Essential Blogging Tips for a Great Start

To start blogging, you will have to think beyond content and design. The daily effort that you put in maintaining, promoting and improving your project will be essential for its success. Most blogging tips focus on the basics but several additional techniques are just as important.

Offer Value to Your Readers

Offer your readers some value and you will keep them coming back. Blogging tips usually tell you to write unique content. Even if you have the most original of articles, your blog will fail if readers fail discovering something valuable and useful.

Think about the niche you have a lot of knowledge in and try to figure out what kind of information people will be looking for inside the particular topic.

Communicate with Your Readers

When you start blogging, you will quickly find out that readers affect the content of the blog as much, as you do. Interact with your readers on a daily basis and create a friendly place where people are encouraged to share their thoughts and ideas. Respond promptly to inquiries, be polite and remove spam or insulting content.

Promote Your Blogs

Your blog will be successful solely if you do enough online marketing. You have to tell the world that you exist in order to increase your popularity. Search engine optimization is one of the most effective promotional techniques. Optimizing your blog for particular keywords of interest will help you get targeted traffic. If you lack SEO knowledge or if you want to learn more about it, you should give our blog starter kit a try.

Our blog starter kit will give you a search engine optimized blog, keyword analysis and social media marketing tools. For a limited time, you can benefit from the special offer that will give you access to great professional tools.

Monitor Results

Good blogging means learning from your mistakes. The final part of the blogging tips focuses on monitoring results and doing adjustments needed for success. The blog starter kit special offer will give you access to website analytics, where you can find out more about reader demographics, preferences and online behavior. Seeing what content is popular and which blog posts are incapable of exciting the audience will give you a chance to tweak your blog and to increase its success in the future.

What makes a great social media marketing strategy?

Social media is the next generation of advertising — no one can really deny that. The question at this point is how you will be bringing your product to the world of social media. let’s face it, if you plan to be a success, you are going to need a good social media marketing strategy.

Keep reading for more information on putting that strategy into action and giving yourself a head start in the social media marketing world.

Be Everywhere

A good rule of thumb in your social media marketing strategy is to make sure you are establishing a presence across the internet. This will mean creating accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and even Google+. These accounts can be tied together easily so that you are transmitting the same message over multiple mediums. This omnipresence will not only be useful, it will show customers that you are tech savvy, which can go a long way.

Embrace Technology

It is not enough to simply set up a social media page — not nearly enough. You need to establish your knowledge of this technology. You need to show customers that you have the necessary intelligence to operate your page. Even if you are not selling a technology related item, you will find that your customers are more willing to buy from you if it appears you’ve put some work into your website and social media pages.

Be Timely

One of the most important parts of social media marketing strategy is ensuring that you do everything in a timely manner. When do most people want to know about your product? If you are running a diner, for example, you will find it is a good time to send messages around lunchtime. Figure out the best time for your store and time your messages accordingly.

Go Viral

It would be a great idea for you to create a viral video on your website or social media page. Viral videos are great for selling products as people will be more willing to pass them along. If possible, make your video funny so that people will want to have it posted on their social media walls. Going viral is one of the best ways to get attention from customers, so give it a try, even if you have to hire a professional.

If you have not figured it out by now, the advantages of using a social media marketing strategy are endless. Not only will you be moving your business into the next generation, you will be giving yourself an unmatched level of visibility. Now would be a great time to look into the possibilities and start building yourself a social media empire.

Creating a digital marketing strategy for your business

Digital marketing may seem like an overwhelming task when you try to do it for the first time. You can choose among different techniques and you have multiple channels to put into use.

To focus your efforts, you need to come up with a digital marketing strategy.

Forget about Selling

In the world of internet, you need to forget about traditional promotional strategies. Marketing has to be about building a relationship with your audience rather than about trying to sell a product or a service.

Tell your audience a story. You should provoke an emotional response to increase the efficiency of your digital marketing campaign. Have a strategy based on content and relationship building, regardless of the goal you are trying to achieve.

Know the People You are Addressing

Digital marketing is two directional. You send a message and you get instant feedback from readers, current and potential clients.

Learn more about the people you are addressing. Personalization sets promotional strategies apart. Choose the message, the tools and the channels that will appeal to the people you are trying to “talk” to.

A good digital marketing strategy should include provisions about understanding the audience, getting feedback and incorporating the information in the future marketing efforts.

See What the Competition is doing

In the world of digital marketing, you can learn a lot about your competition.

Always base your digital marketing strategy on competition analysis. Try to find out what other companies in the niche are doing and how they are trying to create loyal clientele. Learning from the mistakes of others will help you maximize the efficiency of your campaign.

Analyze Results

Digital promotion allows you to figure out the results of the campaign just a couple of days after it has been launched. Immediacy makes this type of marketing unique. You can easily measure the results in terms of increased website visits, comments from readers or a higher volume of sales.

Use the information to adjust your strategy and to make it more efficient. You can do changes midway, which helps you prevent a marketing disaster.

Digital advertising is essential for the success of every company. A clever strategy starts with the right goals, it analyzes the target audience and it measures results immediately. All of these steps guarantee the efficiency of the strategy and its ability to accomplish promotional goals.

Tips for a Successful Social Media Marketing Campaign

Every business owner understands the importance of social media marketing for brand enforcement. Many, however, carry out sporadic attempts that would hardly ever be classified as a campaign.

A good social media campaign has to include a number of important components. Doing it for the first time or trying to increase the efficiency of your online marketing efforts? The following ideas could come in handy.

Determine Goals

Good social media marketing starts with the right goals. Do you want to increase the popularity of your brand? Are you looking forward to establishing a loyal clientele? Or maybe you want to announce the latest promotions?

Figure out what the goals of your campaign are and you will become capable of choosing the right social media channels. The strategy, the content that you will need and the applications to rely on will also depend on your marketing goals.

Use the Power of Multiple Channels

Each social network has its specific audience. The best social networking campaigns utilize the power of numerous channels.

Twitter is the best place for the promotion of your corporate website. Facebook allows you to establish a relationship with your clients. Pinterest and YouTube are the visual social media that will work best for product presentations.

Show the Human Face of Your Business

Try to keep openly promotional messages and spam out of your social networking campaign. The audience of today has learned how to ignore and avoid ads. Your approach has to be more personalized and subtle.

Act as a human being rather than as a corporation when doing social networking. Post interesting pieces of information related to your niche. Answer questions and make your pages fun. This is the only way to get noticed and to create a positive image for your brand.

Content, Content, Content!

Updating your profiles on a regular basis will be determining for the success of a social networking campaign. Even if you start off brilliantly, you will lose your audience through infrequent posting.

A good social media participation plan starts with the right content. Draft a list of articles and useful pieces of information that can be added to your corporate website or blog. You can then use social networks to promote those.

Remember to provide other interesting bits of information that relate to your niche of competence, as well. Using social networks to solely promote your corporate website may be considered spam and you risk losing some of your audience due to the lack of diversity.

Rely on the Feedback You Get

Social media have one great characteristic – immediacy of response. You will know whether your social media marketing campaign is functioning as soon as it goes live.

Use the information that your audience provides. Feedback, whether it is positive or negative, can help you adjust the marketing campaign to make it more efficient and more interesting for the target audience.

Flexibility, consistency and professionalism are all important when it comes to internet promotion. Social networks can deliver, as long as you know how to use them properly. Take your time to come up with a plan rather than to simply create a profile and get going. Pursuing specific goals will make your marketing more focused.

Are We Addicted to the Internet?

The Internet has brought media to a global audience. The interactive nature ofInternet marketing in terms of providing instant responses and eliciting responses are the unique qualities of the medium. Internet marketing is sometimes considered to be broad in scope because it not only refers to marketing on the Internet, but also includes marketing done via e-mail and wireless media. Management of digital customer data and electronic customer relationship management (ECRM) systems are also often grouped together under internet marketing. Here’s an infographic I came across on flowtown.com.

It’s important to keep a few things in mind when marketing on Twitter

In modern times, social media marketing is so important, you could almost say that it’s the key to success in online businesses. And when it comes to marketing on the Internet, one of the most important social networking sites you can use is Twitter.

Part of the reason for this is because Facebook has recently made their site less palatable to marketers through various fees, while Twitter is still completely free, and has the ability to potentially reach a very large number of people.When marketing on Twitter, it’s important to keep a few things in mind:

Tweet Often

It’s a sad fact in social media marketing that if you don’t put out content constantly, you’ll lose people. The Internet is so full of information, so full of conversations and various things happening, that short attention spans abound. If you don’t keep content coming at your followers constantly, you’ll lose people in a hurry. Tweeting on your topic at all is an effective strategy. It doesn’t have to be directly related to your business. Anything in the general area that could be in any way related to your topic could be very helpful in maintaining and expanding your reach.

Follow People in Your Topic

One good way to grow your reach on Twitter is to follow people who are doing something similar to what you’re doing. If you’re in the restaurant business, for example, you could follow others doing the same thing, like Pizza stores, or anything else related. This will put you in contact with potential customers who are interested in the topic related to your business. If you can comment on the tweets that come down the line from popular personalities online, use mentions, use retweets with mentions, and so on, you’ll increase your visibility among that client base. You could very easily get some of your own followers that way.

Keep Attention

When it comes to social media marketing you should do whatever you got to do to keep people’s attention. In the world of social media marketing, attention spans flag fast. So gimmicks like contests, “best of” voting, and anything else interactive is an effective way to make sure people stay on board for long enough to grow your base. Growing any base takes time, and it is necessary to keep at it.

The best time to share content on Social Media networks

Social Media Marketing is about sustaining lasting relationships and by creating new ones. By not providing value and by promoting yourself is a big mistake.  Social media is all about entering into conversations and participation.  We all see companies that enters into social networking, blogging, Facebook and Twitter that spends their energy and time marketing themselves.  This will definitely make sure that people run the other direction. Here’s an infographic from Visual.ly about the best time to share content on social media networks.

Are you annoying your friends and followers on social media?

Social Media Marketing (SMM) is almost the same as like having a conversation with your friends at a coffee shop.  It is also like getting that unexpected phone call from an old friend and just talking to each other.  It is conversational and laid back.  There are hundreds of companies jumping in on the social media band wagon that really just don’t get it and they are usually trying to hard. I came across this article below on Memeburn.com.

Social media rearchitects itself very quickly… our ability to change behaviours is not nearly as fast. This timing dichotomy results in seemingly appropriate behaviours that come off as thoughtless or self-serving. New tools and capabilities in social media have created new norms, some good, and others that unfortunately encourage repugnant behaviour.

In the past I’ve complained about 29 communication behaviours (see “16 annoying communications that must end in 2011” and “13 annoying communications that must end in 2012”). After some reflection on a few of these annoying communications and others soon to be mentioned, I realize the reason many of these communications irritate me so much is because the sender thinks they’re doing the right thing.

Like being thrust into a blinding swarm after our team wins a national championship, we lose our better judgement as to what’s right and wrong. Just because we see others doing it en masse we benignly think it’s okay to engage in abhorrent activity. What proceeds is a challenge to these mob-OKed assumptions.

Friend collecting

There was a time we used to just guess as to who was the most popular person in the room. Today, we look at your very public follower, friend, or subscriber count and we know. If one person’s number is higher than another’s, then that person is more popular, right?

We like to fool ourselves into believing this is not true, but we can’t stop ourselves from staring at those numbers, comparing ourselves to others, and adding more online friends.

While most of us connect with people we’ve met in the real world or online, there are others who truly collect friends, extending invites to complete strangers on Facebook and LinkedIn with absolutely no explanation as to why they want to connect. Both social networks allow you to send private messages to explain why you want to connect. Yet these “friend collectors” avoid taking advantage of that function. What’s worse is the number of these strangers that refuse to reply to private messages after you’ve accepted their friend request.

Refusing private communications proves that the “friending” is purely a selfish action with the intended purpose of increasing public friend counts with no intention of creating a true social connection.

Asking people to like your content-free Facebook page

Similar to friend collecting is the process of setting up a Facebook fan page and then immediately spamming all your friends to like your page which happens to be void of content. Luckily, this has decreased substantially as it used to be a seemingly automatic request to all of one’s friends upon the creation of every single fan page.

Liking a piece of content or fan page is a transactional agreement. It’s an endorsement that comes after I have approved of what you have shown me. Requesting someone to like your fan page without showing them content is the equivalent of asking for something for nothing.

It’s similar to friend collecting because when you build a fan page your desire to create followers is tantamount. Your fan page has nothing, but you’ve got tons of friends. You’re so desperate and so dependent on your existing friend base that you think they’ll say “yes” to liking your page just because you’ve already established Facebook friendship. If you were the only one doing it, then maybe that would be true. Problem is we’re constantly inundated with these self-serving “please help me get my fan page count up” requests.

Yes, it’s a small request. But without content, it’s a lopsided transaction. And because it keeps happening, it becomes blatantly self-serving and obnoxious.

Requiring app installation to consume a message

Ever get a message like this:

“John Doe just sent you a birthday greeting. Install the Happy Birthday App to view the content.”

This is similar to like requests on contentless Facebook pages in that it’s a lopsided transaction. The selfishness in this case lies primarily in the hands of the app developer who sees this as a “viral” technique to increase their install base. In social media speak, the message would read as such:

“Pay me first by giving me access to your personal computer and social network and I’ll show you this message you will probably not like. You can still uninstall the app afterwards if you’d like, but given that most of you don’t know how to do that, chances are you won’t. We’re counting on your ignorance and apathy so we’ll be able to show our investors the number of people who have installed our app. We need another round of funding.”

Auto-DMs on Twitter

Nothing screams “Pay attention to me!” more than automated direct messages (DMs) after you’ve followed someone on Twitter. I think the reason they annoy me so much is how they’re written to appear so personal (e.g., “Thank you so much for following me…”) when they’re obviously not any type of personal communications. I wish Twitter would simply turn this feature off.

The reason it’s so obnoxious is because it’s usually not complimented with an auto-follow. Lack of a return follow means the DM recipient can’t send a direct message back. That’s anything, but a personal engagement.

“Happy Birthdays” on Facebook

Isn’t it great that Facebook reminds us when our friend has a birthday? This alert is a great reminder to send a note about how much you appreciate your friendship. Or you could send a gift. Or maybe record a “Happy Birthday” video greeting. Facebook has provided some amazing personal information about your audience, yet we go out of our way and blow a well-timed opportunity to make a meaningful connection with our friends by just typing “Happy Birthday” and nothing else.

Only typing “Happy Birthday” is truly the least you could do outside of doing nothing at all. What a colossal waste of bandwidth.

Before Facebook, when people said, “Happy Birthday,” your response would be “Thank you. You remembered.” But we can’t say that anymore because we didn’t remember, Facebook did. With this information we chose not to build a meaningful connection, but rather become participants of a massive ongoing spam campaign.

Sharing without consumption

Thanks to the proliferation of like and retweet buttons, we all have the ability to share any piece of content without looking past the headline. While no one readily admits this, we all share content via our social networks without taking the time to actually consume it. It’s often a kind thing to do for a friend who wants to spread the word about an event or a piece of content. It’s not okay to just retweet and share content to build your industry voice.

Blind sharing does provide benefits to the sharer as tweeting out content that other people retweet will raise their Klout and Kred scores. Employers are now using these social rating systems as hiring barometers especially for organizations such as PR firms.

While ostensibly one should believe that blind sharing, even without consumption, would benefit the content creator. When it’s done en masse, then it only benefits the sharers and not the content creators as there are incidents where a piece of content has more shares than views. For stories highlighting evidence of this phenomenon, please read “Here’s what’s wrong with social media: sharing without consumption” and “Why sharing online content may be too easy” on Mashable.

Photo overdose of your kids and your wedding

I have an endless number of photos of my son. My wife and I look at them constantly, and our respective parents can’t get enough of them either.

While I can happily look at a million photos of my child, I can only stomach looking at about three photos of your kid. Understanding that other parents probably feel the same way, I keep a limit to the number of photos I share of my son with my entire social network.

Not all parents are aware of this photo absorption discrepancy between themselves and the rest of the world. Your kid may be cute to you, but you’re the parent and that’s how you’re supposed to feel. The rest of us are not supposed to feel that way.

Same holds true for weddings and honeymoons. The pictures you provide should acknowledge the event, and that’s it. Anything beyond that becomes a tiresome effort that overwhelms your audience.

Posting bad photos

For those unaware of what a bad photo looks like, here are some hints:

• It’s out of focus.
• It’s overexposed.
• It’s underexposed.
• There’s no subject in the photo.
• It’s poorly composed.

While your camera may have this amazing function that allows you to automatically upload every photo you took to Facebook, it also has another great function called “delete.” Not using the always available trash button projects the image of an insensitive clod who wrongly believes everyone will love all his photos he took because the event he was at was just so damn cool. Knock it off and edit your photos.

Follow Fridays

I don’t know why this still goes on. Has anyone ever actually been compelled to follow someone after someone else’s #FF? I would guess not because almost all of them are devoid of context. Those who #FollowFriday still have fooled themselves into believing they’re being selfless, but that’s not the case. You’re alerting those #FFed in hopes they’ll pay more attention to you.

Automatically cross-posting contentless information across social networks

This is the process by which our actions, as measured by various social networks and often without moment-by-moment acknowledgement, are passively shared with multiple social networks. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg happily supports this kind of automated and frictionless sharing as the rise of the social web.

Foursquare check-ins, achievements in social games, and songs we’re currently listening to on social radio stations such as Spotify and MOG can be cross-posted on Facebook and Twitter. While Facebook has smartly turned down the volume on these passive auto-posts, this has not been the case on Twitter which has no power to turn down the volume on anything.

To auto-share your every action across multiple social networks where people haven’t opted in is obscenely egotistical and doesn’t take into account the additional noise being created in the social sphere. Stop it. If someone cared where you checked in they would be following you on Foursquare. No need to let everyone on Facebook and Twitter know as well.

The social media life-cycle

Social Media Marketing (SMM) is almost the same as like having a conversation with your friends at a coffee shop.  It is also like getting that unexpected phone call from an old friend and just talking to each other.  It is conversational and laid back.  There are hundreds of companies jumping in on the social media band wagon that really just don’t get it and they are usually trying to hard. Take a look at this infographic from Mediabistro.com.

Guide to successful brand establishment on Pinterest

Pinterest provides incredible marketing opportunities that are unavailable in other social networks. Making the most of it will help you establish your brand successfully in the online realm and increase your popularity.

The specific nature of Pinterest marketing demands the creation of a unique approach. To build your brand on Pinterest, you will have to adhere to several basic rules.

Think Visual

Although this sounds like a rather logical tip when you are trying to build your brand on Pinterest, many marketing experts forget to do it. Most social media marketing campaigns focus on text and this is where the biggest difference stems.

Pinterest is all about visuals. To establish your brand and your reputation through Pinterest marketing, you need high quality, professional photographs of your products. Investing in a beautiful portfolio will always pay off because many Pinterest members will be tempted into giving you a try, once they see the visuals.

Build Your Network

Just like in the case of other social networks, you will have to build your Pinterest network, in order to enjoy popularity. This is the first goal you should try to achieve when you start to build your brand on Pinterest. Building a network of followers will take some time and it will depend entirely on the consistency of your efforts and the attractiveness of the visuals that you are pinning.

Get involved on Pinterest. Comment, add people to your network and interact with them. The more you demonstrate your desire to be an active member of the community, the more your group of followers will grow.

Know Your Audience

Pinterest is particularly suitable for the establishment of certain brands. Knowing who is using the social network and why will help you draft your promotional strategy.

According to official information, more than 90 percent of the individuals using Pinterest are women. The number of men using the social network has also started growing but ladies are by far more active on the network. Base your Pinterest marketing strategy on this information.

Additionally, it is good to know that 2.2 million Pinterest users are active on a daily basis. This is a large group of potential customers and establishing your brand on the social network will certainly be worth the effort.

Define Your Competition and Monitor Its Activity

To build your brand on Pinterest, you will have to come up with a creative approach but you will also have to focus on your competition. Do some competition analysis to see which companies are on the social network and how they are using Pinterest marketing to increase their popularity. You are lucky if the number of competitors who have discovered Pinterest is limited. This will automatically turn you into a pioneer and increase your brand’s popularity.

Study the campaigns carefully. What visuals are competitors focusing on? How are they interacting with other Pinterest members? You can learn from their successes and failures. They will help you increase brand awareness without committing some of the biggest mistakes that other companies have made.

Pinterest requires some work but it is a great marketing channel. You can easily translate Pinterest popularity into higher sales and better brand awareness. Be goal oriented and think about visuals to make it happen.

The History of Content Marketing [Infographic]

Internet marketing ties together creative and technical aspects of the Internet, including: design, development, advertising, and sales. Online content that you publish is one of your most valuable assets on the web. By sharing your content online you can enhance your company’s brand, broadcast your message across the web and demonstrate your expertise to name but a few benefits. Did you know that you can allow the visitors of your website or blog to share your content with others? Have a look at this infographic from blog.junta42.com.

 

How the world spends its time online

You can have hundreds of websites on the internet, but if nobody knows about you, you are invisible. A well-planned, creative online marketing campaign can put you out there for the world to see and instantly increase your sales.

What is online marketing?

Unlike traditional marketing (newspapers, billboards etc.) online marketing combines all your digital strategies (websites, blogs, PPC ads, email, mobile etc.) in a way that grabs your customers’ attention and keeps them satisfied in the long run.

It is best handled by a professional who knows what he is doing. It requires careful research, planning and implementing.  The strategies used are just as unique as the client (or business) itself.

Why do you need online marketing?

The World Wide Web is an advertising battlefield – it is easy for your business to get lost amongst all the other websites vying for the attention of users. Having an online marketing strategy can mean the difference between your business booming or blowing up in your face.

If you answer “no” to any of the following, it is time to call in the experts:

• Does your business have a Facebook page/Twitter account and are people tweeting about you or talking about you online?
• Does your business have a blog and does it have a following?
• Can your customers find you easily online via your website or online advertising?
• Do you spend thousands on traditional marketing strategies without attracting more clients?
• Do you make use of SEO strategies in your online marketing?
• Do you follow up on customer satisfaction or keep in touch with your clients on a regular basis via email or mobile?

I can help you implement online marketing strategies that are measurable, goal driven and cost effective.

Expand your business, create awareness about your brand and engage your customers through social media – it works!

How internet marketing grows your business

The use of proper internet marketing grows your business with a wider reach than if you did not have an online presence.  If you consider the internet reaches the entire world, you potential are marketing to the world.  The first step in marketing on the internet is to have an online presence.  There are a couple of ways to go about this, one being an information website.  Another being a blog, however you can successfully combine the two for greater impact.

The first step in building a website is having a professional look.  Hire a web designer to make your website shine on behalf of your business.  Using your website is the first step in successful internet marketing.  Build the pages with quality content.  If you are not good with writing content, hire a professional writer.  You want the content to do two things, first to make sense to your visitors and second to make sense to the search engines that rank your pages.  Search engine ranking is one of the modes of marketing, by pulling in visitors who search for keywords and phrases related to your business.

Internet marketing requires your website be search engine optimized, meaning it is set up to help the search engines to crawl your pages and rank them on the search engines pages.  This is a way to draw free traffic from generic searches.  The goal is to use the meta tags on the website, with keywords you wish to be found for by your visitors.  These keywords need to be in the meta tags, the title, description, and keywords, and a few times within the content.  This helps the search engines to know how to rank you.

Another mode of internet marketing is social media.  Using social media websites like Facebook and Twitter helps to grow connections and network with others, which helps to grow your business.  If you connect the social media accounts to your website and if you interact at least once a day on the accounts, you will increase your list and raise the chances that others will also share about your business services and or products.  Place follow and share buttons on your pages to encourage your visitors to share with their connections.  This offers a way to advertise your business free and a way to make it go viral.

Lastly, internet marketing includes paid advertising.  There is a host of choices with paid advertising these days from your traditional print ads in newspapers and magazines to video commercials on television to ads on websites and with the social media groups.  There are also ads on search engines, pay per click, as well as on websites like Facebook.  The internet has many options for paid ads, from banners, to contextual, to full page features.

Consumer reviews VS other ad tactics

We all know how important “Word of Mouth” marketing is and with the power of the Internet it is even more important. Web visitors are more inclined to buy your products, services or solutions when they verify your credibility.The Internet has brought media to a global audience. The interactive nature ofInternet marketing in terms of providing instant responses and eliciting responses are the unique qualities of the medium. Enjoy today’s infographic about consumer reviews VS other ad tactics.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Social Media Marketing

Social media marketingcan be immense for a business looking to expand its appeal to the online community. However, despite the numerous social media marketing advantages that exist, it is not ideal for all types of businesses. The reason for this is that whether social media marketing is useful for a business or not depends entirely on the correlation between investment and returns. Investment here is not only monetary but also effort and time. Similarly, returns can also be in forms other than money alone.

The best way for a business to evaluate if social media marketing is useful for it or not is to understand its significance and potential as much as is possible. In other words, before a business commits itself to a social media marketing campaign, it is important for it to assess not only the social media marketing advantages but also social media marketing disadvantages.

Social Media Marketing Advantages

There are more social media marketing advantages than disadvantages provided it is used properly. Consider the following:

1.  Social media marketing can be used to create brand value for a product manufacturer or a service provider. However, for this to happen, the content needs to be compelling and generate a lot of interest.

2.  One of the crucial social media marketing advantages is the fact that it allows a business to gradually establish itself as an expert in the field. Becoming an authority can generate sales in its own right because it means that people view the business as trustworthy.

3.  Social media marketing can be used to engage and interact with the target audience on a personal level so as to get their feedback about the business, product or service. This can create a sense of recognition and empowerment in the target audience.

4.  Economically speaking, social media marketing is one of the cheapest ways of not only engaging the target audience but also putting across relevant information. In fact, there is a drastic difference between the financial outlay of a decently sized conventional marketing strategy and a good social media marketing strategy with the latter being on the lower end.

5.  Moreover, the most direct of the many social media marketing advantages is the fact that it can generate leads and boost website traffic single-handedly. This can create a positive cycle where more visitors result in more sales and search rankings which, in turn, lead to more visitors again.

Social Media Marketing Disadvantages

While there are more social media marketing advantages than disadvantages, social media marketing is not entirely free of disadvantages. The following are some examples.

1.  Even though a social media marketing campaign can be done without any investment of money, a lot of time and effort is required to make it a success. For instance, resources would have to be set aside for not only making updates but also following and responding to them as and when required.

2.  Like most modes of marketing, the impact of social media marketing can be very difficult to assess quantitatively. The reason, as is obvious, is the fact that the objectives of such strategies tend to be intangible as opposed to statistical.

3.  It can be very easy for a campaign to go wrong if it is not handled in the right manner. The proper use is the right balance between engagement and sales.

Blog Design For Killer Search Engine Optimization

Online content that you publish is one of your most valuable assets on the web. By sharing your content online you can enhance your company’s brand, broadcast your message across the web and demonstrate your expertise to name but a few benefits. Here’s an infographic about designing your blog for SEO.

 

4 Tips for Writing SEO-Friendly Blog Posts

Online content that you publish is one of your most valuable assets on the web. By sharing your content online you can enhance your company’s brand, broadcast your message across the web and demonstrate your expertise to name but a few benefits. Here are a few tips from Mashable for writing SEO friendly blog posts.

In addition to writing for their human readers, web writers and bloggers have to consider the digital web crawlers employed by search engines like Google. Your business can’t skip the task.

Since most would-be readers use search engines to find blog posts, you need to make sure that Google ranks your site highly when those readers search for terms related to your business and the content you’re writing.

You could spend thousands of dollars to have a search marketing firm optimize your business’s blog for search engines, but chances are that you can learn a lot of the fundamentals yourself, saving yourself a lot of money as long as you have the interest and the time. Here’s a basic primer on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your company’s blog.

1. Always Include Search Terms in Your Post’s Title

When Google reads a website to index it, it reads the code directly, not the snazzy presentation that humans see. The way most blogging platforms are built, the headline or title of your blog post is among the first things Google sees, and Google generally assumes the words that appear earliest are the most important. That’s why the title is the most important part of your blog post when it comes to SEO.

Think about who you want to reach with this blog post, and what that person might be searching for when looking for your business’s goods or services, then include critical words from that hypothetical search in the title. The most important terms should appear as quickly as you can reasonably fit them in. Just be careful not to make the title unreadable or awkward to human readers — that SEO effort will have been for naught if the reader is immediately turned off by the content once he or she finds it.

Here’s a pro tip: You’re not likely to win strong ranking for more than one or two search terms at once, so minimalism is a virtue here. Don’t get over-ambitious. Focus on one potential search term, then if you want to rank for a second term, write a separate and unique post specifically with it in mind.

2. Link Important Words to Earlier Blog Posts

Search engines generally assume that a blog post that has been linked to has more authority than one that has not. They also consider exactly what word or phrase linked to the post; a blog post about the iPhone is going to be more likely to show up in Google searches on the subject if another page links the word “iPhone” to the post.

You’ll get the most value from external links from sites that Google or other search engines already consider to be an authority of the subject (if the top blog about iPhones links the word to your post, you’ll get a huge boost), but all incoming links will still pass rank to your page, even those from elsewhere on your site.

So be sure and link important keywords to other pages or previous posts on your blog to gain some credibility and search rank. It will make a big difference. Just don’t overdo it; not only do human readers hate reading blogs so filled with links that they might accidentally click on something, Google may penalize you if you go overboard, too.

3. Hit the Tagging Sweet Spot

Most blogging platforms let you apply tags to your posts. Tags help organize your blog so both humans and search engines can find what they’re looking for. They’re terms like “consulting,” “local” or “technology” that reflect the topics and content of the post.

Google tries to recognize tags and use them to prioritize your site in its search ranking for those terms. The tags are usually links to other pages on your blog (usually a backlog of other posts with the same tag), and like we said earlier, linking search terms to other pages on your site helps too.

So by all means, add pertinent tags to your blog post, but be warned that Google and other search engines are wary of sites that try to game this system. They will penalize you in the search rankings if you use so many tags that the web indexing bots suspect you might be attempting to associate your content with unrelated topics just to score extra traffic.

The method for determining this is arcane, but a good rule of thumb from a pro blogger is that five to 10 appropriate tags are usually right in the sweet spot.

4. Use Google Insights to Find the Best Search Terms

You don’t have to play a guessing game about the best tags or search terms to link or put in your post’s title. Since Google is the most popular search engine, it makes sense to focus your efforts there. Whenever you’re not sure which terms to go with, hit up Google Insights, a web-based tool that compares the popularity of any search terms you want to know about.

For example, if your business is a coffee shop but you’re not sure whether would-be customers are more likely to search for “café” or “coffee shop,” Insights can tell you which one is more popular.

These four tips should get you on your way to having a more SEO-friendly corporate blog. Add your tips for search engine optimization in the comments below.