A MarketingSherpa research found out that creating content is one of the most effective tactics for improving a website’s SEO.

User-Generated Content encountered for Organic search up to 10%, and lead conversion up 125%.

Companies who create content, operate a corporate blog and update it frequently have 55% more website visitors.

57% of companies which operate a corporate blog report to have acquired new customers through their blog.

Corporate Blogging

Blogging gets companies 55% more Traffic and up to 97% more Inbound Links. Companies who blog get 434% more indexed pages in search engines and up to 25x times more business leads.

Video Content Creation

Business who utilize video content creation, encounter up to 300% more monthly unique visitors, and 100% longer average time-on-site per visitor. The average time spent on pages with videos is 3-minutes. Generating video content increases search engine traffic by 157% and page views by 63% unique visitors by 100%.

User generated reviews on ecommerce sites

Content marketing ways like product ratings and reviews are proven to increase conversion rates on product pages.

Visitors of ecommerce pages should be able to include pictures and videos with their reviews. The way like sited as eBay and Amazon do to provide an overall rating are additional ways to increase website interaction.

The value of reviews increases as they are moderated within a short time period of about 24 hrs.

Also sharing these reviews to social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and other is a great way to distribute this user generated content.

Infographic: The Rise Of Conten Marketing

All above activities are visible to search engines and can lead to a massive growth in traffic.

Creating content takes time, money and expertise. When you need inspiration on which content your audience is interested in, just ask them and they will tell you.

When it comes to led generation than “nothing beats the inbound marketing strategy”!

Inbound marketing builds you trust before the sale. Means your audience learn about your business and your products before they are looking to buy from you and without pushing them.

This increases your chance they select your company when they are ready to purchase.

Studies from the past five years revealed that a seriously executed inbound marketing strategy results in up to 62% lower cost per lead an in an up to 55% higher lead conversion rate.

Inbound marketing consists of content creation, content distribution, content marketing, Social Media communication, Lead generation, Lead Nurturing, Lead Conversion, and Closed-Loop Analysis to refine and improve the activities.

Companies who execute an inbound marketing seriously build trust, their brand and are recognized as a reputable source on the web. They get found on the web when future customers are looking, instead of pushing them with dump old fashioned sales pitches.

Infographic: The Inbound Marketing Multiplier

What do you get by executing a professional marketing strategy?

A. Save up to 62% of your marketing budget.
B. Stand out of your competition.
C. Generate a massive amount of leads.
D. Get up to 55% higher lead conversion rates.
E. Increase your customers and sales.

When you feel that you need help to execute this combined marketing strategy just let us know. Request a free custom quote today!

Advertising industry research firm Advertiser Perceptions found out that:

More than half (59%) of US marketers and agencies planned to increase their social media display ad spending on sites like Facebook in the next 12 months.

The good news is that 62% of marketers say that social media is important to critical for their business. And the bad news is that 59% of them want to buy customer attention instead of earning it by a simultaneously decrease of cost per lead up to 62%.

It is a good approach to be visible where your audience is around. But the way how you are visible is more important than a big ad budget.

Moreover a big ad budget does not mean you will be successful with your lead generation campaign.

The most profitable method to gain customer attention in the long term is to offer something of value for the audience. Information which is remarkable and share worthy.

Smart content marketing has proven to be a great way to create brand awareness and to e most effective to drive traffic to a company website and convert this traffic to leads and customers. The most popular ways of content marketing are blogging, social media and video.

A good way to start a smart dialogue is to ask open questions. To ask the audience about their opinion about the published content will open discussions where a brand get the opportunity to respond in a professional, authentic and human way.

Companies utilizing content marketing strategy report n up to 2,000% lift in blog traffic and 40% boost in revenue.

Publish buyer persona oriented remarkable content. This can be achieved with a corporate blog very quick.

How can your business profit from this?

• 1. Start a social media presence. Complete your profile there.
• 2. Research for industry related B2B groups and people. Become a member and invite those people to your network.
• 3. Listen to their discussions. If you have something valuable to contribute than do it, otherwise go on listening.
• 4. Start a corporate blog. Write about topics your B2B audience is interested in. Share your blog articles in social media and ask for feedback for your publication.
• 5. Build landing pages and offer exclusive and valuable content for download. So you generate laser target high quality industry related B2B leads.
• 6. Measure your activities.
• 7. Improve your activities and repeat.

This can lower your cost per lead up to 62%, increase your lead conversion up to 55% and boost your revenue the smart way.

Further resources:

• Video Top Asset Created for Content Marketing
• Marketers Accelerate Social Display Ad Spending

To stay up to date, please subscribe to our RSS Feed

Tweet this on Twitter!

Free Report: Get found and get leads the smart way.

downlod the free report here… 

Any B2B business can use social media as a source of unfiltered information and as powerful business intelligence tool to predict trends, for support and product development. Social media has proved in the past years that it can bring positive ROI when done right.

A recent study from Sagefrog Marketing Group shows how companies have learned to leverage social media.

Leveraging social media for branding and building awareness helps B2B companies.

4 Ways how companies can leverage social media:

• • Increase brand awareness
• • Humanize B2B companies
• • Establish as thought leader
• • Connecting with customers and prospects

An increasing number of companies like Intuit, Sysco, Cisco, GE Healthcare and AT&T are using social media for effective business lead generation.

What sites, tactics and strategies are B2B marketers including in their social media outreach?

To do their social media outreach B2B marketers include professional networking sites like LinkedIn which have proven to be an effective way to generate business leads. Furthermore they utilize social networks like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube also which are helping them to reach customers in new ways.

Some numbers about Social Media Lead Generation

“67% of B2C and 47% of B2B companies report to have acquired new customers through Facebook.” “47% of companies who use Twitter report to have acquired new customer through it.”

Online Marketing strategies like banner ads have been replaced through proven buyer persona oriented content creation which also brings better ROI than pay per click marketing (PPC).

A corporate blog has become the number one content marketing tool for companies. The importance of blogging is growing and people are adding nearly 3 million blogs per month. [Technorati 2011 State of the Blogosphere Report]

Studies show that companies who operate and update a corporate blog frequently have 55% more website visitors. From those companies 57% which operate a corporate blog report to have acquired new customers through their blog.

There is no question content marketing, corporate blogging connected with social media distribution is definitely a revenue driver for B2B companies.

Infographic: B2B Social Media on the Rise

Further resources:

• B2B Marketers Optimistic About Social Media for Lead Generation
• Get up to 25 times more business leads with Content Marketing
• How to save 62 percent of your budget with inbound marketing

To stay up to date, please subscribe to our RSS Feed

Tweet this on Twitter!

Free Report: Get found and get leads the smart way.

downlod the free report here…

Social Media has proven to be a source of targeted high quality leads for B2C and B2B. An increasing number of marketers see lead generation as their greatest online marketing challenge.

Marketers which experienced the business value of social media marketing know that social media is one of their most successful and cost effective marketing channels.

Studies show that companies which relying on online lead generation are two times more profitable than those who do not. Those companies achieve an up to 62% lower costs per lead.

In social media B2B marketers are focusing mostly on LinkedIn which is the most successful channel for B2B lead generation followed by corporate blogging.

A study from Wildfire Interactive shows that social media helps grow brand awareness, increase sales and partnerships and helped to reduce marketing costs.

How can you profit from this trend?

• 1. Start a social media presence. Complete your profile there
• 2. Research for industry related B2B groups and people. Become a member and invite those people to your network
• 3. Listen to their discussions. If you have something valuable to contribute than do it, otherwise go on listening
• 4. Start a corporate blog. Write about topics your B2B audience is interested in. Share your blog articles in social media and ask for feedback for your publication
• 5. Build landing pages and offer exclusive and valuable content for download. So you generate laser target high quality industry related B2B leads
• 6. Measure your activities
• 7. Improve your activities and repeat

Read this article also: Get social to get found from your future customers

Infographic: Digital Marketing Budgets

To stay up to date, please subscribe to our RSS Feed

Tweet this on Twitter!

Free report: Get found and get leads the smart way.

downlod the free report here…

In the past marketers have been dependent on static inflexible campaigns and surveys which took days, weeks or months before companies get an understanding of how consumers are responding to their brand messaging.

To keep up with the today digital pace is a challenge which every marketer is facing by doing brand messaging.

Also it is not necessary anymore to wait for days, weeks or months to get an idea how brand messaging work and if the recent results are going into the right direction.

By taking the advantages of social media into account marketers have the opportunity to get unfiltered real time feedback from their audience about the impact of their brand messaging. Also they have the opportunity to refine their brand messaging in real time by carefully listening to their audience and offer buyer persona tailored information to make their brand outstanding.

This messaging can be improved online in real time and on daily base to lead the messaging towards the company goals.

Brand marketers need to move beyond campaign mode and post campaign measurement and take advantage of real time feedback and metrics on brand messaging performance.

The first question which marketers face to answer is: How far is the reach of my brand messaging?

To get an idea you need to know some metrics about social media and sharing.

• LinkedIn
• Each LinkedIn user has an average of 60 connection and messages there are shared on average 0.3 times.
• Facebook
• Each Facebook user has an average of 130 friends and messages there are shared on average 0.65 times.
• Twitter
• Each Twitter user has an average of 300 followers and messages there are shared on average 1.5 times.

Calculation example “Facebook”

When your company Facebook page has 1000 likes, it means your messages are visible on these 1000 peoples wall as well in the moment when they are published on yours.

We have learned that an average Facebook user has 130 friends.

Your potential brand message reach: 1000 (Likes) x 130 (each one of them) = 130,000 – 1000 (Likes) = 129,000 (possible additional people to see your brand message)

We have also learned that an average Facebook user shares a message on average about 0.65 times. This could increase your visibility to additionally 83,850 people. Your estimated brand messaging reach could be 212,850 people.

Infographic: How Engaged is Your Brand?

You can’t buy a good branding anymore you need to earn it day by day.

To earn reputation and a trustworthy brand to reach an increasing amount of people you need to offer valuable information – content there where your audience is around on the web and in social media. Remarkable and valuable content can be shared from people in the networks and travel on light speed around the globe.

On the web you are what you publish. What are you?

—David Meerman Scott

To take advantage of the real time opportunities the web and social media offer, you need to transform your marketing from static campaign mode to real time mode and make use of daily news, events and the social vibe your audience gives you as a feedback.

What do you think, did I missed something?

To stay up to date, please subscribe to our RSS Feed

Tweet this on Twitter!

Get found and get leads the smart way.

Download This Free Report Here!

Strategic content marketing has proven as one of the best ways to create brand awareness.

Companies utilizing content marketing strategy report n up to 2,000% lift in blog traffic and 40% boost in revenue.

The most popular ways of content marketing are blogging, social media and video.

Publish buyer persona oriented remarkable content. This can be achieved with a corporate blog very quick.

Here are some facts about the power of blogging:

• 1. Blogging companies get up to 55% more Traffic
• 2. Blogging companies get up to 97% more Inbound Links
• 3. Blogging companies get up to 434% more indexed pages in search engines
• 4. Blogging companies get up to 25x times more business leads

In the next stages you should craft buyer persona oriented…

• Press releases
• Pictures
• Whitepapers
• EBooks
• Video

These pieces of content you can distribute on sites like Prweb.com, Flickr.com, Pinterest.com, Slideshare.net and YouTube.com.

Infographic: The Rise Of Content Marketing

Case Study: Overall Content Marketing Strategy Leads to 2,000% Lift in Blog Traffic, 40% Boost in Revenue

To stay up to date, please subscribe to our RSS Feed

Tweet this on Twitter!

Free report: Get found and get leads the smart way.

Downlod the free report here

Today on eMarketer an article captured my attention:

An analysis of AdParlor and SocialBakers found out that industry such as electronics, travel and entertainment are more social marketing friendly than others.

It found out also that Merchant / Banking services, Health/ Fitness and Tourism have higher CPC rates than for example Promotions and Beauty/ Cosmetics. See graphic below.

What does it mean, when an industry needs to pay more than another to get attention and does not get the click trough rates on the end of the day too?

Infographic: Small Business Social Media

Social media is about conversation and about trust. Companies who handle social media authentically and communicate this way with their audience get the most social media juice out and are also well recognized when they do paid campaigns on places like facebook.

Every business who engages in social media needs to understand that trust can’t be bought there. They need to earn it step by step, day by day and year by year.

How can a business earn trust and decrease their ad spending in social media?

• 1. Listen to your audience and contribute to the conversation if you have something valuable to say.
• 2. Develop buyer persona oriented and remarkable content and publish it online and share it in social media. Ask your audience for their opinion about the published content and listen carefully.
• 3. Us the unfiltered social media feedback to improve your service, support your product and your communication.
• 4. Develop your products and services tailored for your audience.
• 5. Measure all what you do and improve your doings.

These above points can earn you trust reputation and respect from your audience. Moreover it can improve your revenue significantly.

Let me know what you think. Do you have similar experiences?

To stay up to date, please subscribe to our RSS Feed

Tweet this on Twitter!

Free report: Get found and get leads the smart way.

Downlod the free report here

Inbound marketing is the marketing strategy that focuses on getting found by customers when they research online for products and services your business also has to offer.

With inbound marketing businesses earn their way to the customer, by publishing helpful information on a blog, in social media and forums.

Inbound marketing includes Blogging, Social Media, Lead Conversion, Lead Nurturing and Closed-Loop Analysis.

Most business has not the resources and the knowledge to execute a powerful and result driven inbound marketing strategy.

They have not good writers on their staff to produce buyer persona oriented remarkable content like blog articles, whitepapers, how-to’s and eBooks on a regular basis.

Also they do not have in-house SEO experts to help them to choose the most relevant keywords to better get found in the search engines.

Moreover the knowledge about social media communication and an effective community management is not in place as well.

But the most important fact is the time to get all the required things done.

Studies show that business who try to do inbound marketing without professional help fail within three months.

What did they win when the do not hire a professional inbound marketing agency? Simply nothing! They waste time resources and money for no revenue results.

If you want to profit from inbound marketing than you should think about to hire professionals who can do the job.

What do you get by executing a professional inbound marketing strategy?

• A. S ave up to 62% of your marketing budget.
• B. Stand out of your competition.
• C. Generate a massive amount of leads.
• D. Get up to 55% higher lead conversion rates.
• E. Increase your customers and sales.

How much does it cost to hire a professional inbound marketing agency?

This is a god question. The same one like how much is a car? What kind of car do you want? Do you want an old car or a brand new Ferrari?

Inbound marketing hourly rates start with $100 per hour, depends what to do.

You can calculate to spend between $2,000/m – $3,000/m for about minimum of six months, depending on the services delivered. Because any serious inbound marketing agency will need this time frame to set your marketing on the right track to help you to reach your revenue goals.

On the end of the day is inbound marketing the most efficient and the most cost effective marketing you can get for your buck.

Did I miss anything? Let me know in the comments below.

To stay up to date, please subscribe to our RSS Feed

Tweet this on Twitter!

Free report: Get found and get leads the smart way.

Downlod the free report here

The influence of user generated content on purchase decisions is increasingly growing.

User generated on-site content created by internet users includes reviews, comments, stories and questions.

A Study from Bazaarvoice shows that today up to 51% of internet users purchase decision is influenced by user generated content. It is influenced by their social network, family and friends.

Today people research on the internet and in social media about a brand, products and services to get the best deal for their buck.

It is crucial for any brand to know what these future clients will find about them on the web. What kind of ratings on rating sites, product reviews in their network, the brands communication from a blog, video, social media, press, etc.

What will these future customers find when they research about your business. Can this information they find about your company influence them positively to buy your products? Or will they influence them to buy the products from your competitor?

On the web you are what you publish, what are you? — David Meerman Scott —

Brands need to follow the general principles of authenticity and transparency and they need to understand there is a huge group of consumers right now who just do not trust them. They need to be open and give their audience the opportunity to talk about their brand. This will become the standard to the long term.

What brands can do to step into brand talk:

• - Be where your target audience is around
• - Listen to the conversation
• - Respond to the conversation
• - Publish and share buyer persona relevant and remarkable content on the web and in social media
• - Ask for opinion about your products and your business
• - Ask for any suggestions for product and services improvement
• - Be authentic, be honest and be helpful
• - Keep the conversation on run

The most important point: START IMMEDIATELY before your competitor does! A later uphill battle will cost you much more and it is doubtful that you can overtake them.

All of the points above increases trust, credibility and reputation of your brand. This is the currency on the web! When you are smart and build your currency the right way than you can gain a massive competitive edge.

What are you actually doing to get seen and found on the web when your target audience is looking for products or services you also have to offer?

Do you utilize one or all of the above suggestions to improve your chances on the market? If not you should start right away! It’s a mouse click economy; your competitor is only a mouse-click away.

Infographic: Bazaarvoice Millennials

Further important resources:

• Reputation Management: How Dairy Queen handles customer service using social media
• Millennials Look to Digital Word-of-Mouth to Drive Purchase Process

To stay up to date, please subscribe to our RSS Feed

Tweet this on Twitter!

Free report: Get found and get leads the smart way.

Downlod the free report here

Before social media people went mainly to search engines to research and to find products and services. Today in times of social media the products and services find them through discussions, content sharing and recommendations from friends and followers. And even on the road these information are accessible through mobile devices.

This evolution of information technology also arrived to the B2B companies.

The search volume on Facebook has overtaken Google. And there are not only consumers who research there. B2B is also using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and other social networks to research for products, services, industry related information and new business partners.

Nobody says that a product or service with a volume of hundreds of thousands of dollars has to be sold on Facebook. But the first contact can be made there and the further discussions and negotiations can be took offline to close the deal.

Social media is a great way to showcase a business and to offer a more personal insight view. A company has great opportunities to show personality to attract the right buyer persona and to get in touch with the right new future customer when this one is looking out for products and services.

All social media sites also have mobile apps; their reach also spreads wider and is working 24/7. Not only teenagers are surfing on social networks through their mobile devices. B2B decision makes do this as well and their number is increasing!

“Research from ad agency TricomB2B and University of Dayton School of Business Administration showed an even higher concentration of B2B influencers researching purchases on mobile devices.”

How can you and a B2B firm leverage this information above for your business?

• 1. Start a social media presence. Complete your profile there.
• 2. Research for industry related B2B groups and people. Become a member and invite those people to your network.
• 3. Listen to their discussions. If you have something valuable to contribute than do it, otherwise go on listening.
• 4. Start a corporate blog. Write about topics your B2B audience is interested in. Share your blog articles in social media and ask for feedback for your publication.
• 5. Build landing pages and offer exclusive and valuable content for download. So you generate laser target high quality industry related B2B leads.
• 6. Measure your activities.
• 7. Improve your activities and repeat.

What do you think? How are your experiences?

Further important resorces:

• B2B Decision-Makers Diversify Digital Research
• Studies prove Social Media Marketing lasts longer

To stay up to date, please subscribe to our RSS Feed

Tweet this on Twitter!

Free report: Get found and get leads the smart way.

Downlod the free report here

Google, Yahoo and Bing increasingly include results from social media discussions in their search results.

But how to get into those results the smartest way?

The easiest way to get better found on search engines is content marketing. As content marketing has become the most powerful marketing strategy to increase brand awareness, trust and credibility with the audience.

As content is only a part of an integral marketing strategy there is more part of the marketing puzzle important to be used.

The most powerful internet marketing strategy which also has proven to be successful and to bring guaranteed results for businesses is Inbound Marketing.

Inbound marketing consist of content creation like Blogging, Social Media Marketing, Lead Conversion, Lead Nurturing and Closed-Loop Analysis.

Inbound Marketing has proven to:

• Save up to 62% of a businesses marketing budget.

• Make a business stand out of their competition.

• Help to generate a massive amount of leads with up to 55% higher lead conversion rates

• Increase customers, sales and revenue.

Content creation

Content Marketing has become a significant part of online marketing strategy. Content marketing has proven to be the best and most cost effective way to drive traffic to a company website and convert this traffic to leads and customers.

The most popular ways of content marketing are blogging, social media and video. Studies show that 57% of companies which operate a corporate blog get customers through their blogging effort!

Social Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing has become a powerful tool to spread remarkable content to reach a wide audience.

For companies who engage in social media and show presence in these channels can open wide opportunities to get in touch with their audience. This leads to an increase of credibility and unfiltered feedback of the target audience and can lead to an improvement of products and services.

New studies show that up to 65 percent of today’s consumers expect a brand to listen and to respond on questions, comments and complaints in social media. Studies also show that companies which use social media actively to communicate with their audience are more successful than companies who do not.

Lead Generation

Inbound marketing has a 62% lower cost per lead than traditional marketing strategies. Inbound marketing way generated leads have a 55% higher lead conversion rate than lead generated through traditional marketing strategies.

Lead Nurturing – Lead Conversion

Effective lead nurturing increases lead conversion by up to 55%. Which does not mean that lead nurturing consist of sales pitches. Moreover effective lead nurturing is also a communication process with the future client in which the lead receives helpful and valuable information too. This grows the trust and increases the chances that a lead buys when he is ready to do so, because he knows the source as a trusted and reputable one.

Closed-Loop Analysis

All marketing tasks need to be measured to ensure you are walking the right way. During this closed loop analysis you increase successful tasks measure, improve and repeat. This ensures a step by step quality increase and a gradually decrease of marketing costs up to 62%.

Infographic: Content creation

Keep your inbound marketing flexible to react on real-time news! Always keep the news in focus. As news appears they can offer a tremendous opportunity for you to jump on this bandwagon to use it as your own marketing push the piggy pack way! But you must react quickly, in real-time!

Simply be the first who tweets, shares or likes the story and also take into account to write a blog article from your point of view ASAP! This can help to increase your brand awareness.

Did I missed something, what do you think?

Further important resources:

• Creating a Content Marketing Strategy | Business 2 Community
• What makes content marketing google worthy?
• Social media, content marketing top priorities for 70 percent of …
• The 10 Commandments of Social Media Content Marketing …
• How 3 Companies Took Content Marketing to the Next Level

To stay up to date, please subscribe to our RSS Feed

Tweet this on Twitter!

Free report: Get found and get leads the smart way.

Downlod the free report here

One of those blogs is inBlurbs blog. In our blog we write about Inbound Internet Marketing – SEO, Blogging, Social Media, Landing Pages, Lead Generation and Analytics.

“Social Media Examiner, the world’s largest online social media magazine, is designed to help businesses discover how to best use social media tools like Facebook, Google+, Twitter and LinkedIn to connect with customers, generate more brand awareness and increase sales. More than 450,000 people read Social Media Examiner each month.

Technorati and AdAge rank Social Media Examiner as one of the world’s Top 10 business blogs. Our more than 120,000 email subscribers look forward to our daily original content.”

We are very proud to be nominated between those great blogs. Many thanks to all of our supporters.

Every business wants to succeed. But not every business is doing what it needs to succeed.

During the past years inbound marketing, which consists of strategic and buyer persona oriented content creation and content distribution like corporate blogging, engagement in social media, lead generation and lead conversion through lead nurturing and measurement through closed-loop analysis has grown in popularity.

The increase of inbound marketing popularity is no fad but the outcome of  measurable and proven results which studies like the MIT study certifies.

Furthermore it is a proven fact that companies which rely on online lead generation are 25 x more profitable than companies who do not.

Some examples why inbound marketing is so successful:

Content creation

Companies who operate a corporate blog and update it frequently have 55% more website visitors. 57% of companies which operate a corporate blog report to have acquired new customers through their blog.

Social media

67% of B2C and 47% of B2B companies report to have acquired new customers through Facebook. 47% of companies who use Twitter report to have acquired new customer through it.

Lead generation

Inbound marketing has a 62% lower cost per lead than traditional marketing strategies. Inbound marketing way generated leads have an 55% higher lead conversion rate than lead generated through traditional marketing strategies.

As inbound marketing strategy consists of buyer persona oriented content creation, social media engagement, lead generation, lead nurturing and closed-loop analysis; it covers the necessary areas for a successfully operable strategy.

Some suggestions to jumpstart your inbound marketing:

• 1. Identify your buyer personas. (Download this free buyer persona sheet)
• 2. Produce remarkable content (blog articles, whitepapers, eBooks, photos, video, press releases and FAQs) for your buyer personas.
• 3. Distribute your content online through your corporate blog and in social media.
• 4. The more you publish and share the better. As you increase the amount of pages of your website and blog articles you get increasingly more digital outpost to get found better online.
• 5. The more articles you publish the more opportunities appear to get Backlinks from other websites and blog who also like your publications and you will be recognizes as a trusted source.
• 6. Build relevant landing pages and clear call to action to generate leads.
• 7. Nurture those leads with important information and not with sales pitches.
• 8. Measure what you do, optimize and repeat.

Infographic: Inbound Marketing vs. Outbound Marketing

—What do you think about inbound marketing?

To stay up to date, please subscribe to our RSS Feed

Tweet this on Twitter!

Free report: Get found and get leads the smart way.

Downlod the free report here

Content Marketing has become a significant part of online marketing strategy. Content Marketing has proven to be the best and most cost effective way to drive traffic to a company website and convert this traffic to leads and customers.

The most popular ways of Content Marketing are blogging, social media and video. Studies show that 57% of companies which operate a corporate blog get customers through their blogging effort!

4 Reasons to start a corporate blog:

• 1. Blogging companies get up to 55% more Traffic
• 2. Blogging companies get up to 97% more Inbound Links
• 3. Blogging companies get up to 434% more indexed pages in search engines
• 4. Blogging companies get up to 25x times more business leads

Social Media Marketing has become a powerful tool to spread remarkable content to reach a wide audience.

For companies who engage in social media and show presence in these channels can open wide opportunities to get in touch with their audience. This leads to an increase of credibility and unfiltered feedback of the target audience and can lead to an improvement of products and services.

New studies show that up to 65 percent of today’s consumers expect a brand to listen and to respond on questions, comments and complaints in social media. Studies also show that companies which use social media actively to communicate with their audience are more successful than companies who do not.

7 Reasons to start your social media marketing:

• 1. Increase customer perception in the marketplace
• 2. Build long term relationship with customers and partners
• 3. Can respond to customers in real-time
• 4. Taylor products and marketing campaigns based on customer preferences
• 5. React and resolve on negative buzz in real-time
• 6. Decrease costs of marketing
• 7. Improved time to market for products and services

Most people think they need to be Steven Spielberg to make a video to put it online to get a positive impact for their business. But this is not true.

You do not need fancy equipment. The only thing you need is a video camera and for the beginning it can be the one from your smart phone.

The most successful video examples come from ordinary people who could not even be considered amateurs. To become successful with your video marketing, with video content, there is only one secret: Just go and do it, do as many video as you can. Publish it and let your audience judge.

6 Reasons to start your video marketing:

• 1. 200% to 300% more monthly unique visitors
• 2. 100% longer average time-on-site per visitor
• 3. 3-minute average time spent on pages with videos
• 4. 157% increase in search engine traffic
• 5. 100% increase in unique visitors
• 6. 63% increase in page views

Infographic: Content Marketing

—What do you think about content marketing? Are you doing one or all three or other content marketing strategies?

Further important resources

• Content Marketing: Videos attract 300% more traffic and nurture leads
• Social Media can be thread to your reputation
• Studies: 65 percent of customers expect companies to be active on social media
• 3 Ways how to use Online Video for Business Lead Generation

To stay up to date, please subscribe to our RSS Feed

Tweet this on Twitter!

Free report: Get found and get leads the smart way.

Downlod the free report here

Mashable reported that LinkedIn has about 131 million users and that 13% of them access LinkedIn through mobile devices.

LinkedIn is the largest professional social network worldwide and has grown for about 63% compared with the last year.

An increasing number of professionals B2B are researching through their mobile devices. The mobile activity is increasing in B2B.

Millennial Media found out that Smartphone’s are responsible for 68% of website impressions. Also Millennial Media found out that mobile-social action Mix Up 39% month over month.

Studies show that people surf on websites for about three hours from their mobile devices compared with one hour from their personal computer. Studies also show that actually about 260 million mobile devices are in use globally and this number is growing in a strong pace.

There is no question that growth in the B2C sector is much higher than in B2B. But keep in mind; consumers are also employed in companies can also be future B2B client. But only when you give the opportunity to know you and your company, means to offer a way to access your company information from a mobile device.

Now the question occurs how companies who are B2B oriented embrace these facts and how they plan to tune their marketing to stay competitive by simply being accessible through mobile devices, being accessible mobile for actual and future customers who research from their mobile devices for products and services your business also has to offer?

There are several indicators to keep an eye on the mobile marketing way.

• 1. The mobile marketing spending is increasing.
• 2. Smartphone’s have become state of the art and are dominating the mobile world.
• 3. Tablet pc demand is also increasing.
• 4. Mobile website optimization becomes more important.
• 5. Location based mobile marketing has become a powerful way to connect with customers.
• 6. Customers demand accessibility of information’s when they want and where they want.

Mobile usage is increasing and marketers must understand how their target audience is researching for information on the web. And they should create content to meet the needs of consumers which research the mobile way

Some stats:

• - It takes 90 minutes for the average person to respond to an email. It takes 90 seconds for the average person to respond to a text message. (Source: CTIA.org)
• - There are more mobile phones on the planet than there are TVs. (Source: Jupiter)

Infographic: Mobile Marketing B2B

– How do you deal with the increasing damand of customers to access your website on mobile devices? I am looking forward to your comment.

Further important sources:

• 8 Key Mobile Marketing Trends
• Mobile Marketing Roundup: Google mobile ads interface

To stay up to date, please subscribe to our RSS Feed

Tweet this on Twitter!

Free report: Get found and get leads the smart way.

Downlod the free report here

A recent IBM study shows that 82% of CMOs worldwide are planning increase their technology investment in social media within the next three to five years.

These are interesting data. As social media evolves and more businesses jumping o this bandwagon it looks for me that three to five years are not an appropriate time frame to step into conversation with existing and future customers.

The more companies engage in social media two way communications the thinner the air becomes for those who start later. Those who come late will experience a massive uphill battle to gain positions which their competitors already have secured.

Companies which like to position their business to gain a competitive advantage need to act now, and not to wait three to five years.

Moreover companies who decide to take action within the next five years will be under risk to vanish from the customer radar and sink.

As social media is evolving at a very quick pace businesses also need to evolve to stay on track.

Content creation is the key to get found on the web. Your audience is researching o the web fist. If your audience can’t find you when they research for products or services which you also have to offer than you will lose potential business.

The three big search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing are indexing content form social media. So if you are in social media your chances increase to get found on the web.

What can you do to position your business today?

If you want to do business in the next five years and beyond you should take the opportunity to jump into social media as a valuable communication channel.

A. Register the most important social media networks for your brand as they are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr, Slideshare and any other sites or forums where your target audience is around.

B. Complete and customize your profiles there to have a social media branding to get recognized by your audience.

C. Listen to the social media conversation and contribute if you feel you have something valuable and helpful to say.

D. Start a corporate blog where you write about topics which your audience is interested in. Share your articles in your social media channels and ask your audience about their opinion.

E. Train you staff to become your brand ambassadors on the web and I social media and give them the freedom to decide how to communicate by establishing clear social media policy.

F. Measure your doings and check out what is working and what is not working. The things which work for your business you should intensify and the thing which do not work the way you have expected you should cut back.

G. Set realistic goals! Be realistic with your social media engagement. Rome wasn’t built in a day as well. Be patient as any strategy needs time to breathe to show up results and social media marketing a blogging are no exceptions.

Infographic: The ROI of Social Media

–How about you? What are your experiences with sociel media? I am looking forward to your comment below.

Further important sources:

• Customer Data, Social Media Top Marketing Priorities for CMOs Worldwide
• Google Begins Indexing Facebook Comments

To stay up to date, please subscribe to our RSS Feed

Tweet this on Twitter!

Free report: Get found and get leads the smart way.

Downlod the free report here

Google Panda update favors websites with great and interesting content. Moreover it favors site content which people like and find it share worthy!

In the old days there have been a lot of people known as SEO experts which try to tweak websites to trick out search engines to get a better search ranking.

But these times are over. To only use tricks and fancy software does not bring you in front of your target audience. Your buyer personas will not find you with this kind of old school methods anymore.

Search engines are trying to get the best results for their users. So they are sorting out crappy and worthless sites. Search engines have become very fine tuned to differ good from bad content. And to insert some keywords here and there is not enough anymore.

Inbound marketing which uses Content Creation strategies like Blogging to publish interesting, valuable and share worthy content are on their way to dominate internet marketing and substitute the old SEO tricks.

Content is king! But only the right content for the right buyer persona will get found and attract the right future customer! This means, businesses have to take the effort to learn about their target audience a lot more than before.

To produce and to publish buyer persona oriented and share worthy content businesses need to listen to their audience and authentically show that they understand and care about them.

Businesses need to participate in conversation and in social media to gain the trust and the opportunity to market their content (blog articles, eBooks, video, photos, documents, presentations, etc.) to their target audience.

Only when companies earn the right and the respect of their buyer personas, then those buyer personas will take notice and share their content to their friends and followers on the web.

This makes the content flow through the digital world of the internet and social media and also offers the opportunity to get indexed by search engines and given out as search results when future buyers are researching there.

The more buyer persona oriented, valuable, interesting and share worthy content a company is publishing on the web, the better are the chances that this content gets shared, get s indexed from search engines and get found from people who research for these kind of products and services.

— Your goal should be to become an authority of your industry, a trusted and valuable source to look for important and helpful information. —

This will increase your brand value and your reach. And in the same time the people who listen when you speak – publish content. This makes it easier to build relationships and to get long lasting business ties.

Companies who publish remarkable content increase their chances to get new business by up to 60%. Studies show that companies who blog can relate about 50% of their new business to their blogging activities.

To produce valuable and share worthy content is not a difficult thing. Each and every business has a lot of sources inside to produce such content. Sources like email requests from customers and the answers which they got make great blog articles.

• - To showcase products how they work and the potential through vide is another great way to produce remarkable content.
• - To write how to and publish them will help your future and existing customers.
• - Every time a company achieves a milestone, big or small, this is a reason to write and publish a press release.

The possibilities are endless. Just use your creativity to produce great content. Look through other industries how they do and market content and use them as an inspiration.

How about you? How do you utilize content creation to gain a competitive advantage?

Further important sources:

• Infographic: Why Content is King for SEO
• 92% of Marketers Agree: Content Is Critical for SEO [Infographic]
• SEO, content marketing, social media top three digital marketing …

To stay up to date, please subscribe to our RSS Feed

Tweet this on Twitter!

Free report: Get found and get leads the smart way.

Downlod the free report here

Most people who are interested to market their business on the web and especially in social media become overwhelmed of the necessary tasks which need to be done to achieve any serious results.

They feel that they need to handle an avalanche of information and requirements to get the necessary steps done.

And I fully agree with this. Inbound marketing which also includes, content creation as blogging and marketing this content through social media channels is a very time consuming business!

As any other marketing activity you cannot expect to do all the necessary tasks at once. You also need a strategic plan where you set timeframes to do your necessary inbound marketing tasks and which you can stick to. Discipline is a key factor!

Above in the title I ask how to eat an elephant? This is very simple, bit by bit!

As any other work you need to split your inbound marketing in daily tasks. You have five working days you can use. You need to determine how much time you can invest daily and from this point you can start.

Inbound marketing includes Blogging, Social Media, Lead Conversion, Lead Nurturing and Closed-Loop Analysis.

Content creation – blogging

As blogging is a key factor for lead generation we suggest to blog no matter which kind of other content you have or want to publish!

Which kind of content is the best fit for your target audience, your buyer personas?

Can you reach your audience with video, eBooks, reports, whitepapers, and pictures, blog commenting or any other piece of content?

Find out which kind of content has the best opportunities in your industry, and this does not mean it must be the same old way like your competitors do it! Be creative. When you competitor does eBook, than you can do video! When they do video than you can do eBooks! To get ideas and inspiration just look through other industries how and what kind of other content thy produce.

Social Media / Forums

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and industry related forums are great place to get seen from your future clients. These places are also great to improve your of page SEO. When you are active there, means when you get into the conversation and share your content there than you increase your chances to found in the search engines!

Lead Generation / Conversion

Content creation and social media marketing are great tools to drive interested visitors to SEO optimized landing pages (lead capture pages) to get them into you database to follow up and to make them paying customers through the time.

Lead Nurturing

As you generate leads you should stay in touch with them. But avoid sales pitches. Instead of do the same which whom you have generated your leads. Inform them with interesting and share worthy content, solve problems, answer questions and simply stay in touch with them, stay visible!

Closed-Loop Analysis

Analyze your doings to determine where your lead and revenue coming from measure refine and improve your content creation, social media marketing, lead nurturing and analysis.

Repeat this process above!

Example: The daily inbound marketing tasks!

Monday

• Facebook 15 minutes
• Twitter 15 minutes
• LinkedIn 15 minutes
• Forums 15 minutes

Check email / Leads 30 minutes

Blog commenting 30 minutes

Draft blog article 30 minutes

Tuesday

• Facebook 15 minutes
• Twitter 15 minutes
• LinkedIn 15 minutes
• Forums 15 minutes

Check email / Leads 30 minutes

Blog commenting 30 minutes

Draft blog article 30 minutes

Publish blog article 30 minutes

Market blog article in social media

Wednesday

• Facebook 15 minutes
• Twitter 15 minutes
• LinkedIn 15 minutes
• Forums 15 minutes

Check email / Leads 30 minutes

Blog commenting 30 minutes

Draft blog article 30 minutes

Thursday

• Facebook 15 minutes
• Twitter 15 minutes
• LinkedIn 15 minutes
• Forums 15 minutes

Check email / Leads 30 minutes

Blog commenting 30 minutes

Draft blog article 30 minutes

Publish blog article 30 minutes

Market blog article in social media

Friday

• Facebook 15 minutes
• Twitter 15 minutes
• LinkedIn 15 minutes
• Forums 15 minutes

Check email / Leads 30 minutes

Blog commenting 30 minutes

Draft blog article 30 minutes

Check analytics 15 minutes

Refine tasks 30 minutes

———

To effectively profit from your web marketing efforts you should plan to invest about 2.5 hrs. daily and more, this depends on your business goals.

You also can split this work to different persons in your company.

– What do you think and how get you the daily web marketing tasks done?

Further resources:

• Social Media Books: Location-Based Marketing for Dummies
• Hiring Demand for Social Media Skills Still on the Rise

To stay up to date, please subscribe to our RSS Feed

Tweet this on Twitter!

Free report: Get found and get leads the smart way.

Downlod the free report here!

The Technorati Study: “State of the Blogosphere 2010” shows Corporate blogs have become a powerful business marketing tool for companies.

With the increasing demand of finding new and creative ways to get the attention of future buyers and recent customers, corporate blogs are established as a trust and credibility building way to show expertise and to get in touch with target audience.

Companies like IBM use blogging to get seen online. Every person there who wants to write a blog gets the chance to write about the things they are interested in, not only about IBM related products.

As blogging is a clear way of communication a business should be authentic and communicate in a human way to become successful with their blogging, content and social media marketing.

Businesses that blog expand their blogging engagement with the help of strategic social media engagement to spread their content and to step into a two way conversation with their audience. Studies show that 57% of companies who blog get customers through their blogging effort!

Blogging used with the power of social media sharing brings blog posts to a wide audience. This audience is interested in this kind of content as it is their primary source to research for products and services on the web.

“Reach” is the key factor which decides the success or failure of a corporate blog.

These days buyers’ research proffered on blogs and in social media to find products and services.

4 reasons to start a corporate blog:

• Blogging companies get up to 55% more Traffic.
• Blogging companies get up to 97% more Inbound Links.
• Blogging companies get up to 434% more indexed pages in search engines.
• Blogging companies get up to 25x times more business leads.

These numbers are good reasons for a business to consider blogging for content marketing!

Blogging is the basic way of content marketing. Which means it is very easy to start with reasonable marketing investment.

There is clear context between the number of published articles, website traffic and generated business leads. The more articles are published the more outposts are there to get found from future customers on the web.

To be successful with corporate blogging, increase reach, web traffic and leads it takes these points:

— Publish high quality articles, which are interesting and share worthy.

— Participate in social media and in top rank forums to gain larger exposure.

— Submit your blogs to blog directories and to top ranked Blog Search Engines.

— Offer free reports to visitors to increase their interest in your website.

There is no question that businesses who utilize blogging gain a massive competitive advantage against those who do not blog.

 — What do you think? Do you use a corporate blog?

Further important resources:

• Blogs attract and engage internet users
• Blogging – 5 Ways Your Business Can Benefit
• 8 Tips For Successful Business Blogging

To stay up to date, please subscribe to our RSS Feed

Tweet this on Twitter!

Get Found and Get Leads the Smart Way

Download your FREE Report Now!

The average internet user is watching 30 minutes of video online daily! These people mostly lookout for entertainment.

This opens wide opportunities for your business to get your products and services in front of potential future buyers when they are looking.

The use of online video is growing as people also increasingly watch videos from their mobile devices.

Videos made as product pitches are not a good bet to attract interested people. Also image videos do not work as a potential viral marketing tool.

Your business should use online video to inform and to entertain your audience. Take care to also optimize your video for mobile. As the smart phone use grows you should keep in mind that these users are also able to see your videos on their mobile devices. Here is an interesting article about video sizes.

Smartphone Trends Infographic:

For information / education: You can show your products in action or explain product features in a more understandable way through video. Let your satisfied customers talk about your products and publish and market those videos everywhere on the web.

Watch this video:

For communication: You can do a video blog, where you instead of to write articles can do videos. Steve Garfield’s video blog.

Steve Garfield is a videographer and video blogger based in Boston, Massachusetts. One of the Internet’s first video bloggers, Garfield began experimenting with the technique in 2002 and launched his own video blog on January 1, 2004.

For entertainment: Nobody says that a product video needs to be boring! You can be creative and do an entertaining product video which people like and share.

Watch this video:

If you have a lack of ideas just crowd source your video to your audience, for example to your Facebook friends and Twitter followers.

Do a contest for the best crowd sourced video! So you can create a buzz on the web, get a lot of attention from your target audience, a ton of creative videos online which mention your brand and can lead further interested people to your business.

Online Video Facts Infographic:

The easiest way for you to profit from online video for your business is to do videos by yourself and publish them in your corporate blog on Youtube, Facebook and other videos channels on the web.

You can simply start your video by using the camera you already have. This can be the cam from you smart phone or any other cam you have. Start doing videos of your company and your products. Ask your collages to explain one of your products in plain English and upload, add a descriptive title, tag and describe this video to help search engines to index it and your audience to find it.

Embed it to your website, write a blog post about the video topic and embed it in your corporate blog. Market it on your social media channels and ask for comments and opinions.

Than do the next video and so on.

Don’t try to do a perfect video. There is no such thing like a perfect video on the web!

With the time you will get a better routine and your videos will become better and better. But this will only happen if you start doing them.

— How do you use online video for business? I am looking forward to your comment below.

Further important resources:

• Five Essentials of Defending Your Digital Reputation
• Content marketing freshman style
• Startup adds Hollywood flare to small business videos
• Start-Up Memoires: YouTube fame & Brand Consisency

To stay up to date, please subscribe to our RSS Feed

Tweet this on Twitter!

12 Powerful Ways How To Get Massive Traffic To Your Web Presence

Download yours now!

More than 3.5 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, videos, etc.) shared each week on Facebook.

Facebook is accessible in 70 languages and has about 750 million users worldwide and there is actually 1,5+ million active business pages online.

There is no doubt if you want to reach your target audience the chances are good that they are on Facebook.

Facebook has become a true business machine which has the power to lift up business in the same speed like its progress. Groupon and other popular brands have experienced this effect in a very successful way. Not to mention the thousands of small businesses who have embraced social media networks like Facebook.

With its massive global reach Facebook has become some kind of a state by its own. And with its technical possibilities like Pages and apps it offers a large toolset for businesses to get seen on this powerful globally accessible network.

But what’s in for your business you will ask now?

My question: Are you active on Facebook, because if not, than nothing. But if you are seriously active in Facebook than this question should have been answered in a positive way yet.

Businesses which want to be active in Facebook but don’t know how to make it happen have two options:

1.) They can do the steps by them self, because there is a truck load of free information on how to establish a business outpost on Facebook. The only thing a business needs to get started is to do the first step and to register a personal account on Facebook. From there you can do one step behind another. From completing your Facebook profile to the registration of a business page.

2.) Or you could shorten your learning curve and save time and money through trial and error by hire a professional agency to help you with your social media marketing like Facebook.

Facebook is a great place to get seen from recent and future customers. Moreover you can attract new customers targeted through the help of Facebook and direct them to your business and your products.

Facebook can become your automated 24/7 business leads machine if you know how to handle it.

How mentioned above there are more than 3.5 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, videos, etc.) shared each week on Facebook.

You could be one of those smart marketers who are doing content marketing on Facebook to generate new business leads.

Facebook offers you to connect your corporate blog with your personal profile and your business page. So every time you publish a blog post it is also showing up on your personal profile and your business page.

Also you can connect your Twitter with Facebook. Every time you tweet something it also shows up on Facebook.

These above are great ways to spread your content to reach your target audience.

Facebook pages offer you the opportunity to establish custom tabs with your content which you can also optimize for SEO.

By the way when you use Facebook, take care that all what you write there is SEO optimized and tagged the right way. This makes it easier for search engines to find your content and to index it.

Facebook pictures are also in the game of content marketing. Pictures are content as well. Upload pictures from your products and events and describe and tag them right.

Facebook video: A great way to show videos from events, product description and testimonials of satisfied customers.

Avoid speaking about you self. Publish interesting and share worthy content. Publish content with your audience in mind.  Allways have your target audience in focus!

Again! Take care that all what you write there is described correctly, SEO optimized and tagged the right way. This makes it easier for search engines to find your content and to index it. Social media marketing is the new SEO.

Marketing takeawy tipp: To publish and market your content on facebook will increase your brand recognition and your credibilty. Produce share worthy and helpful content with your audience in mind.

Further important resources:

• The relationship between Facebook and loyalty
• Major SA brands for Facebook Check-in Deals

To stay up to date, please subscribe to our RSS Feed

Tweet this on Twitter!

Free eBook: 9 Easy Steps to Facebook Success

Download yours here!

More interesting is that 20 percent of searches on Google each day have NEVER been searched for before.

“Udi Manber, Google’s VP of Engineering, gave a brief 15 minute presentation where he also explained that 20 to 25% of the queries we see today, we have never seen before.”

People hear from their friends’ info about products and services and then they go to their favorite search engines and try to find more information on.

What does this mean for your business? More and more people research online on search engines before they buy products and services. The chances are good that an interesting amount of your target audience is also looking for products and services on the web which you also have to offer.

The chances are also good that those people do not know your business and what you have to offer.

And here is your big opportunity to profit from this fact.

Here are some tips how you can get more seen on the web:

To get found online you need to be active and visible there where your audience is. The best and proven way to get seen on the web is content marketing. Content marketing is very simple and easy to do.

You should publish interesting and share worthy content on the web and market it in social media.

Content is everything you have from your business which can be published online. For example photos, articles, videos published on Flickr, forums, social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, document and video sharing platforms like Slideshare and YouTube.

But it is not enough to publish the content. To tag it right with long tail keywords and include a keyword rich description can also help to get it found on the search engines.

By publishing content through a corporate blog every blog article you publish becomes an outpost of your business online.

Market your blog articles in social media. Social media content is indexed by major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing and your social media activities increase your chances to get found on search results of search engines from people who are looking for products and services you also have to offer. Social media marketing has become the new SEO!

Companies who blog generate more traffic and more business leads.

Find further spaces to publish other kind of content and repeat this. Make content marketing to an important part of your marketing strategy.

The more outposts you establish online the more chances you have to get found from future clients.

Published content increases the brand recognition of a business and can earn a trust and credibility with its target audience. The more interesting content a business publishes on the web the higher are the chances that people will find it also interesting and share worthy and share it with their friends and their social network. This spreads your brand to undefined reach and attracts attention from people which did not know you before.

This effect multiplies! The more content, the more outpost, the more chances to get shared and to get seen from new people the more potential clients you will attract to your business!

Companies which do the content marketing strategy seriously get the most traffic through their outposts on the web. The content there is indexed by search engines and appears in search results when the used keywords are typed into search engines!

Smart companies direct this “outpost traffic” to optimized landing pages to generate business leads, to get new customers and increase revenue!

Marketing takeaway tip: Start to publish interesting and share worthy content on the web and market it on social media. The more content you publish, the more your chances will increase to get found from future customer.

To stay up to date, please subscribe to our RSS Feed

Tweet this on Twitter!

Get Found and Get Leads the Smart Way

Download your FREE Report Now!

The Facts

The trajectory of social networking continues to rise and gain momentum.

In fact, in 2010, 9 out of every 10 U.S. Internet users visited a social networking site each month and in 2010 social networking sites accounted for 12 percent of all time spent online, with an average Internet user spending more than 4.5 hours on these sites each month.

Social networking has become ingrained in our lives and is quickly becoming the preferred form of communication for countless individuals.

Facebook, the social networking behemoth, accounted for 10 percent of U.S. page views in 2010, and three out of every ten Internet sessions included a visit to this site.

(2010 U.S. Digital Year in Review: A Recap of the Year in Digital Media)

Why Use Social Media?

Aside from the fact that these sites are widely popular, they do provide numerous benefits to companies and organizations that are willing to invest in this type of marketing strategy.

These sites can assist in recruiting new employees, helping to establish trust with customers, working to build positive word of mouth buzz and establishing your company as an authority in your field of business. They can also assist with garnering research on your customers and testing out new product ideas.

Internally, they can also increase employee communication and feedback, assist with business process improvements and work to streamline project management efforts.

Where to Begin

As stated earlier, start small, but start smart.

Determine which sites to target

Figure out which sites your current and potential clients are visiting and focus on utilizing those for your social media efforts. Also assess what your competition is doing and don’t be afraid to review the efforts of large, successful companies. You can often glean tips and tricks to utilize on a smaller scale.

Establish goals and set metrics

Are you trying to raise brand awareness, sell more products, build relationships, position yourself as a thought leader, or all of the above? It is extremely important to evaluate how successful your strategy is. Measure how much your social media sites are being utilized and survey customers about their knowledge of them.

Align your tone and messaging

Since your vehicle for communication is changing, you also have to consider how you should change the tone of your messaging. Social media is much more casual than traditional marketing and it is also much more indirect.

Become a thought leader

Individuals see right through a campaign that is all about you and your business, instead, focus on sharing how your products and services can make the lives of your customers better and easier.

Don’t be afraid to share information that isn’t specifically about your company. Sharing valuable information establishes trust with your customer base; it shows them that you care about their success.

Make the time commitment and be timely

Social media is about starting and maintaining a conversation. You need to be active in order for social media to benefit your business. Set aside time each day to review what people are saying and to partake in the conversation.

Integrate your social media strategies with each other and with your traditional marketing plans

Ensure your messaging and branding remains consist. The last thing you want to do is jeopardize, weaken or dilute your brand.

In Conclusion

Take a deep breath and jump right in because you have to start somewhere. As long as your content is valuable, you will see that people are interested in what you have to say.

Author Profile

Keith Barrett is a leading search engine optimization expert, with specific interest in social media marketing. His company, Search South, offers small business SEO services, as well as a wider range of approaches for businesses of all sizes.

To stay up to date, please subscribe to our RSS Feed

Tweet this on Twitter!

Do you get found and get leads the smart way?

To learn more download this free report here!

Businesses with a small budget have to consider different plans to attract more customers than expensive campaigns and celebrity endorsements.

Online world has become the most prominent mode of publicity and marketing now days, may be that is why everyone who is online gets to see a number of ads and promotional videos on every webpage they click on.

A cost effective way to get attention of the target audience is corporate blog.

Blogs articles can be written by in-house bloggers or even hired journalists, which depends on the strategy and the budget of the business.

Corporate blogs should be clear targeted and grammatically correct short notices which can be read easily by an average online user.

“Reach” is the key factor which decides the success or failure of a corporate blog.

Here are some tips to increase the reach and the web traffic to your corporate blog:

 — Write  high quality articles, which will instantly Increase Web Traffic
 — Participate in top rank forums to gain larger exposure to the masses
 — Submit your blogs to blog directories and on any top ranked Blog Search Engine
 — Recycle blog content whenever necessary
 — Offer free reports to visitors and increate their interest in your site
 — Find newer ways to know how to get traffic with the help of consultants and observing your competitors if necessary

Download this free report: 12 Powerful Ways How To Get Massive Traffic To Your Web Presence

Further important resources:

• Six Reasons Every Brand Should Blog
• Dataram Successfully Leverages Web Strategy
• Blog Design for Killer SEO Infographic
• Increasing traffic through your online front door
• The 10 Most Important Questions I Get Asked About Twitter

To stay up to date, please subscribe to our RSS Feed

Tweet this on Twitter!

Do you get found and get leads the smart way?

To learn more download this free report here!

To achieve your marketing and revenue goals you need to know which way to go and what exactly to do when you establish an internet marketing strategy.

In today times when things are changing in real-time, even not over night anymore you also should keep a certain level of flexibility to adjust your marketing tasks and correct your course if necessary to reach your internet marketing and revenue generation goals.

As social media and content creation are important parts of inbound marketing you need to keep the flexibility to react on your customers demand. To simply stay on a previous decided way without taking into account that things can change or have changed could lead your marketing efforts in the wrong direction!

How to have a flexible strategy?

Set an editorial Kalender, where you write your content ideas down, where you plan your events and press release distribution. But do not obsess about it.

As content creation is the backbone of inbound marketing you maybe should establish your marketing as some kind of content marketing! Why content marketing?

Go through your social media channels and listen to the conversation. Listen what kind of questions your audience have and what kind of problems they are looking to get solved. Here you will get your content inspiration in real-time. When you carefully listen you can be helpful and contribute in real-time to your audience and make them aware of you.

Also you can use this Q&A as resources to write a blog post, eBook, whitepaper or a simple how-to, to solve the problems of your audience in real-time!

When you produce interesting, helpful and remarkable content you should market this content through appropriate social media channels to get it noticed by your audience, in real-time.

Marketing takeaway tip: Solve the problems that bother your audience in real-time as they appear. This will set you apart from your competition, make you outstanding and will attract more curious potential new clients to your offers.

To stay up to date, please subscribe to our RSS Feed

Tweet this on Twitter!

===================================================================

Do you get found and get leads the smart way?

To learn more download this free report here!

===================================================================

The question should be: How to get found from potential customers?

Do you know which keywords, terms and phrases your target audience is looking for when they do research for products and services from your industry?

A lot of traffic does not mean anything, when you don’t generate high quality leads.

Less is more!

Balzac

Businesses often focus on a “large amount of traffic” instead of the “right traffic”. This results in enormous PPC spending and Keywords acquisition battles with companies with deeper pockets which simply displace you with their massive financial power.

When businesses do SEO than often results are expected over night. But this is not the case. Sustainable results in SEO need time.

Go “Long Tail” and do research for two or three words keywords. A great help to do this is the Google Keywords Tool. Your area of interest depends if your globally active or locally.

If you are locally active lookout for the keywords with a low competition and under 1000 local searches. Mark all of them and export them to your desktop. Be precise with your keywords as you can be, this will increase the quality of your traffic and your leads.

Now you can produce content around your researched keywords. Publish this content in a corporate blog and distribute and market it on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn and so on.

Search engines love blogs. Blogs have always fresh and newsworthy content and therefore they prefer to index them. A regularly updated blog gets more search engine attention than a website.

Each published article is an additional chance to get found on Google from your target audience.

Encourage your friends and followers to give you feedback, comments and critics about your content. Encourage them to share your content with their network of friends.

The information distributed and discussed in social media is also indexed from search engines and the more you are active the more your chances increase to get found in search engine results. Social media is called the new SEO.

Read also these articles:

Leverage your employees to quadruple your business leads
Why numbers count for Facebook lead generation success
How to get found on Google? This is easier than you think.

To stay up to date, please subscribe to our RSS Feed

Tweet this on Twitter!

===================================================================

Do you get found and get leads the smart way?

To learn more download this free report here!

===================================================================

To track your PR results, your reach and mentions is essential for the improvement of your strategy.

The more information you get the better you can improve and optimize your tasks to increase your results.

There is no exact way to calculate the ROI of social media and PR.

Here are some points you can utilize to come very close to facts and data to calculate your ROI:

Google Alerts: You can track mentions of your company in media. You can set alerts for your brand, your name and your products. Google alerts can immediately inform you as soon your brand, your name and your products is mentioned online. You can also track what your competition is doing this way.

Track Your Press Releases: You can do this very well on Google Search “News”, “Blogs”, “Real-time” and Discussions. Here you can also set Google Alerts.

Your Website’s Sources: When you learn more if your traffic is coming from your press releases and from social media like Facebook and Twitter you get clear info how people find you.

Ask Your Customers How They Found You: A great way to measure your reach is to ask your customers how they found you. You can do this in a very simple way by adding an extra form field to your landing pages.

This above are only some ways to measure and to bring great data together, there is much more. But start with the above and evolve your doings to measure the ROI of your PR.

How do you measure your PR reach? I am looking forward to your comments below.

To stay up to date, please subscribe to our RSS Feed

Tweet this on Twitter!

===================================================================

Do you get found and get leads the smart way?

To learn more download this free report here!

===================================================================

Sure it is more effective to speak to a buyer persona more personally than to fire a “one size fits all marketing message” in the hope one bullet will hit the target.

When you talk to your leads than you have to talk to them personally if you want to make a deal, right? You do your conversation in a friendly personal way. So why not start with this kind of friendly and personal way when doing your lead generation campaigns?

EMarketer and EPISERVER studies shows that campaigns done personal have the best results.

Also this Studie show that most of the asked marketers are planning to increase their campaign personalization efforts to increase their visitor to lead and the lead to customer ratio.

Some great ways to personalize your marketing efforts are the use of personalization features in your email management system. Also you can include in your set of share buttons on your blog an option to ‘email this article’, only to name some of them.

As those studies also show what marketer are already doing and what they plan to do in the future, you should also set your plan for campaign personalization to increase your lead generation and conversion quote.

To stay up to date, please subscribe to our RSS Feed

Tweet this on Twitter!

===================================================================

Do you get found and get leads the smart way?

To learn more download this free report here!

===================================================================

Facebook is a valuable source to showcase your business and to get in touch with your audience.

With its more than 600 million users worldwide Facebook offer great opportunities to generate leads and to reach new customers globally. Facebook has about 1.7 million business fan pages. Facebook is growing about 700,000 users daily.

67% of B2B and 41% of the B2C companies say, that the get new customers through facebook.

The companies who say that Facebook is important to critical to their business have increased up to 83% within the last two years.

With its valuable set of features facebook offers various ways to get seen there like:

1. Facebook Fan Page

2. Facebook iFrames

3. Facebook Video

4. Facebook Photos

5. Connect your Twitter with your Facebook Fan Page

6. Connect your Blog with your Facebook Fan Page

7. Connect your Slideshare with your Facebook Fan Page

To be active on social media sites like facebook can be essential for a business to get found and get leads!

Search engines do index social media content, and when a business is distributing their content in social media, the chances are good that there content appears in the next search results on Google, Yahoo and Bing on the first page.

Social media is also called the NEW SEO!

Get going on Facebook:

Get started on Facebook and listen to relevant conversation and build relationships.

When you publish brand relevant and helpful content for your audience than take one problem at a time and offer a solution to your buyer personas.

Engage your audience to discuss and rate your possible solution or even to offer a better one.

Ask your audience about their experiences with your solutions.

This starts a conversation and attracts more interested people to your solution, content and in the next step to your products and services. All of them without pushing or pitching your audience. Simply by showing expertise and gaining trust.

Start to generate business leads the smart way!

How have been your experiences with Facebook for business lead generation? I am looking forward to your feedback below in the comment section.

To stay up to date, please subscribe to our RSS Feed

Tweet this on Twitter!

========================================

DOWNLOAD the FREE eBook:

9 Easy Steps to Facebook Succes

Download it here for FREE

========================================