women, such as breast cancer research and support for abused women and children. Your customers and supporters of the charitable cause will spread the word about the promotion, which will lead to more sales. 

Start Small

Don’t look at the swag sales as a huge untapped revenue stream. Inc. 5000 cautions against thinking of marketing material as a substantial part of your profits, but stresses that real profit can be made with careful planning. Start with small vendors and see how sales of the items go before broadening sales.

Sell the swag exclusively out of your storefront or online store, or partner with a local store related to your industry to sell the goods. Focus entirely on the local market. If sales prove successful, branch out to more national avenues and broaden your online marketing strategy to include other regions. If you find you’ve ordered too much swag and it’s not selling, dial back on the campaign and re-strategize.

When you sell swag rather than give it away, loyal customers are getting the word out about your company by financially supporting your business. However, if you’re going to ask customers to pay to promote your business, you have to offer something that is worth paying for. Having a compelling logo and design that people want to buy gets people talking about your business.

About the Author: Gary Austin can provide your company or organization with the best promotional pens in the industry. Visit http://www.thepenguy.com/promotional/ to find out more.

4 Online Marketing Services that Drive Success

To do well with a business, one must have a multifaceted approach that involves trying to find customers with a variety of different methods. However, this is not always easy, as many new business owners do not know what actually helps to build a strong a customer base. Here are four online marketing services that drive success. 

SEO

With high organic search rankings, a company can see a lot of traffic to their website. To get started, most people opt to do it on their own and experience poor results, since it is difficult for the average person to do it right. Luckily, a professional SEO company can, with ease, help a website reach the first page of the major search engines. They can do this by helping the business create solid content and gain links from a variety of quality sources. Thus, when you are even looking for a dental practice marketing service, you should first consider using an SEO company in order to generate a large amount of natural attention. 

Email marketing

With email, one can market their ideas to a wide audience and find a lot of success. To begin, one should hire a service that can construct a marketing email that will bring in new visitors to the website of the company. These same companies, such as 123 Postcards, will also be able to provide your company with a direct mail service, which will make sure that you reach out to as many people as possible. This is a perfect option for a business that has a hard time getting people excited about their product using other methods. 

Social media marketing

Most people fail to build a sound social media marketing plan, as they do not know what will interest followers. The problem is that many people will simply give up when they don't see results from their efforts with social media. In order to see the best results, you should consider using a professional company that will know how to build and use your social media sites with the maximum amount of efficiency in mind. Remember, social media is here to stay, and a company must embrace this early on if it wants to succeed. 

Surveys

When owning a website, one will, inevitably, have both satisfied and angry customers. To understand the reason for these varying opinions, one should conduct surveys. This will not only help the business to understand the mindset of clients, but with this information, the business owner can improve the situation and avoid causing issues with current and potential customers. However, most people do not know how to conduct a survey tactfully, and it is best for an entrepreneur to pay someone to do this task, since it is necessary to ask the right questions without alienating or bothering visitors that come to the business. 

With these four services, a company can build their customer base and achieve long-term success.

5 Great Ways Pinterest Can Improve Your Career

One of the key elements of building your own career is to start connecting with people, start advertising your skills and to make a good impression to others. The social media is one of the medium that is most commonly used for advertising. This advertising scheme using the social media network is not only exclusive for internet marketers but also to professional individuals as well. Using the social media can become a powerful tool that you can use in helping to boost your career and doing the same is not merely limited in advertising your career through text but through images as well. 

Pinterest makes it possible for any professional to improve their career by using its platform for advertising their work, more primarily their skills in designing and other visual portfolio. Pinterest is a social media network which unique feature is the virtual pin board that allows people to pin or post images which is an opportunity to promote the visual presentation of your brand, career or profession. If you aim to promote your career using Pinterest, here are 5 great ways to help you take the right directions. 

1. Showcase your specialty or professional industry

Using Pinterest is a great opportunity to show enticing images that will showcase your specialty or professional career. If you are a professional wedding organizer for instance, you can certainly post the images of the events to which you organized and pin them on your virtual board for everyone to see. If you are a chef, you can take a picture of your master recipes and make people start liking your mouth watering menus. Web designers can post the websites that they have designed while artists could also pin the photos of their masterpieces of artwork. Because photos are worth a thousand words, you can always showcase your brand and specialization that is within your profession in order to boost your career using Pinterest and make your specialty known to the public. 

2. Highlight your customers with due recognition

Pinterest (Photo credit: stevegarfield)

Pinterest can help boost your career when you try to recognize your customers in your Pinterest account. Try to recognize your loyal customers by pinning their photos, their website or anything related to them that will give due recognition for contracting your services. This way, you are building your customers’ loyalty and make them repeat buyers or customers in the future. Customers always like the feeling of being recognized, therefore you should exert effort to make them feel important and appreciated and they will likely patronize your services which is a step of building your career reputation. 

3. Use Pinterest to hunt for a job

You can use Pinterest to promote your portfolio and professional career in landing your dream job. By creating your own personal brand that will highlight your accomplishments and creations by showcasing them on your pin board. Choose the most appropriate videos, photos and articles to pin on your Pinterest pin board that will highlight your skills and talents. You can use this as a reference to support your professional career in order to land your dream job. If you are fortunate enough, someone may find your Pinterest profile very interesting and might offer you a job that fits your qualifications. 

4. Make your Pinterest board a good resource for similar career industry

 (Photo credit: colleengreene)

Users of Pinterest can pin images or re-pin the other user’s photos or pinned items on their own virtual pin board. You can start improving your career and allow it to gain a momentum by working out to make your own pin board a resource of information that is related to your line of profession. You can always be on search for related news and updates about your professional career and provide that valuable information to your own pin board for others to find and re-pin on their pin board as well. You gain more popularity for people who belong to the same work industry as yours and you can start building your own professional brand and career by becoming an authority about your specific career field. 

5. Connect with other Pinterest users who belong to a similar profession as yours

You need to stay connected with people who have the same profession as yours. The more people you can get to become your own network of friends, the more exposure your Pinterest profile gets. As you use your Pinterest account as an extension of your portfolio to showcase your skills and talents, the more people will likely start noticing you. It is essential to be able to connect with professionals who could give you tips on how to prosper in your career and who may be able to vouch for you with a good word of recommendation. Pinterest is a good place to start making friends with people who share the same interest as yours and to professionals who are already successful in similar career industry as yours.

About the Author:

The guest post is written by Mackenzie, finance and business writer and guest blogger for 4 years already. She is proficient at webdesign, internet marketing and guest blogging. She runs the website  Accountancy Services and she loves covering the articles on various blog sites.

Satellite Communications and Social Media

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Over the last year data traffic from mobile devices has increased 2.4 times. Industry leaders had forecasted an increase of only 125%. This has been the  global trend over the past 5 years. In 2012, monthly mobile internet data was at 624 petabytes. In the year 2000, the entire Internet has a total capacity of only 75 petabytes.

With the rising need to move more and more data, finding resources to do the job has become an ever growing problem. Data centers are not only getting ready for an ever growing amount data but to make it worse the growth of social media, YouTube, and online games is just adding to the problem. Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr has made a great impact on the webs need for more capacity.

Satellite Communications from SATCOM Systems  have become more available in the last few years and are helping to carry the additional traffic. Because of the billions of dollars spent by both private and public sectors it is now available to be used for data traffic. Today, much of Internet traffic is being carried by wireless providers. People use their cell phones to surf the net and use social media and the trend is rising. 

The benefits of a partnership between cellular network operators and satellite operators can only benefit the end user by providing better and more reliable service. The combination of satellite and cellular allows service coverage of more areas which wasn't possible before with just landlines. 

Remote areas that are not close enough to the standard phone company lines will be able to pick up their internet through compact and efficient satellite dishes. 

Make your Business Marketing Savvy with these Strategies

Businesses take different strategies in online marketing. With the plethora of ways businesses can advertise their products, there is really no such thing as a perfect fit for all businesses when it comes to online marketing. Most of the time, businesses combine different ways of advertising and marketing so that they can achieve their goals. However, it is good to know that there are some generally accepted ways in online marketing that is effective for all kinds of businesses. One is social marketing. It is not very far from online marketing. It has the same intention, social marketing just uses a different platform and that is social media. 

Social marketing is a very popular marketing plan for many businesses. It is not very hard to see why social marketing is very effective. It can gather the customer base that businesses target and it is a very accessible form of advertising. Making a profile on a social media platform is very easy. On the other hand, there should always be some form of marketing to take place. Here are some easy strategies that most successful businesses use when it comes to social marketing. 

Product Advertising without Sales Talk

Social marketing is different from traditional advertising. Most social media users find sales talk irritating. The question then pops up- how do you advertise products without sales talk? The answer is plain and simple. Post straight to the point and appealing content. Social users are drawn to attractive content that is relevant and new. Moreover, presentation is key. Most people who use social media like to see graphics or images. A promotion for a new product can be easily spotted and will rapidly gain popularity when it is through a short interesting image. Remember that your website is probably not the only business page they are following, therefore make your content stand out by using images. No tacky sales talk allowed. 

Conduct Q & A

A social media is a big forum. It is not a one way street like a website that only feeds content to its visitors. Social media involves both parties and interaction between them. So, keep in touch with your customers constantly and give them some space for feedback. This is a good way to know their thoughts and opinions about your company’s products. In addition, it will also make your company customer oriented.

Blog about your Company

In a company’s website, blogging seems a little bit amateur. One great thing about social media is that it gives you an avenue to blog. Blogs are very helpful in attracting customers as it gives them a perspective about your company that they have never seen before. Blogging would definitely make your customers feel that they are personally connected to your company.

Important events in your company, behind the scenes pictures or everyday life in the company are great things to blog about. This will surely make customers prefer and patronize your brand.

Author Bio:

Austin Richard is an IT professional from Pass Certification. It provides you 100% 70-482 exams. Let’s take benefit of 70-432 Exams material efficiently and get guaranteed success. Check out free demo of all certifications Exam.

Five Ways Technology Marketing Can Improve Your Sales Targets

Image via CrunchBase

Despite the downturn, businesses are still investing increasing amounts of time and money into the digital marketing arena. A raft of new technology means that communicating with consumers is more exciting than ever, with touchscreen tablets and smartphones leading the way. 

Technology also continues to make advances in the field of business-to-business marketing with technology marketing companies providing software designed to enhance the sales and marketing function. 

Use a CRM system 

A customer relationship management system can be a powerful tool when it comes to marketing your business and can increase both productivity and profits. CRM systems enable users to build up and maintain detailed customer profiles, which in turn can be used to develop sales and marketing strategies based upon specific needs. Marketing automation takes this concept one step further and delivers personalized content in response to consumer's online behavior. 

Be social, not antisocial 

Unless you have been living under a rock recently, your business will be utilizing platforms such as Twitter and Facebook to communicate with consumers. With more and more brands vying for attention, you need to ensure your social media messages are engaging and aligned with your marketing strategy.

Be aware that boastful status updates are likely to encourage customers to hit delete and it is bad form to follow people on Twitter on the off chance they will follow you back. On the other hand, requesting feedback can be a successful way to engage with existing and prospective customers on social media platforms. 

Search engine listings

In order to be found, your website needs to be indexed by major search engines such as Google and Yahoo. There is software available that will automatically submit your URL, website name, keywords and description to popular search engines, bringing more traffic to your website. 

E-mail marketing

OK, so e-mail marketing may not be new, but it continues to lead the way as a cost-effective marketing tool, particularly for small businesses. You can build you own e-mail database from existing contacts and use your website to capture new data. Ensure you offer an incentive for signing up and make sure your e-mails contain valuable, relevant information or genuine special offers. 

Mobile technology

The use of smartphones continues to grow rapidly and this looks set to threaten the humble PC. As millions switch to mobile phones to connect to the internet, send e-mails and access applications, businesses that ignore the mobile marketing platform do so at their peril. Mobile technology can also change the way organisations conduct business as employees have access to company data 24 hours a day from wherever they are.

The digitally connected world paves the way for exciting technology advances that offer businesses an increasing number of marketing opportunities. However, increased competition and an uncertain economy mean businesses must seek innovative ways to gain a competitive edge.

Everyone would be wise to remember that traditional marketing techniques can still be valuable in the digital age and often the most successful campaigns take elements from both the old and new.

Louise Smith is a digital marketing consultant. She has been writing for websites and printed media for over ten years. Louise uses sources such as technology marketing to research developments in the industry.

Of the People for the People: When Banking Goes Social

Social media has come a long way, baby, over the past decade. Analyzing the already (in) famous case of Facebook alone will reveal a spectacular tale of a brainchild born out of the enthusiasm of three Harvard dropouts. What started out as a basement dream evolved into a social network especially devised for students and alumni of Ivy League colleges, which then expanded across colleges in the United States and eventually took over the whole world. Nowadays, there is little people don’t do on Facebook. They chat, keep friends, family, and acquaintances updated of their personal status quo and whereabouts – and, more recently, they’ve also started taking their banking to new social level. 

Of course, this latest revolution is inextricably tied in with the mobile revolution, in which both technology and IT savvy have a lot to say for themselves. Over the past year, the US market reach and share of smartphones has increased to great extents and the latest polls in the field indicate that it will only continue along the same lines in 2013. Not only are more and more people online, but the range of actions they perform on their mobile, online-ready devices is also becoming more and more diverse. Supremacy belongs to game playing, which has surpassed, in terms of time spent at play, the time people spend playing video games on their desktop devices. Online and social banking, however, is also undergoing a quiet revolution of its own. 

Two of Australia’s Leading Banks Go Social

Bankwest is one Australian bank that realized the catchphrase according to which ‘you don’t exist if you’re not on Facebook’ is truer than they may have initially thought. At http://www.facebook.com/bankwest they’re keeping clients informed, both current and prospective ones, of all the bank’s activities outside the main institution’s premises. Their strategy is personal and their approach light, as their profile is peppered with pictures from recent social events, organized in support of the bank’s many social initiatives. Bankwest is one Australian bank which has been focusing on online presence more so than others in recent times – their online savings, credit card, and personal loan deals often come with better terms than their offline counterparts.

Bankwest is not the only online Aussie bank either. Another major competitor on the market has recently launched a marketing campaign aimed at informing clients of the many services they offer online. These range from enabling payments via mobile, to dedicated smartphone apps for people seeking to purchase a new home. According to the bank’s representatives, their latest campaign is about improving the bank – customer relationship, and not about “technology for technology’s sake”. The decision to go online and implicitly social was marked by the bank’s desire to stay on top of its game, to improve the way banking was viewed and to provide a higher-value experience for the end-user. 

What’s in it for the Banks?

As the latter example goes to show, taking a banking enterprise online and helping it stay connected with its clients through multiple channels is not about being ‘trendy’. It’s the next logical step in an approach that is firmly rooted in the traditions of the banking industry. Back before the global financial crisis, and even further back in time, during the fifties, sixties, and seventies, banks were perceived as more ‘humane’ and implicitly human than they are now. The GFC changed all that, as many institutions across the world tumbled toward their inevitable end, fueled, it seems, by a lot of inhumane amassing of capital. Current attempts at socializing via the newest means available are, by the looks of it, an attempt of making amends for the past decade. Time alone will tell if the general consumer public chooses to validate this attempt or dismiss it.

The Imperative of the New Marketing in the 21st Century Business Environment

Could marketing be new? This is a very fundamental question that readily comes to mind at the mention of the words ‘’New Marketing’’. It also logically entails that there is an old marketing. For the sake of clarification, the new marketing refers to the use of the social network in advertisement and marketing while the old marketing refers to the use of the conventional marketing media such as newspapers, magazines, bulletins, and so on. 

Due to the sophistication of the contemporary age, the social media has become the second nature of man because it seems he cannot do without it. Consumers continue to have the flair and enthusiasm over the internet, Smartphones, social media, and other online networks. This equally requires a paradigm shift in the marketing strategy of any business that wishes to survive in this 21st century world. Smart businessmen know this fact and waste no time in tapping into the opportunities.

Internet marketing:

The new marketing is basically focused on how to gain customer loyalty through the use of the social media and online sources. The new marketing attracts customers by offering useful information about the business in a more concise and precise manner using the online method. This is done with the belief that the majority of people cannot do without their social network applications. Because of the social media, the kingship of the customer (remember the popular marketing maxim that the customer is the king) is more enthroned through the social media. This is because the customer now determines the type of information he wants, how he wants it, and when to receive such information.

In the new marketing, Google and the social media become the main avenue through which your clients can find you. The clients do not need to come to the corporate office. All discussions between you and the clients about your business take place through the internet. This is the core area of the new marketing as major implication of the social media marketing. You create an account with Facebook or twitter, and people who have an interest in your products start to follow you. Offering useful information about your products is the surest way to gain their full loyalty.

Social media marketing:

In the course of the social media marketing, it is ideal to reserve some budget for promotional giveaways. This will help to get your followers and clients fascinated. Plan it in such a way that such giveaways will be given to clients and followers who participated in contests and won. This will increase the participation of the followers and clients. You will be surprised at their positive response.

When you open an online marketing site, it is advisable that you make an inclusion of other issues such as entertainment, news, education issues, sports, and other things that have the potency of fascinating readers, especially the youths. These will serve as baits in getting more clients to your site or social media page or business profile.

Author Bio:

Austin Richard is an IT professional from Selftesttraining. Have you really looked for this Selftesttraining.com Assistance? Move ahead to take the benefit of SAP Certification Exams and pass your exam easily.

Consumers Have A New Way To Vent Their Customer Service Problems Using Social Media

Image via CrunchBase
Many of us are all-too-familiar with these and other phrases that accompany the soothing muzak used by many companies to manage our limited patience when we're on hold with their customer service departments. Unfortunately, even after a human is eventually reached, consumers often find that by the time they hang up the phone, the issue they called about remains unresolved. What can a frustrated consumer do?

Try Twitter.com

One alternative that consumers are increasingly turning to is Twitter. By now, many of us are using Twitter, a social networking and microblogging Web site that allows its users to post short messages (known as "tweets") that can be read by our "followers." Use of Twitter has exploded in the past few years. At last count, Twitter users were tweeting nearly 50 millions tweets per day.

Since Twitter is a public service, consumers’ tweets are visible to everyone on the Internet (unless the user blocks access to his or her account). Twitter has become a powerful megaphone for consumers. In the past, if a customer had a problem with a company, their negative experience was communicated mostly to friends and associates by word-of-mouth. In recent years, consumers have started voicing business reviews on the Internet, via blogs or review sites. With Twitter, there is even greater potential for thousands of users to hear - many, instantly - about bad experiences. For companies that are eager to protect their reputations, this is an issue they would be wise to manage.

Companies Are Watching

Numerous companies are doing just that -- assigning staff to monitor Twitter for customers who are dissatisfied and respond directly (via Twitter) to that customer. Many Fortune 500 companies have set up their own Twitter accounts, allowing customers to direct their tweets to a designated Twitter agent for a particular company (via Twitter's "@" reference system). Companies as varied as Comcast, JetBlue, Wachovia, Bank of America, UPS, and Blue Cross Blue Shield have set up Twitter accounts to complement their traditional customer service lines.

So how can frustrated consumers make use of Twitter to improve their customer service experience?

Here are some tips and tricks that might help:

1. Try the conventional method first. Most companies have dedicated customer service lines that can address common problems, though time spent on hold should be expected.
2. While you're on hold, use a search engine to search for "[company name] Twitter." This will usually bring up a list of Twitter accounts associated with a particular company.
3. If the traditional customer service route doesn't solve the problem, tweet away! Be succinct in your tweet (Twitter has a 140 character limit on tweets) and reference one or more of the Twitter accounts for the company in question, using the "@" reference. Example: "The widget I ordered from @acmewidgets showed up broken today. Customer service was no help."
4. Keep your expectations reasonable. Some companies have set up their Twitter accounts primarily to tweet about company news, not respond to customer complaints. Review the last few tweets of a particular company's Twitter account to make sure your tweet goes to the right account.
5. If you are contacted by a representative of the company, take your conversation to email or phone. This is a better way to describe the exact problem and get it fixed quickly.
6. Look for Verified Accounts. Twitter's openness has led to numerous accounts impersonating real companies or celebrities. Look for accounts that have been verified as legit by Twitter. Note that Verified Accounts for businesses are still in the beta, or testing, stage, so don't rely on this exclusively.
7. If your tweet led to the problem being solved, tweet about that, too! Companies will be more likely to help you and others in the future if they know that going the extra mile on Twitter led to positive feedback for all the world to see.

Twitter is a valuable tool in the consumer's toolbox for resolving customer service issues. If going the usual route of calling the customer service line doesn't solve your problem, don't be afraid to try Twitter to express your displeasure. The old saying that the squeaky wheel gets the grease has never been truer.