Inbound Marketing Agency » Get Found Online

How to use Social Media for Customer Acquisition

Dragan Mestrovic — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 20:50:43 +0000

Social media has become a significant part of serious marketers lead generation strategy.

Companies who engage in social media increase their reach massively. And there is no matter if they are B2C or B2B.

Social media is public communications channel where companies can get great unfiltered feedback.

Companies need to understand that social media is not for “pushing your messages out “.

To be successful and to reach a positive ROI with social media, companies need to communicate and to listen to their audience.

It is simply untrue when someone claims that his customers are not active in social media. They are active in B2C and B2B and they research online for products and services.

The only question is: What will they find when they research for products and services you also have to offer, will they find you or your competitor?

Studies prove that B2C and B2B profit likewise from social media engagement.

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

Engaging in dialogue with customers via social media has become an important part of successful companies.

Smart marketers measure the value of social media channels as well. They want to know which one has the best results for their business. One of the most popular channels is Facebook. About 44% of surveyed marketers say that “Facebook is valuable because they help with new customer recruitment”.

Moreover they have stated that Facebook fans have higher conversion rates and they make more frequent purchases.

How can you measure the ROI of your social media marketing?

• At first you can do this by increase of your revenue
• As a second way you can measure are “Likes”
• You can measure social media mentions of your brand

A great way is to add lead capture pages to your in social published articles and to track the traffic, leads, lead to customer rate and revenue per generated lead. So you get a good picture of your cost per lead and adjust activities to increase your profits.

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 cost per lead.

Infographic: Brand Messaging

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Let LinkedIn do FREE Marketing for your business

Dragan Mestrovic — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 14:01:21 +0000

LinkedIn has updated their privacy conditions.

LinkedIn is now permitted to use your name and picture in any of their advertisements. So they can use this throughout their whole network for their marketing purposes!

How scary, or maybe not…?

See ch. 2 of their privacy policy: http://www.linkedin.com/static?key=privacy_policy&trk=hb_ft_priv

Ok, here are two ways you can deal with this:

First - You can forbid it by change your privacy settings this way:

1. Place the cursor on your name at the top right corner of the screen. From the small
pull down menu that appears, select “settings”
2. Then click “Account” on the left/bottom
3. In the column next to Account, select the option “Manage Social Advertising”
4. Finally un-tick the box “LinkedIn may use my name and photo in social advertising”
5. and Save

Or, the Second possibility – You can use this as an opportunity to let market LinkedIn your business throughout their whole network for FREE! Simply let them do the branding job for your business and paying not a dime for this!

How does this sound for you?

Here is how it works:

You simply change your photo to a branding tool! Use your photo by inserting your brand LOGO how I have done here with my LinkedIn photo. That’s it.

Now LinkedIn is very welcome to use my photo throughout their whole network as long as they want.

I only can say THANK YOU LINKEDIN for this tremendous FREE marketing opportunity and God bless you!

By the way, you can do this on Twitter, Facebook and other networks as well.

— Let me know what you think and how your results are.

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Studies prove Social Media Marketing lasts longer

Dragan Mestrovic — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 00:58:46 +0000

The Social Media marketing return on investment is a major factor why businesses choose to step into social media marketing and the two communications here.

Social media has proved in the past years that it can bring positive ROI when done right. Some successful examples are Intrepid Travel, Easy Lunch Boxes, SnapRetail just only to name some of them.

As businesses understand that social media is no short term sprint than more something like a marathon they engage with more diligence to plan their steps to reach a long term ROI.

Successful brands look at social media engagement as a plant which needs to be cultivated over the time to grow to an unlimited range.

BzzAgent has discovered that about 61% of brand advocates would buy products up to one year after social media campaign has expired. This proves that social media marketing and two way communication lasts longer than ordinary one marketing blasts from yesteryear.

This does not mean that social media has become a “push the button cash machine”. Not every campaign will be successful. But like everything on the planet the volume of activities and their step by step improvement ensures a growing success.

This does not mean that brands should fire one campaign behind another. This means that a brand should carefully listen to its audience. When they listen carefully their audience will tell them which campaign could be appreciated to become a possible success story.

In the mean time a human and authentic communication should be the priority.

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

No matter if there are critics or praise. Every feedback is a chance to showcase the brands standpoint and get in touch with the recent or future customer.

Brands that listen to their audience and improve products and services to fit their audience’s needs are one step from that to be the long term winners. The growing trend for custom products proves this. The one size fits all strategy does not work anymore this is for sure!

Any 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.

The others who do not will be left behind, and they deserve to vanish because they do not care a shi* about their audience and never have. Social media also points this out and separates the good from the bad once.

In this new world the customer B2C and B2B wins and the brands who care. And that’s good!

Infographic: B2B Social Media Marketing

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Get social to get found from your future customers

Dragan Mestrovic — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 00:12:57 +0000

Google, Yahoo and Bing increasingly include results from social media discussions in their search results. Especially Google+ results are likely more visible on Google results pages. Bing favors Facebook and also search results on Facebook are also from Bing too.

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?

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Power your Inbound Marketing with small social networking sites

Dragan Mestrovic — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 00:38:31 +0000

In the beginning of 2012 the traffic, unique visitors and time on site of some smaller sites like Tumblr, Pinterest and Google+ increased and attracted attention from marketers.

The audience of smaller sites can be of big marketing value for marketers as there are not overwhelmed of information like on the bigger ones.

Marketer can gain attention quicker and lead more qualified and quality traffic to their sites to convert them to leads.

This increased lead quality could also reflect in an increasing lead to customer rate.

With better lead quality you save time and money when you convert them to paying customers. Maybe your lead count decrease but the quality increases and you grow your revenue the smart way.

Here is a most actual list of social networking sites from Wikipedia.

Go through and research which one can e most suitable to reach your target audiences the most efficient way.

Register with those networks and complete your profile than start the conversation by distribution your content – publications to these networks.

Further important resources:

Smaller Social Sites See Significant Boost in Usage

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Eight steps to steal laser target traffic from eBay

Dragan Mestrovic — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 00:09:01 +0000

In the past years eBay is an established platform to buy and sell goods. Millions of people day visit eBay to research and to buy products. Hundreds of thousands of businesses utilize eBay to get new customers and to make revenue.

But there is another side of eBay. Increasing fraud, increasing sales and listing fees and the decreasing image value of eBay.

But there is good news for businesses. Ebay is a traffic machine when it comes to target traffic. Moreover the eBay traffic is laser target.

How can you use eBay to lead a ton of laser target traffic to your business? Because this is the only way how you can profit from eBay in the long term, when you build your brand not theirs!

Here are eight easy steps how you can squeeze out eBay traffic and increase YOUR profits:

First: You should change your mind and not use eBay of your primary source of business. This decreases your sales and listing fees and focuses your audience to your website and the listed offers.

Second: When you are listing your offers on eBay you should ALLWAYS include your website and your blog URL in to your listing, so your audience get the chance to visit your website.

Third: Only list offers on eBay as special offers, do not list them in your website and shop at the same time, so the visitors can’t compare. Use eBay to introduce new products for a short time and then only offer them in your shop.

Fourth: Design your website and shop in greater marketing strategy in mind and build it as marketing hub to canalize your traffic to leads and your leads to sales.

Fifth: Build your own email list to keep your audience updated. Include a call to action to your audience to subscribe to your newsletter on your website, so you own your list.

Sixth: Setup a lead nurturing process to keep your audience informed, but do not bother them only with sales offers. This leads to higher unsubscribe rates.

Seventh: Start a corporate blog to open a two way conversation hub for your audience to build trust, position yourself as a credible source and to publish remarkable content.

Eighth: Start a facebook business page and add Facebook special, especially for your FB fans. Start a Twitter and add special offers for your Twitter followers.

These steps above ensure that you build your brand in the longer, drive a massive amount of traffic to your website, generate a ton of business leads and increase your revenue and sales and decrease your dependence of eBay and your eBay costs.

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inBlurbs Blog is nominated as one of the 20 finalists

Dragan Mestrovic — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 14:56:30 +0000

socialmediaexaminer.com has picked under over 570 nominations 20 Social Media Blogs for the Final Winner Selection.

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.

Why you should carefully listen to social media

Dragan Mestrovic — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 00:21:09 +0000

Did you sometimes think about how would it be to increase revenue and profits by being much quicker with product and services development than your competition?

When was the last time you and your business have been ahead of the trend curve?

What would you do to have such a tremendous competitive advantage which enables you to produce products and to create services your buyers demand and want to buy, always and repeat this again and again?

Yes, you would appreciate this advantage and do all the best you can to profit from it. Who wouldn’t?

But the fact is that most businesses are not willing to go the extra mile to achieve this kind of long term success. They simple stay in their comfortable zone and think if they do not take advantage of any new opportunities or technologies than they lower their risks. But the opposite is the sad fact.

I know it, because these are information I have discovered from many conversations of which I had with businesses. These businesses will fail in the long term there is no question!

A small percentage of businesses are willing to go the extra mile and use new technologies and opportunities when they appear. These businesses will be the winner in the future for sure!

One important part of success is the ability to listen and learn!

If you are able to listen than you are able to learn and you will develop yourself and your business to the next higher profitable level.

When you listen to conversation you become aware of new information, technologies and what your recent and future customers think about you and your business.

1. Do you know and do you listen what recent and future customers think about you and your business?
2. Where do you listen?
3. Did you improved your support, developed products and services to solve the target audience demand yet?

If not than I give you some good reasons why you should do:

• In social media people discuss open about their needs and are willing to give more personal information [develop buyer personas to better identify your audience].

In blurbs buyer personas analysis sheet

View more presentations from inBlurbs

• They complain open and want to be taken serious and you can show them that you care
• They give you suggestions for product and services improvements
• You can see upcoming trends, the potential volume and tailor your products and services to fit these trends and to reach those customers who are in demand for such products and services

Infographic: Social Media in Small Business

This is like you personal crystal ball which shows you the future. All this is simply done by listening and engagement in social media.

You decide about your business success for 2012 and nobody else, not your competition, not the economy and not your forefathers! No excuses take action and step into conversations on social media.

This is your extra mile which you have to walk!

I wish you good luck and best of success for 2012.

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Get up to 25 times more business leads with Content Marketing

Dragan Mestrovic — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 00:37:33 +0000

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.

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?

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5 Ways to get Customers Inbound in 2012 through Mobile Marketing

Dragan Mestrovic — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 00:00:12 +0000

Mobile is on the rise. The evolution of technology which companies like Apple and Google have powered has produced new experiences how people find products and services.

People surf from their mobile devices like smart phones and tablets about three hours a day compared with one hour from their desktop PC.

People are connected on social networks like Twitter and Facebook, Yelp, Foursquare and other location based services that show them best locations in their area. They rate, check in and check out of their popular locations. There are apps available who show you how to mix a cool cocktail and which houses are for sale in a street.

The things have developed to a new level of communication. This leads to the question when people have their apps activated and are on them, will they additionally take the effort to open a web browser to research? More likely they will not.

The trend shows that search engine search traffic will decrease and companies who are active on location based services will get an increase of traffic as people use them preferable.

Infographic: Local Mobile Search

For a business this means to get engaged on those social networks and services which already are very popular and have mobile apps active. This is the way to get in front of the future customers.

Infographic: Mobile Marketing

Some tips how to profit from the increasing mobile trend:

1. Optimize your website to be accessible from mobile devices.
2. Also a business should start to collect mobile phone numbers to enable their mobile marketing.
3. Adjust the email marketing and the email messages to be easy readable from mobile devices is also a good strategy.
4. Build your digital outpost and get engaged in social media, in location based services and rating sites.
5. Develop your own mobile app to stay in touch with your audience directly.

Summary: With this above activities you can significantly improve your visibility in 2012 and attract more future customers to your business.

—What do you think about mobile marketing, did I miss anything?

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3 Ways how to profit from your Daily Deal Sites marketing

Dragan Mestrovic — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 00:25:59 +0000

BuySellAds reports that 82% of businesses are unsatisfied with Daily Deal Sites. They specially indicate that they are not stratified with the amount of repeat business they generate after running a daily deal.

For me this is no surprise. As the most businesses I have talked to have no idea how to do a daily deal marketing campaign the right way to get the most out of it in the long term. Yes right, to do a daily deal on sites like Groupon is a marketing move. And like all marketing activities your business is doing you need to do it the smart way to profit from it!

MISTAKE 1: The most common mistakes made from businesses when they running a daily deal campaign are to offer deals which their current customers and future prospects can compare with their current available offers.

SOLUTION 1: When you step into a daily deal campaign, than you should put together a package which is only valid and available for this special daily deal and when the deal is over the package also vanish.

Also you should reward your recent customers more than your new ones. You can do this by offer an additional discount for this special daily deal to all of your loyal customers.

MISTAKE 2: Another gladly made mistake when doing a daily deal campaign is to not collect the contact details of your new customers.

SOLUTION 2: You should prepare to collect information like mobile phone number, email address, Twitter ID, Facebook ID and LinkedIn ID of your new customers. This will help you to get and to stay in touch with them later and keep them updated about specials for loyal customers only.

By the end of the day your “daily deal campaign” is a “lead generation campaign” and you should make the most out of it.

MISTAKE 3: Do you know bonus programs? Buy seven Coffee and get the eight one for free? Do you know such programs, yes? Do you use them for your business also when you do a daily deal campaign? The most do not!

SOLUTION 3: Prepare bonus cards with different IDs (can be a QR codes) for each of your daily deal campaigns. This will help you to measure how many of your “deal customers” are coming back to your business and how much they spend. When you add a QR code to every deal and associate it to each new customer whom you issue a bonus card, you will get an effective way to measure your daily deal campaign success and more important to motivate your “deal customers” to come back to your business and become loyal customers too.

Infographic: The Daily Deal Divide

—What do you think about Daily Deal Sites? Did I miss anything?

Further important resources:

82% of Businesses Are Unsatisfied With Daily Deal Sites

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How to attract 55 percent more customers with proven inbound marketing system

Dragan Mestrovic — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 00:06:28 +0000

Today customers no matter if the are B2C or B2B are overwhelmed with information and offers. This makes it very hard for a business to stand out and to get found online for their future customers.

The increasing competition and the decreasing marketing budget make the recent situation and the future outlook more difficult.

Businesses who want to be and to stay successful need to rethink and to reposition their strategies.

It is not enough anymore to be there. Moreover when you are there, but not where your target audience is around than you are nowhere!

What makes a business to stand out of the crowd and secure their share of the market in the long term?

Like anything humans do there are several ways to achieve goals. One thing is try and error. This takes time and can consume a lot of budget. The other thing is to do it like you have done in the past, because it worked “in the past”. But what worked in the past is not necessarily working in the future. Or you use a proven system which has demonstrated thousands of times that it works and is able to bring in positive ROI.

Such proven marketing system is inbound marketing.

What’s inbound marketing?

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.

What’s does inbound marketing help me to do?

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

What does inbound marketing consists of?

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

The MIT Sloan Institute found out that businesses which use inbound marketing are more successful than businesses which do not.

Additional studies have proven that inbound marketing:

A. Saves up to 62% of your marketing budget
B. Makes a business stand out of their competition
C. Helps to generate a massive amount of business leads
D. Helps to get up to 55% higher lead conversion rates
E. Helps to increase customers and sales

To jumpstart your own inbound marketing system just starts with a corporate blog and publish remarkable and share worthy content. Distribute this published content on the internet and in social media. Measure your results, improve your doings and you are on your track to success.

Infographic: Inbound Marketing

Just to do it smarter you can save a lot of time and money when you use HubSpot to make you an inbound marketing rock star. They helped over 4000 companies to improve their revenue through HubSpot inbound marketing software.

Video: HubSpot

LinkedTube

Further important resources:

How to Use Social Media For Better Customer Acquisition

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SEO goes mobile and you should embrace this trend of location based marketing

Dragan Mestrovic — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 01:00:05 +0000

The use of mobile devices is increasingly growing. Tablets and smart phones have become state of the art technology around the globe. People are consuming video, audio, social media, games, news, books and periodicals on the run.

By the growing use and demand of mobile apps people become more dependent of them. Popular services like Facebook, Yelp, Foursquare, Groupon and other are using apps to stay in touch with their audience.

As their audience is actively using their apps when they are on the road the chance decrease that they separately open their browser to research on Google for products or serivces. They will use their location based services and the recently activated apps to discover, products, services, locations, deals and things they are interested in.

People are about three hours online on their mobile devices compared with one hour from their pc.

The more people research this way, the more the search engine research will decrease.

This trend is creating a growing demand for businesses to be visible in these services and their apps as well. Also to think about to produce own mobile apps to be and to stay connected to their audience.

What can a business do to participate from I call it “Mobile SEO”?

1st Register with all important location based services like Yelp, Foursquare, Neer, Loopt and SCVNGR. Engage here with your audience, build and customize these digital outposts.

2nd Be active in social media sites like Facebook, Linked, Twitter and others important to your audience.

3rd Jump start your mobile marketing the smart way. Collect the mobile phone numbers from your customers. Establish a database where you store all important information about them to later have the ability to custom tailor personalized messages to reach them the right and human way. Look out for a two SMS marketing software which enables you to do and to control your messages.

4th Get even smarter and develop your own mobile app for your audience. To get ideas look through the industries and get inspired how others have done it.

Infographic: Mobile Marketing

—-Tell me, does this also work for you?

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How to get more traffic and business leads with Google +1

Dragan Mestrovic — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 00:42:51 +0000

Today it is crucial to be active in social media to make your business more visible and this is no secret.

As major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing are indexing social media content the chances increase for businesses to get found online when they publish remarkable content and distribute this content to social media where it can be shared and commented.

With the last step to start +1 button and Google profiles and pages for companies Google has opened a other opportunity for businesses to get their content indexed and improve their SEO the social media way.

When visitors of your content click the +1 button than anybody in their network can see what they like including their profile picture next to the +1 vote. Also its the same way with published content on Google profile and business pages.

When you have already shared your published content like blog articles, pictures, video, etc. on social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and others then you get a further powerful opportunity with the +1 button which you should use to become more visible.

How can you start to use Google + profile and page for your business?

A. If you have a Gmail account than go and register your Google+ profile and complete it. Insert all necessary information and customize your profile. Take care to use long tail keywords in your description.

B. When you are done with your personal Google plus profile than establish a Google business page. Insert all necessary information about your business. Take care to use long tail keywords in your description her as well.

C. Now let your friends know about your Google+ presence and invite them to your circles.

D. To step into conversation publish your content, information in your updates and ask for opinion. Comment on others updates and share them through the +1 button.

Your action and activities will drive awareness of you and your business and hopefully lead interested people to your blog, website and your offers.

Furthermore you got an additional chance to improve your visibility in the search engines through social SEO.

Infographic: Google+ VS. Facebook

—What do you think and how do you use Google + ?

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15 Ways to SMART Mobile Inbound Marketing for Restaurants

Dragan Mestrovic — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 01:06:58 +0000

There are 6.8 billion people on the planet. 4.5 billion Own a mobile phone.

Gartner Group predicts, that by 2013 the number one way people will access the internet will be through their mobile devices.

70% of all mobile searches are acted upon within an hour vs. 30% of all traditional searches.

With mobile marketing you deliver your message directly to your customer. It’s like you spoken directly to him and he listen carefully what you say.

There is no question, if you are not active mobile than you miss large opportunities to make customers aware of your business. Take action before your competitor does.

Infographic: How Online Marketing Drives Offline Success

Domino’s iPad App: Makes & Delivers Custom Pizza

Starbucks Cup Magic

Custom iPhone Application for Restaurants

Presentation: Mobile Trends and Strategies

Infographic: Dining and Restaurant Reservation Trends

15 things you can do to empower mobile restaurant marketing:

1. First of all, claim your business in the appropriate social media platforms and location-based applications.
2. Mobilize your website and start using mobile media for your business.
3. Start collecting mobile phone numbers from your customers and organize them in a database so you later send personalized SMS to them, to inform them about specials and news.
4. Use QR Codes for promotions.
5. Reward your first-time visitors
6. Change deals often to stay attractive.
7. Promote group check-ins. The more in a group, the better the deal
8. Interact with customers. Make them accomplish a small task (Origami napkin) to redeem
9. Promote to those checking-in nearby
10. Encourage interactivity
11. Keep yourself updated about mobile media and trends.
12. Design a Smart Phone app for your business. (like the one from Starbucks or Domino’s)
13. Run a mobile ad campaign
14. Measure your results
15. Improve what you do and repeat.

—What do you think?

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How to use Inbound Marketing for your Coffee Bar

Dragan Mestrovic — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 00:30:30 +0000

Coffee shops or coffee bars are not only places where you can buy a cup of fresh brew coffee but more some kind of social places to meet friends to sit together and chat.

More over coffee bars have become place where business people do meetings and also sit there with their notebook and do their work.

Coffee bars are also a great business and the only sector of gastronomy worldwide which is increasingly growing year over year.

Entrepreneurs can make good money when they operate a coffee shop or build a coffee chain like Starbucks and others worldwide have done. Here is a list of coffeehouse chains.

All successful businesses have one thing in common, they have great marketing and they care about their customers and coffee shops are no exemption.

As the coffee shop business offer great opportunities to make big money it also deserves special attention in different areas.

I do not now go to explain the different coffee beans now. I am talking about the opportunity which inbound marketing offer to a coffee shop.

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

To get customers your audience need to know that you exist and what you have to offer. So you need to get found!

When you start a new coffee bar it can make sense to use Groupon for the first six months to helps boost your revenue. But when the first six month are over you need to have a creative mindset to attract new customers and keep the actual coming back to you.

You should make your coffee shop visible on Google Places so people can find you and the best thing is, they can rate you and leave a comment. You also can encourage them to do this by rewarding them for comments and ratings.

You should also register in your local web based yellow pages. As search engines index content of yellow pages your information gets indexed as well.

Foursquare, Yelp and other rating sites which also target your area could be a got bet also.

Start your own blog where you write about the things your audience is interested in, share these articles on the web and in social media and ask for comments and suggestions.

Build social media outposts in Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and related forums and participate in the discussions and groups there.

Look what big coffee shop chains do but do not try to copy them look through other industries how they do marketing to get inspired for yours and your customer loyalty program.

You need to build your own business DNA your unique brand and this goal you can only achieve when you do your thing.

-Let me know what you think. I am looking forward to your comment.

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How to gain a competitive position for B2B with Mobile accessibility

Dragan Mestrovic — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 23:23:33 +0000

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.

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Social Media can be thread to your reputation

Dragan Mestrovic — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 23:15:54 +0000

Companies engage increasingly in social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other forums and platforms. They go to step into conversation with their audience to offer better service and support and to strengthen the band between actual and future customers.

Social media is a great way to grow brand awareness for the business and to expand the reach to get more customers. But social media can also be a trap for those who are not familiar with managing their reputation online.

Everything a company is communicating on the web and in social media can travel a far way and have an impact on the reputation of the brand.

On social media people are talking about your last blog article, your service, products, about you and your brand. With or without your involvement.

As content which is published on social media also can be indexed by the major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing the chances are great that also the content you have distributed will appear in the search engines search results too.

For you it is important to know where you or your brand name has been mentioned so you can respond. Therefore your best strategy to keep a good reputation is also to be active where your target audience is talking about you. So you can respond professionally and show your opinion.

You should care about your online reputation as the web has a wider reach than small town gossip. Future business and future contacts will be influenced by what the people find about you on the web.

Your behavior on the web and what other say about you will affect your future for sure.

To keep a good reputation you need to take care of the WHAT, WHERE and the HOW.

WHAT do you publish on the web and in social media?

You should avoid do praise your products too much. Do not make the mistake to use social media as a distribution channel and overload your audience with dump sales pitches.

WHERE do you publish your content?

Publish content topics where they belong and where they are appreciated. Therefore you need to listen carefully to your audience and give them the information they demand.

HOW do you communicate?

Always communicate in a professional and friendly way. Try to be helpful and show expertise and avoid sounding like schoolmasterly.

How you present yourself on the web can win you business and respect. To achieve this you should take the time to establish a good digital branding and biography.

Infographic: Reputation Management

–How do you protect your reputation on the web? Let me know what you think. I am looking forward to your comment.

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IBM Study reveals that social media is the Marketing Priority worldwide

Dragan Mestrovic — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 23:22:27 +0000

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.

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Your competitor has increased his Internet marketing budget by 11 percent

Dragan Mestrovic — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 23:47:23 +0000

Traditional media budget are increasingly shifted to Internet/ Digital marketing! It is more than possible that also your competition is increasing their internet marketing and digital budgets. How about you?

Do you have an Internet/ Digital marketing strategy yet? Are you active in social media and do you actually have strong relations to your target audience?

According to Q3 2011 research from media buying solutions provider STRATA, companies are becoming just as focused on digital media as they are on spot TV.

If you take a closer look to these numbers below, than you can see that the trend is changing! The old school media like spot TV has lost 10% within nine months while the Internet/ Digital gain 11% of budget in the same time.

What does it mean to you? Yes, they shifted their budgets to Internet/ Digital and put a little bit more on top!

Spot TV Q1 2011 45% – Q2 2011 41% – Q3 2011 35%. This is a decrease of 10% within nine months.
Internet/ Digital Q1 2011 23% – Q2 2011 24% – Q3 2011 34%. This is an increase of 11% within nine months.

More and more companies shift their budgets to Internet/ Digital to increase reach and decrease marketing costs.

While Internet/ Digital marketing can be measured more reliable, the companies get the opportunity to exactly learn about the road their marketing dollars travel and to improve their marketing to get the best possible results.

As the competition increases the efforts to get seen from the target audience also increase. Companies who want to gain the competitive edge need to build strong relationships with their audience and show them they care.

As increasingly companies discover the power of internet and digital marketing, the air for errors, bad customer service or bad products becomes thinner.

Businesses who want to stay on the top of the game need to listen and to react in real-time. They need to be, thoughtful and accessible 24/7.

What can you do to stay on top of the game?

Do not look around what your competition is doing! Play your own game and walk your own way. Watch out to other industries to get ideas and inspiration o how to step into conversation with your audience.

Use your creativity to attract the attention of you audience. For example, you can do instructional video and post it on Youtube and your website and then share it in social media and ask for the opinion of your network. You can do a blog and you should be actively listening in social media.

Do not try to sell! Just be there, be helpful and show expertise. Then you will attract the right people to your offers automatically.

Measure what you do! If you have no numbers than you dependent on luck and guessing and this you should avoid. To make strong decisions you need strong data.

More important sources:

Agencies Report Clients Still Increasing Focus on Digital

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Studies: 65 percent of customers expect companies to be active on social media

Dragan Mestrovic — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 23:16:00 +0000

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.

With the massive increase of social media brands have also discovered these communication channels to get in touch with their audience. They communicate with existing and future customers, respond to questions and complaints and solve support requests in social media like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other sites.

Studies show that companies can increase brand value and customer satisfaction by up to 35% when they are actively engage and communicate with their audience on social media.

Sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn cumulate a total of more than one billion users! It seems that any person on the globe is active in one or more social networks. As the numbers of internet usage increase the numbers of social media use increase as well.

Customers appreciate when brands take time to listen and to respond to them in social media.

Seven business advantages of social media engagement:

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. Decreasing costs of marketing.
7. Improved time to market for products and services.

By being active in social media company’s show that they care about their customers and that they are interested in their opinion. By taking this opportunity of interaction companies can be a massive step ahead of their competition.

Companies who hesitate or simply do not care to step into social media conversation simply show one thing, that they do not care about their customers.

As we are in times where information is under your fingertips any business can use social media to get in touch with their audience. And if companies hesitate to start alone and by them self there is a ton of skilled help out there to help them to get their social media marketing up and running, training their staff and implement working process to profit from social media marketing.

Companies which use social media actively to communicate with their audience are more successful than companies who do not.

David Meerman Scott made an analysis for his new book “Real-Time Marketing & PR” and discovered that companies which utilize social media actively in their business have on average 5% higher share prices on the stock exchange. Companies who do not use social media for business have on average 3% lower share prices.

It pays out to be active in social media!

Start today to make social media marketing your catalyst for growth.

–How are your experiences with social media marketing for your business?

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Do you want to grow your business, than change your mind set first?

Dragan Mestrovic — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 19:03:05 +0000

Adjust your mindset to realtime to reach your buyer personas today and in REAL TIME.

The budget sizes are no indicator of marketing success anymore. But speed and agility are competitive advantages which bring you step ahead of your competition but only if you react when the market is ready for you and not the opposite.

Anybody who can react in real-time and has the right data and information by their hand has a competitive advantage. Businesses which change their mindset from old campaign planning to the new realtime marketing and pr opportunities will be a step ahead of their competition.

How to utilize HOT global news for your business and go piggyback to achieve real-time marketing and pr success?

To have a plan for the future is great, but you need to be active today, now and in real-time. This opens you wide opportunities to jump on the bandwagon which also can transport your message piggyback to your audience.

Watch this video with author David Meerman Scott speaks at DMA2011 about the importance of real-time marketing, based on his best-selling book realtime Marketing & PR.

Some simple but effective tips to bring you up into real-time marketing

Look out for news which relates to your business and think abouts how to contribute a beneficial way to that news which actually appears.

A great way to be and stay updated is to have some kind of information hub, some kind of dashboard.

You can do this very simple by research for related news sites, social media sites and blogs and to subscribe to their RSS feeds which you bundle in your Google RSS reader. So you get all the necessary and most recent news at one place. From there you have an almost 360 view of topics which could be interesting for you and which you could utilize for your marketing.

Google News

Google Blogs

Google Reader

Another great tool to monitor social media is TweetDeck.

TweetDeck is an Adobe AIR desktop application for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn , Foursquare, and MySpace. Like other Twitter applications it interfaces with the Twitter API to allow users to send and receive tweets and view profiles.

Infographic Small Business and Social Media use

-How do you take advantage of news for your business? I am looking forward to read your comment below.

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Why you should love ugly Tweets and bad Facebook comments

Dragan Mestrovic — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 19:24:23 +0000

When businesses are thinking of to get into Twitter, and set up a Facebook business page they often are afraid what people can say about them. Maybe they could complain and other will see this and they could lose business and reputation.

But the opposite is the fact!

You should be thankful for everybody who is complaining on Twitter and Facebook. This gives you the opportunity to get in touch and to explain your position.

You better should be worried about the people who do not complain but turn away disappointed from your business and you don’t know why and how to reach them to get the issue fixed.

To simplify social media and to make it work by 100 % for your business you should include all people which work in you company to showcase what they do and to communicate with your customers.

This can be done trough a corporate network of blogs where anybody can write about any topic he or she interested in, independent from the company topics. The same way IBM already does.

You can also motivate the whole staff to Tweet and to get the word out about the company, news, events other interesting topics. The same way like Zappos does.

Activities like a corporate network of blogs, Twitter and Facebook can show a human site of our business and motivate future customers to get in touch with you. The recent customers can become “evangelist” for your business and become your most valuable asset in social media marketing!

To benefit from this tremendous business potential which social media offer to you, you should change your thinking and turn away from the dogma that you have to and must control any communication of your employees!

You need to have effective social media policies in place, train your staff and the most important TRUST your employees and show them that you are willing to hand over control to them.

You also need to ensure yourself that anybody in the company understands the responsibility which accompanies this strategic move! A great way is to establish a self reacting control based on trust where everybody is looking what the colleagues are doing to prevent mistakes.

If anybody misuse trust, than it works like in any other company and business where employees misuse good will. Say good bye to this one and go ahead to work with them who understand and are trustworthy.

Ask your employees to give 100 %, care the same way and take responsibility as you do. Leave them space to make their own decisions. And the one who don’t want to, fire them and look out for people who want!

Here are some ways you can deal with ugly messages in social media:

1. Put the truth out for everybody to see it.
2. Communicate with the person which puts up the negative comment.
3. Be thankful for every customer which gives you a negative comment. He still wants to talk with you!
4. Listen to your customers.
5. Treat your customers ALWAYS with respect.
6. Try to satisfy realistic requests.
7. Show that you care, step back and express regret.
8. Try to offer an alternative.
9. Get into debate and state your point of view.
10. Keep the conversation objective, polite, civil and honest.

As your conversation will stay online forever, anybody can see it and track how you have responded. This can rule about the way how the people perceive you and your business in the future. Keep this in mind!

—How do you deal with ugly Tweets and bad Facebook comments? I am looking forward to your comment.

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9 Ways How Chief Marketing Officers can Harness Social Media

Dragan Mestrovic — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 17:51:59 +0000

An IBM study found study found out that about 26 % of chief marketing officers track blogs and only 40 % follow any online communications. And the most shocking is that about 82 % still rely on traditional “old school” market research to plan their marketing strategies.

As social media is two way communication and offer tremendous opportunities for companies to get in touch with their audience this seem like somebody has not activated the phone or fax while somebody is scared of communication!

Companies like Coca-Cola, Nike, DELL, and Starbucks, only to mention a few shows how important social media and the conversation is which is taking place there. Companies which engage their target audience in social media show them that they care and are willing to listen what their audience is talking!

As a business which is active in social media you get direct feedback for your product and the chance to improve and evolve them that way your audience wants to buy them.

Companies which embrace social media and the opportunity to step into conversation will be the winners, there is no question!

Studies prove that companies which transform their communication skills to social media gain more trust and strengthen their brand.

Here are some simple steps how companies can step into social media conversation!

1.) Create a social media policy. There are a lot of examples only which you can use to get ideas.

2.) Get active and build a corporate blog where you publish information about the topics your audience cares of.

3.) Spread those blog articles in social media like Twitter, Facebook and also in LinkedIn if you are B2B focused.

4.) Listen to the conversation in social media networks and if you have something beneficial to contribute do it, if not listen further.

5.) As you are in conversation keep the water cooking and ask open questions, ask for recommendations and critics and answer your audiences’ questions.

6.) Be always honest! Do not even try to hold something back.

7.) Be authentic! People forgive mistakes but they not forgive to be ripped so easily!

8.) When you get critics than deal with it in a professional way! Critics and complaints are great to step into discussion and show your point and to show that you care and are willing to improve your products and services.

9.) Measure your doings to learn where the social media conversation is leading your business.

As social media is no trend it will not vanish and Chief Marketing Officers should very quickly embrace this powerful communication channel.

If you still believe your audience is not in social media than prove this by doing research there for your industries top key words or for your competitors and you will see by yourself if other companies have already take action there to get in touch, maybe with your recent customers.

—What have been your experiences with social media for your company? I am looking forward to your feedback.

Further important resources:

Marketers struggle to harness social media – survey

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Is Google+ a good bet for your business?

Dragan Mestrovic — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 23:29:35 +0000

When Google+ was launched some people had the opinion that it will destroy Facebook in a short time period. Within the first weeks which have been running under invitation only to get an Google+ account, Google+ as been able to register more than ten million users.

Some observer had the opinion that a big exodus from Facebook to G+ will happen and maybe Facebook had the same in mind when they begun to close loopholes to expert contacts to Google+.

But this has not happen. Sure users which use Facebook are also on G+ now but no exodus took place.

The last estimations about the number of G+ users go in a range of 40 million and up. With its 750 million and daily growing base of global users Facebook does not need to be scared of G+ yet.

Imagine you went several years back and had the chance to register with Facebook when they had about 40 million users. Can you imagine how big your possible network could grow and how far would be your brands range globally?

This is your chance now to turn the wheel of time several years back and get into the game. Probably this will be your last chance to become part of massively growing social network for the next ten years. Position your business now, before you competitor does!

G+ actually offer personal profiles only but is also experimenting with company profiles similar as Facebook Pages.

The best thing what you can do as a business person or marketer is to register a personal profile with G+ which is now open for everybody and help your employees and coworkers to do the same.

G+ is ruled by the social networking rules too!

Build relationships and communicate in a professional and beneficial way to your Circles! This will help you to increase the number of connection and when the day has come that you can register your business page on G+ than you hopefully have a large and influential audience with which you maintain good relationships. This could jumpstart your G+ Business Page in a very powerful way.

To take action now can make huge a difference for your business. As G+ and social media are no secrets anymore, simply any business is tried to get a share of the cake.

Businesses that wait will be left behind and have to fight an uphill battle reach a reasonable position, but will never overtaking those who came first. That’s for sure!

Here are some simple tips for you to take advantage of G+ NOW!

1. Go to Google and register a G+.
2. Complete your profile and upload a personal picture.
3. Research who of your business partners and other connections is actually on G+ and invite them.
4. Place the G+ widget on your website and blog so your visitors can use this as an opportunity to connect with from there.
5. Look daily through your STREAM and see if you can contribute to your Circles news or if there are interesting information which you could share.
6. When some of your Circles comment your info than this are you weak up call to start the conversation. Ask some open question.
7. If you operate your own corporate or personal blog you could share your latest post in your STREAM.

And as you are waiting for the G+ Business Page to come you have the opportunity to get into G+, build your circles, expand your reach and set you and your business in advanced position. And this all with no pressure or any deadlines!

–How about you, how do use G+ actually? I am looking forward to your comment.

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SHOCKING: How to Destroy your Business Reputation? BUY leads!

Dragan Mestrovic — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 19:41:42 +0000

Today as I went through LinkedIn a group got my attention. It was the group about Online Lead Generation which I am a member of and where I contribute if there is a topic where I can help?

But today I went through the posts and I thought OMG, they are talking about buying leads. The word “Business Suicide” went through my brain.

Especially one provider caught my attention and I went to look into his background. This provider claimed to „generate thousands of real time leads in just about every vertical”!

Puhh I thought, this is a tough proposition and let’s see what’s behind them! I checked his website and guess what?

- An Alexa Rank of only 2,170,186 (means about 5 -10 unique visitors daily)
- 13 Google Indexed Pages (lesser pages means, lesser chances to get indexed and found on the search engines)
- Only 92 Backlinks (Qualified back links are one of the SEO strategies to get found, the more the better)
- No Corporate Blog (content marketing through blogging is the key to get found and to get leads)
- No presence in social media: no Facebook Business Page and no Twitter (43 percent of all online consumers are social media fans or followers, if you are not there you are missing them)
No Web DNA…. (maybe a ghost )

I asked him two question, I am curious if I will get any educated answer.

Q: How did you establish a business relationship to those leads?
Q: Why should those leads do business with the people who buy those leads from you?

Disussion Update

If you like to follow this discussion on LinkedIn, you can find it here.

Why did I done this you might ask?

Simple answer: I was shocked by that proposition made there and more shocked me that businesses believe this kind of fairytales and put their business on risk without to know what they are doing!

To buy leads is a waste of time and money and WILL harm the reputation of your business FOR SURE!

When you buy leads it is the same like you open the yellow pages and start cold calling from A-Z.

The people you reach do not know YOU, they did not requested to be contacted from YOU and they did not explained an interest in YOUR products and services previously!

By buying those leads – their addresses and bother those people you only show one thing, that your business has no USP and your products and services have no value for them.

You ask why?

If it would be the opposite you wouldn’t be dependent on paid leads! Instead of you would generate leads and customers automatically!

Boooom. You don’t like what I say!

So before you think about to pay for addresses, you should ask yourself why do you need to buy them and why do you not generate enough recommendations and leads from your existing customers actually?

To purchase leads is only a drip onto the hot stone. This will not solve your long-term issue and will not bring you closer to your business goals.

The opposite is the fact: The longer you depend on bought leads the more your chances will decrease to gain a competitive advantage!

Believe it or not you will loose business in the long term!

Stop buying leads and start build relationships. Build trust and credibility through content publishing (blogging) and two way conversations in social media. This is where you can generate highly valuable target leads with an PROVEN up to 55% conversion rate.

Start inbound marketing strategy by starting your own corporate blog ASAP!

69% of Businesses Attribute Blogging to Increased Leads [Data]

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.

Inbound marketing can help you to:

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.

“Get seen and you get visited! “

— How about you? How are your experiences with bought leads?

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How to Take Advantage from Mobile Marketing & Location Based Marketing

Dragan Mestrovic — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 13:10:13 +0000

Is mobile marketing recently a part of your inbound marketing strategy?

More and more people worldwide use mobile devices daily to access the web, to shop and to network on social media sites. Social sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn have apps out there to make it dump easy to communicate and update the network from the run.

To ignore this growing mobile marketing trend could be a very dangerous failure for your business!

To get your piece of the pie from this trend the first thing you need to do is to optimize your website and email communication for mobile use!

Did you thought about to make use of mobile apps to improve your location based marketing?

Services like Foursquare are best examples how businesses use location based marketing to reach a wider audience.

Some facts:

People are increasingly use mobile devices to access content on the web!

In March 2011, nearly 39% of US mobile subscribers were browsing the internet using their mobile device. That’s up by 2.2 percentage points from just 3 months prior.
Mobile apps are almost as popular as browsers; 37% of subscribers used downloaded apps.
Subscribers are also increasingly using social networks on their phones. In March, 27.3% indicated they used a social network on their mobile phone, up from 24.7% just 3 months prior.

Source: HubSpot

Actually about 30% of companies who are using Mobile Marketing do strategic lead generation through this! With only one third of the companies you and your business still have wide opportunities to position in this area!

As this trends evolves more and more businesses get ready to get there communication done in the mobile and location based marketing area, you should not wait to get active here. Otherwise you are put on risk to get left behind.

An uphill battle later could cost you more than to be with the trend now!

Further sources:

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Social Media Marketing Daily Tasks or How to eat an Elephant?

Dragan Mestrovic — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 19:05:35 +0000

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:

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Bloggers, Stop Thinking… “Just Do It”

Matt Krautstrunk — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 14:46:39 +0000

We all know that a personal blog and professional blog are inherently different to the core. A professional blog is set up to drive traffic and conversions, but I feel strongly that running a successful corporate blog is less about running a “business” and more about simply grinding out quality content.

I’ve been in online marketing for a little more than a year, and one thing I’ve learned is that the majority of online marketers are “thinkers” and there are very little “doers.” People who will go out of their way to evaluate needs and fill them immediately themselves are doers.

Thinkers can understand needs but they make plans to do them. The inherent problem here, is that not everything is going to run like a well-oiled machine in blogging, so thinkers get caught trying to correct non critical problems when the doers are out engaging. In this post, I’ll explain how the motto “Just Do It” explains why the doers are successful in the blog world, and the thinkers are left thinking.

Blogging Is Raw, Organic

One of the most appealing aspects of blogging and reading blogs is the fact that it is real. Blogging is inherently a less corporate and more human way to communicate with your audience. Thinking too much about what you are saying strips the human, organic elements that make blog posts engaging. As we all know, successful blogs are shareable and engaging.

De-corporatizing your blog and encouraging informational, fun posts will improve your social influence and will help you build a community faster. Just think about the links you click on Twitter. Chances are you are clicking on “6 Things Bloggers Can Learn From Dr. Seuss” over an article called “6 Tips for New Bloggers.”

Don’t Plan…Write

Thinkers research keywords for titles to rank for and plan out posts based on targets. Doers write about content that is exciting to them. Forcing a blog post based on keyword opportunities and Google Trends is inhibiting your writing. I’m willing to bet 9 times out of 10, a blog post that is written from emotion and necessity will trump engagement over a post that is written from SEO opportunities.

What I’m ultimately trying to say is, blogging is simple. It doesn’t need to be a systematic process of checks and balances to be effective. It simply needs to make a reader want to share it with his/her friends.

Now this doesn’t mean that utilizing blogging “street smarts” won’t help you. Reaching out to contacts to help promote content and going the extra mile, sometimes pays off in big ways. For the most part, however, don’t sweat the small stuff. Keep a consistent tone and write consistent blog posts you take pride in, the readers will follow!

About the author:

Matt Krautstrunk is a writer on topics ranging from social media marketing to credit card processing at Business.com. You can reach Matt on Twitter @mattkrautstrunk, LinkedIn and Facebook.

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4 Powerful Reasons to Start Your Corporate Blog

Dragan Mestrovic — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 19:05:06 +0000

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:

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