Social Media marketing has influenced the marketing strategies of business organizations online in recent years.

Almost all of the niches are now using social media marketing for their business promotion online. There is heavy competition in these social media sites as well on grabbing advertisers to market through these sites.

Newly emerged social media sites Google+ and Pinterest have been the major social media sites to watch in recent days. Many say Google+ is ideal for business where as there are experts describing Pinterest as one of the major social media competitors for business online. This article gives a glimpse of using these two social media marketing sites for business.

Identifying the right Social Media Sites for business

Everyone in the marketing world online knows about the advantages of social media marketing and how it can cut your marketing budgets if identified correctly. Previously there were very few promising social media sites such as facebook and twitter which are used by businesses for social media promotion.

But as days went by, top Internet organizations such as Google came up with Google+ with wide range of features for business organizations. Companies are now trying to cap their market share from these fast emerging social media statistics. Inbound marketing experts are now planning to use these social media sites for business lead generation.

Not only recent statistics suggest that Pinterest has also been used largely by organizations for their business promotions. All these social media marketing promotions for lead generations are only started after indepth analysis by marketing experts online. But what are these analytics which led to these decisions? Well an overview of the next paragraph will let you know why Google+ and Pinterest are valuable for business online.

Generating business leads with Google+ and Pinterest

Google+ has brought interest of millions of people online with the type of launch that they have made. Google has taken some of the best steps to create interest in users while launching Google+. Likely within the first 3 weeks of the launch 20 million users started using Google+.

Moreover Google+ profiles and stats have been remarkable and Google started indexing Google+ content. Another interesting stat is that 63% of Google+ users are male and sites that use Google+ started getting 3.5 times more traffic than the sites that haven’t used Google+ for their sites.

Google+ has been prominently used by software developers and college students which brings into the fact that Google+ has a wide range of influence on students and working software professionals.

One important stat that is very much useful for businesses is that 40% of marketers suggest Google+ as prominent tool to promote their business as it is expected to reach 400 million users by the end of this year.

Another prominent social media site Pinterest also managed to gather 10.5 million users as on February 2012. This made businesses eye on Pinterest to promote their business.

Not only for the number of users, Pinterest has prominence for re-use as 80% of pins which are done in Pinterest are re-pins. This means if you are successful in bringing interest to a small group of people using Pinterest , your business many go viral.

Also Pinterest has the power of retaining users similar to facebook and twitter which can be observed from the stat that users have increased by 145% from the month of January.

Another stat that is surprising is that 80% of Pinterest users are female and this is one of the successful social media sites that have brought female interest. If your business is a trending topic, then your business is likely to generate quality leads.

Another important stat that will generate interest in advertisers for business lead generation is lead conversion rate. Lead generation conversation rate in Pinterest is 15% compared to 9% from Google+.

Infographic: Pinterest

Infographic: Google Plus

So putting altogether you should be strategic and take expert opinion while promoting your business through Google+ and Pinterest. Take the expert opinion while make social media promotion through these social media sites. Generate quality business leads from these emerging social media sites and stay ahead of your competitors.

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.

An eMarketer study found out that 79% of US marketing professionals said they plan to increase spending on social media marketing and 24% of them said that social media will be the most-used tactic in the ad industry this year.

As the number of areas and activities increase marketers are confronted with various platforms and various ways to use and measure those platforms. Marketing tools and automation are the most seen challenges.

“In the Marketing Tools Study 2012 from digital marketing technology and services company PointRoll and Kelton Research, US marketing professionals reported using multiple tools in each campaign they execute. More than half of respondents used more than five tools in a single advertising and marketing campaign, with 33% saying they averaged five to six, 15% saying seven to nine and 13% saying they used an average of 10 or more.”

This results show that marketers come closer to paralysis through analysis! The more tools have been used the more time is spend on them.

Instead of to improving their marketing marketers are bound in tools mess!

Marketers should focus one tool which helps them to get found online and in social media by more qualified visitors, helps them to convert more visitors into leads, to close those leads efficiently and which provides analytics to help make smart marketing investments.

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For a restaurant to get new guests the audience needs to know that you exist and what you have to offer. So you need to get found!

When you operate or just start a restaurant it can make sense to use Groupon for the first six months to help boost your reach so more people learn about your restaurant. But when the first six month are over you need to have a holistic strategy prepared to attract new guests to your restaurant and keep the actual coming back.

But what if you do not have the time and the experience in house to do so? And which strategy should you use, which one brings the big bang for your marketing buck?

Inbound marketing has been the most successful Internet marketing strategies in recent years.

Many businesses from different industries are using inbound marketing since about ten years as it is highly productive for their business. This article will give you a few examples why restaurant businesses should outsource their marketing and advantages in doing so.

Inbound marketing has been the successful and cheapest marketing trends in online world now. Inbound marketing generated leads have a proven 62% lesser Cost per Lead (CPL) and an up to 55% higher conversion rate! It simply outperforms any other way of marketing like TV, Radio, Print Media, Mass mail, Trade shows, Pay per click, Cold calling, etc.

All major brands and thousands of small and mid size businesses have switched to these powerful marketing strategies. Inbound marketing needs expertise, dedication and commitment and companies can benefit by hiring a professional inbound marketing agency. It is beneficial for companies to outsource their marketing in order to concentrate more on their business and leave their marketing strategies for the experts in the field.

Infographic: Dining and Restaurant Reservation Trends

Advantages of Outsourcing Marketing for Restaurant

Restaurant business is popular though its wide opprotunites it offers. Hundreds of success stories show and prove how money can be made by operating a good restaurant. Chains like Burger Kind, KFC prove this. Also celebrities have discovered the restaurant business as a profitable way to make extra revenue.

With increasing competition, regular restaurants have also started their business online and taking reservations and orders. With many competitors creeping up, it is very much important for the restaurant owners to get themselves updated with the latest marketing trends online to stay out of the crowd.

1. Get found online through inbound marketing

Main requirement of restaurant industry is the word of mouth marketing and getting new customers. So it is important for the businesses in restaurant industry to concentrate on their competence and outsource the marketing it for the inbound marketing experts to lead new guests to their restaurant.

Main advantage of inbound marketing is to get found online at the start to the customers. By hiring marketing experts who use the latest social media marketing and analytical tools for analysis, companies need not worry about the fast changing marketing trends and strategies.

2. Marketing Experts help you in Social Media and Content Marketing

Social Media and content marketing through blogging have increased in popularity as consumers are increasingly looking online for reputable sources to spend their money. Content marketing is increasingly used by companies to get new customers to their business.

If we take an example, companies that blog get 55% more visitors to their business website. So it is very much important to use these types of marketing strategies to gain new customers for your restaurant as well.

Another important strategy that has been successful is the social media branding for  business and being active in social media. It is very much important to update your social media profiles regularly as search engines have started indexing your business social media content. This brings more prominence for your business in search engine marketing.

Not only search engines, your customers are also very much interested with the latest news, promotions and deals that are updated in your blog and social media.

To get potential leads and increase their prominence in market place, it is therefore useful to hire the marketing experts to do this job for restaurant industry.

3. Less Marketing Budgets and risk free business marketing strategy

Inbound marketing is the cheapest marketing strategy in the long term. It is easy to outsource your marketing by hiring an inbound marketing agency and build prominence on the web for your restaurant business.

By using various effective and creative marketing, inbound marketing agencies help to stay ahead of your competitors and get found online easily to potential customers.

Not only do the inbound marketing agencies help to do your marketing, they also help you to minimize your budgets on the long term.

Summary of what 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

These are some of examples on how you can benefit by outsourcing your restaurants marketing to a professional inbound marketing agency. Start your inbound marketing today and stay ahead of your competitors

Read also:

• 15 Ways to SMART Mobile Inbound Marketing for Restaurants
• How to use Inbound Marketing for your Coffee Bar
• How Inbound Marketing outperforms PPC the smart way
• Is Inbound Marketing to expensive for YOU too?

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

Facebook has about 830 million users worldwide which means it reaches one fifth of the global population.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg predicted there will be 1.43 billion social network users in 2012, 63.2% of internet users will visit a social network at least once a month, rising to 67.6% in 2013 and 70.7% in 2014.

The top ten largest countries are:

• 1. United States 155,886,800
• 2. India 45,018,540
• 3. Indonesia 43,521,320
• 4. Brazil 42,199,700
• 5. Mexico 33,599,040
• 6. Turkey 31,526,380
• 7. United Kingdom 30,484,380
• 8. Philippines 27,718,720
• 9. France 24,100,240
• 10. Germany 23,251,880

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.

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.

Social media has proved in the past years that it can bring positive ROI when it’s done right.

Some successful business examples are Intrepid Travel, Easy Lunch Boxes, and 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.

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

Infographic: Small Business + Social Media Use

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”.

A proven working strategy 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 is two times more profitable than those who do not. Those companies achieve up to 62% lower costs per lead.

Get active and establish your outpost in social media today!

Seven steps to establish your brands social media outpost:

• 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 do you use social media?

Further Resources:

Facebook Helps Get One in Five People Worldwide Socializing on Online Networks

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Free EBook: 9 Easy Steps to Facebook Success

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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

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Like market leading airlines, private air charter is in a very competitive business.

Private air charter companies need to be in front of their audience when they are looking if they want to increase business and revenue.

Private air charter companies need their audience to talk about them to spread the word about their brand.

As long their recent and future clients are talking about them, they have realistic chances to get seen, visited and to increase their business.

The challenge:

When a Google search is carried out for the search term “Private air charter” there is about 2,740,000 results.

Under these circumstances it is difficult for a private air charter company to get seen and noticed from their future customer amid of this massive amount of search results.

The solution is that a private air charter company has to stand out of their competition to attract clients like a magnet.

With the proven inbound marketing strategy a private air charter company can place them self in an unrivaled position against their competition!

When interested audience is looking for private air charter services and they go on the internet to Google, Yahoo and Bing for research. Customers also rely on recommendations from friends and business partners when they choose private air charter services. Customers go to their favorite social networks as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to do their research there as well.

Three important questions you should ask yourself:

• • Can your private air charter business be found on Google from potential customer when they are looking?
• • Do you know what’s been talked about you or your competition online?
• • Why should a customer fly with your private air charter company?
• • Is your private air charter website an asset or a liability?

Marketing has changed and Private air charter business’ need to be where their audience is on the internet. The market leading airlines are!

Private air charter business’ need to utilize the Inbound Marketing strategy for their business to get found, to get leads and to increase their customers and revenue!

Inbound marketing strategy that focuses on getting found by customers when they research online for products and services a business offers.

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

Inbound marketing includes Content Creation like Blogging, Social Media Communication, Lead Generation, Nurturing, Conversion and Closed-Loop Analysis.

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.

We suggest to publish buyer persona oriented remarkable content. This can be achieved with a corporate blog.

• • Studies show that companies who blog receives up to 55% more target traffic than companies who do not blog.
• • Studies also show, the higher the volume of published blog posts the more the traffic increases.

Social Media Marketing

A company should also be active in social media like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and hand picked niche networks 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 get in the position to 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 customers 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.

Infographic: How Airlines Have Taken Flight With Social Media

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.

• • Studies show that companies with 17+ landing pages increase their lead count disproportionately.

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 customer in which the lead receives helpful and valuable information too.

This grows the trust and increases the chances that a customer flies with your private air charter 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%.

In a nutshell, inbound marketing:

• A. saves your business up to 62% of the marketing budget
• B. makes your private air charter business stand out of the competition
• C. increase brand value and recognition
• D. generate a massive amount of leads
• E. gets you up to 55% higher lead conversion rates
• F. increase customers and sales

Let me know what you think, did I miss anything?

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The revenue spending on social networks are increasing this is a fact. More and more businesses discover that social networks are a great communication tool to get in touch with their audience.

B2C and B2B have realized that the business decision makes are active in the social web and try to reach them by paid advertising.

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 opposite is more likely the result.

Smart marketers use PPC only for short campaigns, and not as a substitute of a holistic strategy.

Why? Because PPC has no log term value for marketing, when you stop your PPC your lead flow also stops. Another point is that you do not earn any trust in the market with PPC. Anybody can bid for the highest keywords. You can’t buy trust and reputation by bidding the highest price per click!

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

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.

Furthermore 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: Inbound Marketing on the rise

Companies who utilize inbound marketing simply leave their competition behind them in the dust. Inbound marketing is brain versus budget, and in the long term the brain always wins!

What do you think? Did I miss anything?

Further resources:

• Is Inbound Marketing to expensive for YOU too?
• How to use Social Media for Customer Acquisition

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Generation Y, young, digital-savvy consumers, are the 18- to 34-year-old age group which has grown up with internet and social media. They communicate about product and services with their friends on social networks. They read and write online reviews and are more likely to recommend products.

They have higher wages and are more likely to spend their money on luxury goods as well.

A survey done by American Express Business Insights find out that Generation Y increased their spending 31% in 2011 over 2010.

Famous brands have discovered this trend and are more active their where Generation Y is around on the web. This is about B2C.

But how about B2B and what can they use this information for?

As Gen. Y goes older they will get more influential jobs and positions in companies and this is what makes them interesting for a B2B approach.

For you if you are in B2B, you should follow the examples of the big consumer and luxury brands and establish your outposts on the web and in social media.

As those Gen. Y users actually do not have influential positions they are an interesting community for you and your human resources to get new talent for now. This also gives you the opportunity to play

You should build a strong network all over the coming years, establish your business as a trusted and reputable source and grow awareness for your B2B activities.

This will let you enough time to learn their interests and to learn their way life, so you can speak their language when it comes to do business with them. This knowledge and the existing connections will make you business much easier within the next twenty years.

Your today’s activities will be your investment in your businesses future. In the first step you improve your human resources and get in touch with talent where they are around on the web and in social media. And for second you learn a lot about their interests and what they appreciate and what they do not like.

Infographic: WHO ARE THE MILLENNIALS?

Marketing takeaway tip: Improve you online presence by become active in social media. Start publishing valuable target content through a blog, video, eBooks, and whitepapers. Improve your website and make it a great marketing hub to communicate with your audience and to attract Gen. Y job seekers for your business.

Further important resources:

• On Facebook, Millennials Friend an Average of 16 Co-Workers …
• The Paperless Office?
• ‎Millenials / Generation Y Infographic – eLearning Blog Dont Waste …
• INFOGRAPHIC: Generation Y, Employment And Facebook
• Gen Y Speeds Up Luxury Goods Spending
• INFOGRAPHIC: Guess Who Employs The Most Gen-Y People In …

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In the past it has been important for a business to have good SEO in place to get found on the search engines through their target audience. Businesses optimized their websites and published content with keywords on a frequent basis.

In the last years content marketing has emerged and a new era began on how to manage it to get found from customers who research on search engines and than in social media. At this time buyer persona content creation is a must for businesses to increase their chances to get found on the web.

Companies need to spend enough diligence to identify their buyer personas because of to reach their lead generation goals. Smart content marketing is a critical factor to attract the right buyer personas to a company website and convert them to leads and during a lead nurturing process to revenue!

But a new way of search has emerged where some of these tactics above does not fit anymore. Mobile devices have spread around the world and statistics show that about 260 million devices are in use actually and this number will grow by 2014 to more than one billion.

When people are on their mobile device they do not go to the web browser to research for a restaurant or retail store.

They rely on their mobile apps from Foursquare, Yelp, Gowalla, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other which give them information instantly and also location based information where how to hit a great location. Also in the B2B sector more CEOs are researching for products and services on their IPads, IPhone; Blackberry and Android. This trend is increasingly growing.

Search traffic will decrease and companies who are active on location based services will get an increase of traffic as people use them preferable.

Consumer Trend in Mobile Purchases

2009-2010, % of consumers making 1 or more m-purchase

Source: Oracle / ATG

What does it mean for businesses?

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 and most important to stay in front of the future customers.

Infographic: Mobile Warming

Marketing takeaway to profit from this increasing mobile trend:

• 1. Optimize your website to be accessible from mobile devices
• 2. Sart to collect mobile phone numbers to enable your mobile marketing through personalized SMS
• 3. Adjust your email marketing and the email messages to be easy readable from mobile devices
• 4. Build your digital outposts 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

With this above activities you can significantly improve your visibility on mobile devices and attract more future customers to your business.

What do you think? Are you actually active to reach your target audience on their mobile devices?

More important resources on mobile marketing:

• 5 Ways to get Customers Inbound in 2012 through Mobile Marketing
• 8 Key Mobile Marketing Trends

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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.

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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

Further resources:

• Studies prove Social Media Marketing lasts longer
• Marketers Value Social Media for Both Branding and Customer Acquisition
• Companies Relying on Online Lead Generation Are 2X More Profitable [Data]

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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.

Further resources:

• How to keep your face out of LinkedIn ads
• LinkedIn Tip: How to Opt-Out of Social Advertising
• LinkedIn “alert” shows users still on edge about privacy

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FREE Report: 8 Steps To Get Seen On LinkedIn 100+ Million User Base

FREE LinkedIn Marketing Report download here!

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

Further important resource:

• How Social Media Really Works for Small Business
• 5 Surprising Social Media Business Success Stories
• Top 10 Small Business Facebook Pages: 2011 Winners!
• Social Campaigns Give Long-Term Boost to Brand Metrics

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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

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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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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.

Did I miss something? Let me know what you think.

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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.

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].

• • 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.

Further topic related information:

• Monitor your social media in less than 10 minutes a day
• Social Media puts your business at risk! Are you prepared?
• 4 Steps to Create a Social Listening Strategy
• How to Build a Free Social Media Monitoring Dashboard

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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

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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?

Further resources:

• Mobile Marketing: A look ahead to 2012
• SEO goes mobile and you should embrace this trend of location based marketing
• 15 Ways to SMART Mobile Inbound Marketing for Restaurants
• 22 Percent of your future clients research through mobile devices
• How to gain a competitive position for B2B with Mobile accessibility
• How to Take Advantage from Mobile Marketing & Location Based Marketing

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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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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

Further important resources:

• How to Use Social Media For Better Customer Acquisition

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The use of mobile devices is increasingly growing. Tablets and smart phones have become state of the art technology around the globe.

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?

Further important resources:

• 2012 Trends: A Virtuous Circle of Technology and Content Adoption
• Top 10 Mobile App Trends in 2012
• 8 Key Mobile Marketing Trends

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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 + ?

Further important sources:

• Google News Now Spotlights Some +1′d Content
• +1 Content Now On Google News: Care To Read What Your Friends Liked?

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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?

Further sources:

• Domino’s iPad App: Makes & Delivers Custom Pizza
• Hotel Industry increase revenue the smart way. Participate in Social Media!
• 6 Smart ways for local inbound marketing for restaurants
• Get mobile with your Inbound Marketing
• How to use Inbound Marketing for your Coffee Bar

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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.

Further important sources:

• Starbucks Holiday Cups Come to Life With Augmented Reality App
• Coffee Shop Facebook Marketing: 4 “Hot” Examples
• Cherry Street Rocks Facebook
• Twitter To Go: One Houston Coffee Shop Makes its Mark

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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

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Companies engage increasingly in social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other forums and platforms.

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.

Further important sources:

• Online Reputation Management Reports, Issues, Replies – Online
• Infographic – Online Reputation Management
• How ‘Real’ is Online Reputation Management

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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

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