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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Further important sources:

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

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When Google+ was launched some people had the opinion that it will destroy Facebook in a short time period.

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.

Further sources for this topic:

• How to Add a Google Plus Tab to Your Facebook Page
• Share your ‘circles’ with other Google Plus users
• 20 Ways to Master Google+

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Content creation – blogging

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

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

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

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

Social Media / Forums

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

Lead Generation / Conversion

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

Lead Nurturing

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

Closed-Loop Analysis

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

Repeat this process above!

Example: The daily inbound marketing tasks!

Monday

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

Check email / Leads 30 minutes

Blog commenting 30 minutes

Draft blog article 30 minutes

Tuesday

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

Check email / Leads 30 minutes

Blog commenting 30 minutes

Draft blog article 30 minutes

Publish blog article 30 minutes

Market blog article in social media

Wednesday

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

Check email / Leads 30 minutes

Blog commenting 30 minutes

Draft blog article 30 minutes

Thursday

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

Check email / Leads 30 minutes

Blog commenting 30 minutes

Draft blog article 30 minutes

Publish blog article 30 minutes

Market blog article in social media

Friday

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

Check email / Leads 30 minutes

Blog commenting 30 minutes

Draft blog article 30 minutes

Check analytics 15 minutes

Refine tasks 30 minutes

———

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

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

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

Further resources:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Further important resources:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Companies who blog generate more traffic and more business leads.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Hiscox surveyed US small business leaders and found out that 47% do not use social media for business.

Puuuuh, I don’t know what you think when you read such information but I ask myself: “What do the 24% mean when they say they do it when they have the time and the 14% which indicated they don’t know enough about it?

Does this mean they step into customer conversation when they have the time and the other seem even not to know how to communicate with their audience?

Maybe they do communication through telepathy or any other exciting media. I am just kidding, let’s get serious now.

Social media websites are communication channels. These communication channels are the places where your target audience is around, where they communicate, ask their network friends for product and services opinion and where major brands and thousands of small business worldwide are ready and prepared to step into the conversation with their audience.

Those businesses are aware they need to be active in social media, to get seen, to gain trust, credibility and to attract there audience to their products and services by publishing share worthy and remarkable content on the web and in social media.

Every business which treats social media as a serious communication channel to attract new customers and to stay in touch with their existing customers and their followers (potential future customers) is a step ahead of those 47% which not using social media for business.

Moreover, every business which treats social media marketing with a strategy and obligation instead of doing it when they have the time will profit from it.

Some facts about social media for business:

• - Customer behavior has changed so your marketing must change!
• - Internet and social media has changed the marketing push to a real time communication.
• - 78% of internet users do research online before they buy!
• - They spent 3x more time on blogs and social media than on email or other publications.
• - 67% of the b2c and 41% of the b2b companies report to have acquired new customers through Facebook.
• - 42% of the companies report to have acquired new customers through Twitter.

Social media makes your business found when your audience is looking! As social media is indexed through search engines, the chances are good that your business appears in search results of the big search engines when potential customers are researching on the web!

What does this mean for your business when you are active in social media actually? It’s simple you are a big step ahead of those 47% which are not.

You should improve your social media tasks and fine tune them step by step to improve your results.

Listen to your audience; this will help you to improve your business and products. When you listen carefully your audience will tell you what they want to buy from you. This gives you the opportunity to build custom tailored products and services to increase your customer base and revenue this way.

Marketing Tip: Keep an eye on your competition and look what they are doing, but do not try to copy them. Instead of look through other industries to get ideas and to adopt their creativity with social media marketing to your business! Don’t try to do your social media marketing perfect. It will never be perfect! Just do it as soon as you can and get the word out to your target audience and then refine it step by step.

Further important sources:

47 Percent of SMBs Still Not Using Social Media. Oy.

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Twitter announced to start displaying promoted tweets in user streams. Twitter is also planning to release a self-service platform later this year. Facebook and LinkedIn already have self-service platforms where business can showcase their brand message, products and services.

Pros of paid advertising

Paid advertising allows you to place your ad there where your community is so that you reach this community instantly. You save time because you do not need to develop relationships and do interaction with people. But this will not instantly led your business to a loyal customer base.

Pros:

• Instantly visible: You are instantly visible as long as you want to be and with the keywords you have chosen.
• Keywords control: you have your keywords under control and choose which to use and which not.
• Flexible budget: You can start paid as with any budget.
• Cheap: As it customizable you can choose how much and how long you want to spend.
• Measurable results: You can track your spending and your results. Lead to customer quote, etc. and have a good picture of your returns.
• Wide reach: you can instantly reach a wide user base of millions who are already looking for products and services you also have to offer.
• Quick: You can set up a paid ads campaign very quick.
• Target your location: When you are a local business it makes more sense to target your local area. With paid ads you are in full control that should see your advertisement.
• Time frame: You can set the start and the end of any campaign. You are not obligated on long term agreements.
• Mobile: As more people are on their favorite social networks though their mobile devices, you can also reach them through paid ads.

Cons of paid advertising

As you have no relationship with your audience in these communities where you place your ads, it can become difficult to attract them to your business even if your ads are fancy. Only a good relationship to your target audience leads you to a loyal customer base in the long term.

Cons:

• You can’t buy authority: Even ifyou have a high ad budget; you do not have the relationship and authority to your audience.
• You can’t buy credibility: Through paid ads you get seen but when they visit your website. What will they find? Is there anything what can increase trust and credibility?
• Paid traffic costs money: As long as you want results out of paid traffic you need to do paid advertising. In the moment you stop, your constant stream of leads will stop instantly as it has begun!
• Keywords battles: As you are not the only person who understands the opportunities of paid ads, others will also try to get the most popular keywords. A keywords battle begins and prices for those keywords increase massively! So a single click to your website can cost you a large sum of money! And there is no guarantee that this click will convert into a lead or in a paying customer!
• Brand recognition: As you buy your audiences attention through paid ads you can imagine they will not be very willing to listen to what you have to say. This could let you look like a lazy and budget oriented company without a personal face. So your brand could suffer!

Marketing Takeaway Tipp: Paid ads on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter offer various opportunities to advertise a company targeted to their audience. Paid ads should be used in a context of a clear marketing strategy which includes blogging, social media and social web marketing, premium content creation and real time marketing and PR. Only than paid advertising can serve you as a valuable source of new business leads an customers!

Further important resources:

• Twitter To Start Displaying Promoted Tweets in User Streams
• How Twitter’s Ads Work
• Twitter’s Adam Bain Talks Promoted Tweets In Timelines — Why You’ll See Them, And Why You’ll Like It
• Facebook’s Online Education Center for Businesses

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B2B and B2C companies profit from it reach and various marketing opportunities. Recent studies show that 67% of B2C and 41% of B2B companies report to have acquired new customers through facebook.

Facebook has started Facebook for Business. It introduces and teaches business hoe to use the Facebook marketing tools like Pages, PPC ads, sponsored stories and the platform himself.

Facebook for Business

Facebook Pages

Facebook PPC Ads

Facebook Sponsored Stories

Facebook Platform

The first part of a Facebook strategy is to set up a Facebook Fan Page for a business.

The next step is to promote this Facebook Fan Page by writing a press release, a blog post, send an announcement to the recent customers and include the link to the company’s new Fan Page in the signature of every email which goes out. Keep in mind to include a call to action “Like us on Facebook”!

As you have kick started your Fan Page you should think about to enhance it with custom design to make it more a branded outpost of your business.

To expand your reach you could use Facebook’s advertising platform.

Last but not least get into conversation with your audience. This is the most important part of your Facebook marketing, listen, give and talk when you have something important to contribute.

The next steps you could do are to do sweepstakes or special FB related offers only for your FB friends on your Facebook Fan Page.

You can ad your blog and your twitter account to your Fan Page so Information are directly distributed from your blog and your Twitter to your Fan Page so your fans can see and interact.

As you start you will have no likes and no discussions on your Page, but don’t worry, almost the biggest Fan Pages started out with ZERO likes and discussions! The only thing you need to do is to get your Fan Pages seen from your audience.

When they discover your Fan Page and like the content you publish than they will share it and this will attract more visitors and more likes. You have to do one step behind another to achieve success on Facebook. Rome wasn’t built in a day! Be patient and be open and communicative and the Facebook success will come to you as well.

A further great way to attract your audience very quick is to participate on related Facebook groups and even to like the Facebook Fan Pages of your competitors.

When you contribute educated information to those groups participate in the discussions on the walls of your competitors with helpful information you will quickly attract Likes form those sources to your Fan Page.

As you publish content and do discussions and interaction on Facebook you increase your chances to get indexed from the search engines like Bing. This could bring your content up in the top search results and help you to get seen through your Facebook marketing on the search engines.

Facebook like other social web activities is numbers related. The more you put in the more you get out. And this is also valid for Facebook marketing. The more effort and creativity you put into your Facebook marketing the more results you will have for your business.

Further important resource:

• Facebook Releases ‘Facebook for Business’
• Five Facebook Must-Dos for Entrepreneurs

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Google+ integrates social services such as Google Profiles and Google Buzz. It will also be available as a desktop application and as a mobile application.

When you look on Google+ the new social network than you might think, oh another one where I have to register and maintain relationships as I already have tot do in Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other one. And Google has failed in the past with its efforts to come up with some king of big thing in social media. For example take Google Wave or Google Buzz.

So why you should bother about Google+?

Within the first week Google+ was able to gain 10 million new members. When you look at the dominance of Google than you can imagine the growth potential which Google+ has.

Google has added the +1 button before the launch of Google+ and offered a powerful tool to recommend a website to friends, as like the “Facebook Like Button” but with higher volume depending on the Google search results. So everybody can rate any website with the +1 button and show it to his network of friends. Also the +1 button becomes visible in the ads and once clicked it can increase the attention o the ad which increases his visibility and so on.

Most of the corporations don’t allow its employees to access Facebook from their office. Not so with Google, it is available for all with no restrictions.

Google+ actually offers features which Facebook does not. For example the feature to communicate vie web cam with up to ten persons of your circle.

With this strategic move Google made the Google profile to an online asset. Now you can see the people in your social circles who and which search listing they like.

As a marketing person you can profit from this when the people visit your search listing like it with Google +1. Site which earn legitimate +1 will be rewarded by Google and they relevancy will increase.

The best way for your business to gain relevancy in this new Google world is to create relevant content and get as many Google +1 rating as you can. By following this opportunity your business gains a competitive advantage.

Your social activity will set you apart from your competition and gain you an advantage in the Google’s ecosystem and evolving social search strategy.

This existing Google tools offers you as a marketer a big advantage which you should use to get seen and t get found from your target audience.

Here is a Google cheat sheet you can utilize for your Google+ daily tasks

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A study conducted with 180 businesses discovered that 67% of the B2C and 41% of the B2B companies have been able to win new customers through Facebook.

Businesses which have serious social media marketing strategies in place have connected to social network sites like Facebook and experienced the similar growth as those social networking sites.

There about 3 million Facebook pages of local businesses online and this number increases daily. Because these pages are free and can bring tremendous value when you add them to your social media marketing strategies to get in touch with your audience on Facebook. You can utilize Facebook for your business and profit from it.

Here are 6 advantages to be on Facebook:

1st Advantage to be on Facebook, Visibility: You can increase your visibility. As your network grows there also your reach grows. The more people you are connected with the more your visibility for your business will increase and the chances to attract new customers.

2nd Advantage to be on Facebook, Share ability: When you publish valuable and share worthy content on Facebook the chances are good that your network will share it to their friends. With this share ability of content more people become aware of your business and maybe connect with you on Facebook and visit your website to see what you have to offer.

3rd Advantage to be on Facebook, Branding: The more people get to know you, the more your brand will spread on Facebook and on the web as well. To become a visible brand is important to gain attention and to get the chance to start a conversation with potential customers.

4th Advantage to be on Facebook, Trust and Authority: You can’t buy trust and authority you have to earn it in a long trust building process. Your audience will only listen to you when they think you are trustworthy. When your audience decides you are trustworthy, than your communication get weight and your audience will listen to it and share it with their connections.

5th Advantage to be on Facebook, Connection: Social networking is all about building connections to people with the same interest. An average Facebook user has about 130 connections. The more relevant connections you can build the better. But keep in mind that this does not happen overnight! To build relevant connection takes work and time.

6th Advantage to be on Facebook, SEO: As the major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing indexing social media content and give it out in search requests, your communication could also be on such a search result and make you known with people who didn’t new you before!

How do you utilize Facebook fan pages for your marketing? I am looking forward to your comments below in the comment field.

Here are further important resources for the topic Facebook Fan Pages:

• The 25 Most Popular Facebook Fan Pages
• Facebook Tips: How do I find and “fan” a Page? | Facebook
• Why Use Facebook Fan Pages for You Business
• Top 50 Branded Facebook Fan Pages, June 2011 « Ignite Social Media

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Location based marketing is used to pinpoint consumer’s location and provide location specific information, to attract customers to products and services, on their mobile devices. Location based marketing is going to out beat other types of traditional advertising as the mode of delivering the advertisements is a mobile device which is ubiquitous.

As location based services use mobile devices to share location and your doing with your network, they get more info and improve your experiences.

Studies show that people who use location based services are:

— 80% male
— 70% 19-35 yrs. Old
— 70% college grads
— 38% considered influential
— 20% more likely to do mobile research

The motivation to use location based services are to find friends, play games, get coupons and share their activity and increase loyalty. Further motivations are to find hidden offers, discover points of interest, get new experiences and find new products and services.

Two profitable reasons why you as a marketer should use location based marketing for your business:

— Location based services users will increase from today’s 96 million users by 2012 to 526 million users.
— Of all Smart Phone users about 10% are on location based services. About 63% of all IPhone users are on location based services minimum once a week.

Here are five location based services which you should utilize for your marketing:

Gowalla

Goby

The Dealmap

Yelp

Foursquare

Is your business location based services and marketing ready?

— Is your website optimized for mobile?
— Do you have planned to do a mobile app which complements your business with location based services?

On the end the products seek us based on our activities and location. The question is will it be your products or the products of your competitor which will find the new customer?

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

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

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

Less is more!

Balzac

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read also these articles:

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

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Does this mean that it’s not possible for a small business to gain considerable rewards from search engine optimization? On the contrary, I would suggest that there are massive benefits associated with SEO that’s done in the right way. But you need to think carefully about your strategy if you want to achieve cost effective results.

Ignore massive corporations!

It’s easy to look at the search results for the most competitive keywords and to assume that you need to be ranked for these phrases in order to succeed. There’s a good chance that you’ll find that these search terms tend to be dominated by the big brands and corporations.

This is not a coincidence. The reason why big companies are able to control the search space is because they have significant online marketing budgets. You can be sure that they are hiring top SEO professionals and spending considerable sums of money to achieve those positions.

Typically, it’s also the case that large organizations tend to have a large amount of data available to them. Although this should give them some advantages, you may be amazed to find that many big companies fail to act on the information. That’s often because they simply have too much data to analyze.

What does this mean for small business owners? It means that big corporations are missing out on some key signals.

Target cost effective search terms

Those big organizations often spend so much time, effort and money targeting high profile search terms, they don’t realise that the search terms that convert well may be less competitive. That’s pretty ironic!

But it also reveals an opportunity for small business owners. It means that you can target those areas that larger rivals are ignoring. This won’t just mean that you’re not having to compete with the massive corporations (with their massive advertising budgets) – it also means that you’ll be targeting keywords and phrases that will actually generate income for your business.

This is the cost effective approach to small business SEO that you should be striving for. Sure, it won’t allow you to boast at dinner parties about how you’re top of Google for a high profile search term. But how much does that really matter? Most business professionals would rather have money in their bank accounts, than being able to boast about such trivialities!

Put your strategy into action

Once you realize that SEO isn’t about high profile, competitive, poor converting search terms, you’ll find that you’re in a much stronger position.

You’ll be able to move your online marketing efforts forwards, without wasting money on SEO that’s simply never going to produce the returns that you’re looking for.

Effective SEO should be seen as a business investment. Once you’ve grasped that, you can stop making the mistake of seeing it as a cost.

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As one of the leading search engine experts in the UK, Keith Barrett has used his considerable online marketing experience to help numerous businesses over the course of the past decade.

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ROI Research Inc. has survey of 2,997 active social networkers and 59 percent of respondents said: “It is important to have a LinkedIn account”

Some of the most important findings are that people recommend companies and buy products they follow and 58 percent are more likely to buy a product from a company they follow.

About 50% take advice about products and services they plan to buy. 60 percent of them state that they are ready to take action if a friend recommends something about a product or service.

More than 50 percent of the surveyed use social networks to provide feedback to companies.

About 52% of the surveyed agreed that people can influence business decisions made by companies, brands and retailers by voicing opinions on social networking sites

LinkedIn also offers PPC (Pay per Click) advertising. Here you can reach your audience laser target and generate business leads instantly.

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Those who still believe may not have long to wait however, as his latest prediction states that 21^st October will now be the date for the end of the world. Well, we all make mistakes.

So how does the end of the world have anything to do with SEO? (Unless your site got hit by Panda, then you’ll have felt that end of the world experience before).

White Hat Rapture

It seems as though the world of SEO has its own rapture story entwined into its very core and that using the unfortunate fate of Harold Camping’s trusty followers could provide a timely lesson in how best to succeed at SEO.

Scanning the various blogs, articles and forums that proliferate the web will show the avid search engine marketer the good, the bad and the downright ugly of SEO. There are any number of ways to game the system and there are fierce lines drawn between those who use underhand tactics to fool Google and those who are passionately loyal to the codes of conduct laid out in their terms and conditions.

It is those who stick unwaveringly to the white hat approach who apply most to this idea of SEO rapture in that they, like the followers of Mr Camping, are waiting for the date where the almighty will come down and offer the ultimate reward for true believers. In the case of the whiter than white hat preachers, that reward is search engine success at the expense of their more black hat competitors who have profited up until now.

Has the Date Been Set?

Unlike those who believed that the world would end on 21 May, the white hat believers do not have a fixed date, but they remain confident that the day will occur when Google will reach down from the skies and reward those true believers with first page rankings while casting everyone else into the abyss of search engine obscurity.

While all of this makes for an entertaining read, what truth is there behind Google’s own rapture date and how should you be marketing your website effectively?

Much like the end of the world prophets, the date when Google will punish those who violate its conditions keeps on moving. Although there has never been a date set in stone, every algorithm change brings with it more people who are convinced that the end is nigh for the link spammers, but it is a date that keeps moving further and further into the distance.

So how should you market your website successfully without risking a fiery end at the hands of Google?

The key is in variety. If you don’t keep up to date with what even the darkest of web forces are doing then you risk being left out of the loop. See what others are doing and apply a more sustainable method of using those techniques to benefit you.

Above all use your common sense. If you see somebody using methods that look really risky then steer well clear, but used in small doses, some of the more “grey hat” techniques can yield some positive results.

Don’t base all of your marketing on the same one or two techniques and always experiment on sites that aren’t going to cost you money if you get penalised, this will help you to develop an array of marketing procedures that will leave you less exposed next time Google changes its algorithm.

Variety is the key so don’t place all of your faith in Google eradicating  your more shady competitors. If you end up waiting for that day of white hat rapture, you could, like the followers of Harold Camping, be waiting for far longer than you expected.

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About the author:

Alan Grainger is an in-house B2B web marketer and manages the SEO for The Promotional Gifts Company, a leading UK specialist in the promotional products sector. He writes articles exploring the issues faced by the B2B web marketer, giving an “in the trenches” view from an in-house SEO department.

Goal

Every bloggers need to divine where he or she want to go. He/she should clearly set what he/she wants with his/her blog. Like if you want to go somewhere, you need to choose your destination. Successful blogger always know his/her destination. Successful blogger s always knows what he/she wants and work hard to achieve the goal.

Setting up your goal is very important before you start to create your blog and work hard to make your blog to become a successful blog. If you know where you destination is, you should know what you need to get there

Time

Blogging means you need to spend your time with your blog and other stuffs every day. Better you start asking your self before you start you blogging journey. Do I have time to blog? This is important because I’ve seen few blogger can’t manage their blog anymore because they are don’t have time anymore. They are busy with other activities, like school, works or anything else.

You will need to spend more time with your blog to promote and share your articles, answer all the comments you receive, reply all the emails, engage with you readers, etc. So it is important to to decide if you want to become a full blogger or just a part time blogger.

Experience

At the first time, we all are newbie. No body born as an expert. So with your blog, do you have any experience to share? Are you the expert? People always love to read articles from the expert. You need to share your experience as an expert to you audience. Your article must be an article that people waiting for because you are the man in your field.

But we are not always nee to be an expert. If you like to learn and sharing your experience with your articles; people will come to your blog and mention your name at the blogosphere. The important thing is your articles always have value added whether you are and expert or just a newbie that really want to share a story at the blogosphere.

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Latief is an Inbound Marketing Certified Professional. He is the owner of the simple blogging tips blog ever and Build Business Blog for SME’S in his country and help them grow their business. Please add Latief as your friend @ Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin or visit his Facebook Fan Page.

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Indeed, it doesn’t even take an algorithm change to have this effect and it has reached the stage now where even Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s crack webspam team blowing his nose will cause a ranking debate in some circles.

So with so much gossip and speculation surrounding the search engine industry, how can you make sure that you are on top of the news and that your websites won’t suffer at the hands of Google’s next algorithm change?

The unfortunate truth is that you can’t. Google are a law unto themselves and if they decide to make a change then you have to be sure that you have put the right work so that you won’t be tossed to the back of the pile when the next big algorithm change comes into force.

But what you can do is try to keep on top of the Google guidelines so that your site doesn’t tumble down the rankings during the next big algorithm change.

Now this isn’t going to be another one of those “be whiter than white” posts that the net is full of. The truth from a business point of view is that bosses want to see results, and often playing by the rules can be a long road to success. So how do you get the balance right between goody-two-shoes web marketing and downright dastardly “black-hat” approaches?

Throw All of your Hats into the Bin

Before you look to “algorithm proof” your website, you need to decide if it’s even important to do so. If you are selling a seasonal product and have a number of well ranked websites then it might not matter if your methods are deemed worthy of punishment by Google. So long as your livelihood isn’t dependant on one site ranking well, you aren’t necessarily tied to what Google deems to be fair.

There are many articles written on white vs. black hat approaches but in the cold hard world of business, a more pragmatic approach is needed than simply wearing different coloured hats.

However, if the success of your website is keeping people in a job and you are trying to convey an online image of quality, then quite frankly you would be crazy to risk it all by spamming your way to the top. Know what you want to achieve, know what Google likes, learn what actually works and analyse your options accordingly.

If your business depends on sustained online success, your marketing strategy should reflect this through quality link building and award winning content. Get this right and you won’t need to worry too much when the next algorithm change comes knocking on your virtual door.

Don’t Just Rely on One Method

This is fairly self-explanatory. If your entire web marketing effort relies on just one or two methods you are leaving yourself wide open to get Google-spanked should the next big change not agree with your strategy. If your link building efforts revolve around just comment spamming blogs and building profile links, you could be crying into your morning coffee come the next big change.

The solution? All things in moderation. It’s common sense, if you are building your linking strategy on shaky ground, don’t be surprised if it all comes tumbling down.

Build Your Strategy Like You Would a House

Tacky metaphor time, but please bear with me. If you have decided that it isn’t worth risking yours and everyone else’s jobs by spamming your way to the top then you will need a quality link building strategy, so get in touch with your inner builder!

Every strategy needs a firm foundation, so look to build your strategy on quality links gained from strong sources. Guest blogging, quality directories and press releases will get you a few of these and it is an effective way of kicking off your campaign.

After you have a strong foundation you can build your wooden framework. These will be links from blogs and forums, profile and comment links that every site will need but that won’t be overly effective in isolation. Spread them out a bit, avoid automation and try and have something to say. Just because they are comment links it doesn’t mean that they have to be spam.

Then you will need the brick exterior that will protect your website. Should Google decide to kick away your wooden foundation links, these brick ones will hold your whole campaign together. Become an authority in your niche and show your knowledge through quality content and give people knowledge that they are actually looking for. It is this quality approach that will mean that should Google ever spring a surprise algorithm change, your website will be well positioned to ride out the storm.

How do you plan to survive the next big Google algorithm change? I am looking forward to your comments below!

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Alan Grainger is an in-house B2B web marketer and manages the SEO for The Promotional Gifts Company, a leading UK specialist in the promotional products sector. He writes articles exploring the issues faced by the B2B web marketer, giving an “in the trenches” view from an in-house SEO department.

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Then the Internet came along and consumers were suddenly free to share their opinions about the service they had received from their auto mechanic, the quality of their new flat-screen TV or the trustworthiness of their lawn service.

In the early days of the Internet, companies thought they could sue consumers into silence by filing lawsuits against sites like ours. This not only doesn’t work, it produces even more bad press when, invariably, consumers’ right to free expression is upheld in court. More recently, small businesses have been falling for pitches like that from Done! SEO, a search engine optimization company that claims it can make consumer complaints disappear from sites like ConsumerAffairs.com.

Retailers and service providers sometimes pay thousands of dollars a month for these “removal” services before they realize their money has been wasted.

Despite what some SEO firms claim, they are not able to somehow obliterate complaint pages on our site. They can generate tens of thousands of pages of fraudulent content claiming to be from real consumers but this is a) illegal and subject to civil and criminal prosecution and b) ineffective, as all of the major search engines are quick to detect attempts to spam their results with bogus postings.

Taking all of this into account, ConsumerAffairs.com has recently instituted new programs that make it easier for companies to engage constructively with their customers.

Specifically, our “Accedited Business” program requires local retailers and service providers to subscribe to a Code of Good Practices and to respond promptly and proactively to customer complaints. And, our “Reputation Management” program for larger businesses establishes a direct, public communications channel that facilitates fast, efficient exchanges with aggrieved customers.

Our founder and editor likes to say that “a good reputation can’t be bought, but it can be earned.” Can’t say it much better than that.

How are your experiences with SEO scam? I am looking forward to your comments below!

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Ryan Eslicker is head the Consumer Affairs small business outreach department. Ryan interacts with consumers and small businesses to understand obstacles they currently face. He generates and manages content that educates all of our consumers about these complaints. Ryan has an Undergraduate degree from Oklahoma State University in Finance Masters in Business Administration from University of Tulsa. He also has experience in managing and marketing websites.

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Like any other business person you have to focus on your daily business tasks, simply to do business and revenue!

To get seen from your buyer personas it is important to be where they are and to get in touch and to interact with them.

The process of identifying your buyer persona is critical for your business. Moreover a good fundamental analysis of your buyer personas will save you a lot of time and money in the future and increase your revenue!

Focus on find out what your buyer personas are. Find out what your customers have in common, how they found your offer on the internet and why they buy your products and services. Digg deeper and try to find out what kind of interest they have next to your products and services. For example find out what kind of hobby they have and on which social networks, groups and forums they are mostly around on the internet.

Draw a buyer persona sheet for every buyer persona you discover and complete and update the sheet constantly. So you always are on track with your potential customers.

Second step

Visit the social networks, groups and forums and listen first and contribute second there. Be helpful with your comments and ask educated questions to drive attention to you. Publish helpful articles there to drive more attention to you. Invite those members who interact with you and invite their friends from the social networks, groups and forums as well. So you will grow your network step by step.

Third step

Produce remarkable and helpful content. Test the content to see which topics work and focus on them. Produce and offer special content to be downloaded from your website only. Set landing pages and generate leads. As you generate leads you should produce further content to include this into your email messages for lead nurturing. Keep in mind to not to do sales pitches in your content and lead nurturing as well. Be informative and helpful. This will increase your reputation and trust.

Fourth step

Measure which articles and topics bring you the most response in traffic, leads and revenue and focus on them. So you make your doings much smarter and you save a lot of time.

You should take one hour each day for each task. This offers you the opportunity to do five tasks a week and plan your time much better.

Summary

Focus on blogging. Companies that blog get up 57% more traffic to their website than companies which do not blog. Therefore I suggest that you save three hours per week for content creation. Remain two hours you can use to spread your content in your communication channels like social networks, groups and forums and to do conversation with your network.

How do you organize your inbound marketing and what are your results? I am looking forward to your comments below!

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There’s no doubting the fact that social networks are playing more of an important role in the way the web works, with people using Facebook to track down local suppliers and Google admitting that it now uses social factors when compiling its rankings.

There’s also set to be more integration between the search engines and your social networks, with Google displaying websites that your Facebook Friends have recommended in its SERPS.

Google have even gone so far as to develop their own social signal, +1, which will enable people to show which websites they like by clicking a button, much in the same way the Facebook “Like” button works.

It is this cross platform integration that is causing the most excitement at the moment, with web marketers predicting it will change the entire way in which people find websites on the internet. But before we get too carried away, it is important to consider who this won’t effect, as well as who it will.

Cross Platform Integration

Us internet marketers are a pretty switched on bunch. We’re always signed into Google, our Facebook profiles are always open and we could Tweet from the North Pole if we chose to.

So when you see results pages in Google with which of your Friends has tweeted about a certain website or who has “Liked” a particular company it’s pretty easy to get excited about a new way of searching.

But stop for a second. Just because as a search marketer you are always signed into Facebook and Google at the same time and you always have your accounts active, does the average searcher?

Just because it is possible to integrate information between different platforms, it is still a massive leap between this capability and everyone on the web being able to see it. Some people don’t have a Facebook or Twitter account. Some people don’t have a Google account.

Some people search Google without being signed in to Facebook at all. Personalised search of this kind depends on many variables being in place at once for it to work and the more variables there are, the less take-up a particular service will have.

What About B2B?

B2B web marketers should get a lot less excited by every announcement coming out of Silicon Valley. Google integrations with social media platforms are a great idea in theory, but unlike the wonderful world of web marketing, your average office worker is more likely to receive a disciplinary than see your company displayed in the SERPS by being logged in to Facebook at work.

Big companies have measures in place to stop employees from straying off topic when browsing the web, and to the average business owner, Facebook is well and truly off topic! The image of Facebook as a place to go to chat to your friends and spy on lovers past is too engrained for it to be allowed at work, no matter how relevant your searches might be because of it.

If you are a B2B marketer and office workers are your target, it might be a while before you need to worry about social media integration interfering with the SERPs in your niche.

This isn’t to say that it’s not important to have a social media presence, it still is. Social media can be a fantastic resource to find people who are interested in your niche and provide a great way to interact with customers who are interested in your services.

The integration between the social networks and the search engines is still in its infancy, as are social factors being used as a ranking factor, but this can be expected to grow in time as Google seems to be finally embracing Facebook and Twitter.

What is important to bear in mind however is to treat each announcement from Silicon Valley on its own merits and apply every change that will affect your niche as you see fit. Jumping on every bandwagon will simply be a waste of time and resources, so before you get excited about the next big announcement, make sure that it is actually applicable to you, and more importantly, your target audience.

How does  social media helps your B2B search? I am looking forward to your comments below!

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About the author:

Alan Grainger is an in-house B2B web marketer and manages the SEO for The Corporate Gifts Company, a leading UK specialist in the business gifts sector. He writes articles exploring the issues faced by the B2B web marketer, giving an “in the trenches” view from an in-house SEO department.

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The best and easiest way is to get your Google Places listing first. This is very easy and a great point to start your local marketing! Make your listing in Google Places.

To get found you will need to find the best long tail keywords and to include them into your published content. Research long taile keywords and include them into your content.

Did you build your Facebook fan page yet for your business? And how about LinkedIn, did you made your company profile there as well? A facebook fan page can helpy you to market your business to your local market.

Do you know Groupon? Groupon helps you to market direct to your local market, laser target! With coupons you can attract a lot of new cusomters to your business very effective.

Furthermore, there are local business related directories. Did you check your local directory? Just go to Google and type your city and local directory. Then you get all the directories releted to your city. When people research they go online first and when you are listed in your local directory than you can get found locally!

Did you register your business in Foursquare and Yelp? If not, hurry and register. Be active on Foursquare and you can attract custmomers locally as well.

Twitter, with Twitter you can communicate with your local audience as well. You can promote  new coupons, products and event. Go out and register with Twitter.

How you can see, you have a ton of opportunities to take advantage of to grow your business in the local area before you reach out to the world. Just do your homework and go local first!

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A huge amount of traffic is also no guarantee for a successful online business.

You need to have the right traffic, and a huge amount of it.

You invest effort and money to generate traffic, why not attract the right traffic with the right people to your business?

To attract your target audience to your business you need to show expertise, gain trust and build credibility.

People only buy from people and businesses they trust.

People mainly go online to research and not to buy!

If you are not able to showcase your expertise and build credibility with your target audience than they will not click to buy, no matter which PR o how many traffic you think you have!

You can showcase your expertise; build trust and credibility with remarkable content you publish online.

Build trust and credibility before you try to address your products and services. Social media is a great source to build trust and credibility.

Social media has also become the new SEO!

The more you are active in social media, means the more you interact with your audience, build and distribute remarkable content like blog posts, video, eBooks, Whitepapers and Articles, the more trust and credibility you will build with the people you like to attract as your future customers.

Search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing are actively indexing content from social media.

Those results increasingly come up on search results when people research online in search engines! If you are not active in social media than you waste a big chance to build trust, credibility and to get found online.

“On the web you are what you publish!” –David Meerman Scott

Marketing takeaway tip: Be there before the sale. Build trust and credibility. Be there and they will come!

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Also the count of your inbound links shows your potential clients the value you can offer.

The more inbound links, the more people think you are credible and have valuable content which is link worthy.

To get a massive amount of inbound links you need to produce remarkable and link worthy content and promote this content online and through social media.

When you are starting to get inbound links from other blogs and websites you should analyze it and see where they are coming from and to whom they are linked too and who is linking back to your link sources.

Checkout which of those linked sites has a good SEO authority, Page Rank and, Inbound links and Alexa Rank. Checkout how active there audience is on those websites. The more activity there is the better.

When sites are linking back to you means they think your content is link worthy. So you should get in touch with them to build a relationship. Their target audience could become your paying customer.

Track your inbound links and measure your growth and sources.

Marketing Takeaway Tipp: The more valuable and remarkable content you produce, the more chances you build to get Inbound links.

More resources to this topic:

• Advanced Content (85)
• blogging (46)
• Get Found Online (221)
• inbound marketing (163)
• Off-Page SEO (86)
• Trust Agents (51)

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This is almost imperative in order to grow your business. And in that too, one would like to grow search engine rankings so that the chances of their business improve with search engine marketing.

This article provides 6 potential ways to gain significant back links:

#1 Share useful and relevant content that match your keywords

Always feed more and more attractive and valuable contents because content is the key for attracting visitors to your website.

If content satisfies your visitors, then definitely there are chances of getting repetitive visits for your site and also increase traffic. Famous websites providing social interactions to the customers also have huge content in the form of blogs, articles and so on.

#2 Link only to relevant websites

Another important factor is that the contents which you provide must have links to relevant websites.

For this purpose inbound marketing agency should get to work and extend that as much as it can. Inbound marketing experts can help you to gain significant backlinks from relevant sites easily and effectively.

#3 Inviting Guest Writers from similar niche

Inviting other authors who can write contents appropriate to your website will be very much useful for generating search engine traffic.

Others may have ideas which might be valuable for your business. So look for such persons who can write for you in this way. That really gives tremendous response for your articles and also helps in linking with these writers blogs.

#4 Writing Guest Posts in Other Sites

Again, be open to provide links to blog writers so that you can have more content for your visiting.

Be attached to the social media sites too. This task can be allotted to social media marketing agency. So that nothing relevant is missed.

#5 Frequent Press releases helps in link building

Never forget writing and publishing press release.

However, you can find some free examples on the net but one must try something of one’s own that will be the best. One must include everything regarding business like search engine strategies and ensure their submission is aso search engine friendly.

#6 Identify reliable link network for your link building

And the last is that one must build a whole network of the links provided with the content. Internal links must be included also.

Appropriate search engine keywords must be used with these links with the provision of search engine services that will be offered to the visitors and maintain that.

• FREE Report: 12 Powerful Ways How to Get Massive Traffic to Your Web Presence
  

Marketing Takeaway Tip:Above six link building techniques will help you to grow your page rank in a smart way and help you to get into top pages of search engines.

Related Links
5 Basic Tips to increase back links
Spotted 5 ways to increase back links
Five tips to increase your back links

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Therefore, there are a plethora of keyword research tools, but the most top 10 keyword research tools are below.

Google Keyword Research Tool: This is one of the most important keyword tools as it is free to use, and by using this tool, you can easily search for keywords, but the most important thing is that you can search keywords more than 40 languages.

It has feature of high quality, frequently updated and clean keyword database.

Yahoo Keyword Research Tool: It is another most popular keyword search tool as it helps in generating and maintaining its own database of keywords to match Google.

It is free to use and having its own keyword research tool.

The Wordtracker Keyword Research Tool: It is another free as well as popular keyword research too today and it has limit of just more than hundred results; moreover, it manages a free highly detailed database.

Google search based keyword research tool: It is Based on actual Google search queries and matched to specific pages of your website with your ad and search share; apart from it, it is new to adwords account and better to add official product introduction

Google AdWords Keyword Research Tool: It is another best keyword research tool because it is very useful to get new keyword ideas.

Google is very dominating search network, so it provides you keyword search volume statistics for Google search network.

Google Insights Keyword Research Tool: It is another powerful keyword research tool as it is used in viewing status by year or a specific time for seasonal niches and also it helps in viewing status by country, state and even city for regional niches.

SEMRush Keyword Research Tool: It is the best tool to search competitor’s sites with common goodgle keywords and find the list of google keywords as well as adwords.

And also it finds potential advertisers as well as potential traffic sellers for a site.

KGen Keyword Research Tool: It is an extension of Firefox that helps in looking at what keywords are much more strong on visited on websites and it retrieves every words of webpage and tells us how many times they appear in the page.

Twitter Search Keyword Research Tool: It is one of the best keyword researching tools because it is the most popular among the internet users and it is the source of latest information.

So, there is in built search engine that displays search result that are based on relevancy and sorted out on date time stamp.

Traffic Travis Keyword Research Tool: It is the best keyword tool for SEO strategy as it is a free and gives an assessment of the difficulty of ranking for a particular keyword; besides from it, it removes most of the grunt work of assessing PR and searches as well as back links.

Marketing takeaway Tip: Keyword research tools helps in identifying the right keywords for your business. Learn how your customers are searching for products that are related to your products keywords from these latest keyword research tools.

Further important resources about this topic:

• Other useful keyword research tools
• top keyword research tools exposed
  

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There are many websites that help you to get found online. And since search engines started indexing social media content, social media SEO helps you easily to get found online.

Get found online with presentations:

It is easy to get found online by sharing your presentations in some top websites which are visited by customers.

By sharing your expertise, you get found online very easily.

Some of the top sites where you can share your presentations are

• Slide share
  
• Docstoc
  
  

Getting found online through commenting:

Are you active in social media? Social media sites like facebook and LinkedIn are one of the best ways to share your content and get recognized online.

Actively participate in discussions related to your niche and solve people’s queries.

This helps you to get recognized among group of people and also get found online. Since social media content is indexed, social media SEO helps you in getting recognized very easily

Some of the best sites where you can actively participate in discussions are

• LinkedIn
  
• Facebook
  
• Myspace
  
  

Getting found online through Video Sharing:

How to videos are another way to get found online. Share how to videos in sites like youtube and get found online easily through social media SEO.

As youtube is visited by millions of visitors every day, it is very easy to get found online.

Some of the best places to share your videos are

• Youtube
  
• Blip.tv
  
• Vimeo
  
• Viddler
  
• Dailymotion 

These are some tips to get found online.

Marketing take away Tip: Getting found online is possible only by sharing your expertise with your niche. Actively participate in social media and get found online easily through social media SEO.

Let me know what you think and comment below. I’d love to hear from you.

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