Category: social media marketing

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

social media marketingNew studies show that up to 65 percent of today’s consumers expect a brand to listen and to respond on questions, comments and complaints in social media.

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

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

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

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

Seven business advantages of social media engagement:

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

It pays out to be active in social media!

social brand messaging

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

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

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Effective SEO done very simple with Content Creation like Blogging

SEO-ContentGoogle 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.

http://blog.hubspot.com/Portals/249/images/WhyContentForSEO_FINAL_2-600x1641-resized-600.png

 

 

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

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Why Social Media only will NOT bring you any profit

social-media-gambleSocial media seems to be the universal treatment for anybody who tries to get ahead of his competition and to increase profits.

I have bad news for you: Social media only will not solve your problem! 🙁

What do you really want to achieve from your Social Media activity?

• Are you looking to increase your sales?

• Do you want to improve the customer service?

• Do you want to decrease marketing budget and increase results in the long term?

• Are you trying to create outposts for your business to get in front of your customers?

• Are you looking to expand your reach and strengthen your brand?

• What’s your motivation and what are your goals to get in to social media?

Here are four things you will need to establish parallel with your social media activities:

As social media is a communication channel you need to establish relationships to people you want to talk to. And this does not happen overnight, even not with six or twelve months. This is a long-term task!

The first thing you need to succeed in social media is PATIENCE!

As relationships are not build in a few days and you will need to be there to get into conversation, this can become a time consuming venture.

The second thing you need to succeed in social media is PERSISTENCE!

As all discussion and all conversation a great, very important and to build strong relationships is a main goal, you still will need to keep in focus the return on investment for your activities? You need to measure your doings and the results!

The third thing you need to succeed in social media are realistic METRICS!

Last but not least, you need to generate leads out of your efforts! As you do social media marketing you will pull a lot of visitors to your website. And here it is where you need to have effective landing pages in place to generate leads!

The forth thing you need to succeed in social media are LANDING PAGES and an EFFECTIVE LEAD NURTURING PROCESS!

Not to mention that you need to offer incredible service to your customers to make them love you, to become evangelists of your brand and to talk to their friends and business partners about how awesome your company is.

You only can achieve this by showing that you respect and care about your customers and give them a good feeling when they do business with you!

samuel colt peace makerThere was a saying from the times of the Wild West: “God has created human but Samuel Colt made them equal! “

You can apply the same to social media for our time!

With this kind of attitude you can outperform any competitor, no matter of his financial and market power!

 

—How are your experiences with your social media efforts? I am looking forward to your comment!

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Why you should love ugly Tweets and bad Facebook comments

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

But the opposite is the fact!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

infographic_brand-storytelling

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

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

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

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

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9 Ways How Chief Marketing Officers can Harness Social Media

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

b2b-social-media-marketing-infographic

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

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

Further important resources:

Marketers struggle to harness social media – survey

 

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Is Google+ a good bet for your business?

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

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

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

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

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

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

google plus profile dragan mestrovic

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!

googleplus_facebook_infographic_small

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

Disussion Update

linkedin buy leads discussion

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

Why did I done this you might ask?

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

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

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

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

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

You ask why?

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

Boooom. You don’t like what I say!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Inbound marketing can help you to:

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

 

“Get seen and you get visited! “

Content-Marketing-Infographic

 

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

 

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How to Take Advantage from Mobile Marketing & Location Based Marketing

location-appsIs mobile marketing recently a part of your inbound marketing strategy?

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

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

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

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

location-infographic

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

Some facts:

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

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

Source: HubSpot

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

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

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

Further sources:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Content creation – blogging

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

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

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

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

Social Media / Forums

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

Lead Generation / Conversion

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

Lead Nurturing

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

Closed-Loop Analysis

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

Repeat this process above!

Example: The daily inbound marketing tasks!

Monday

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

Check email / Leads 30 minutes

Blog commenting 30 minutes

Draft blog article 30 minutes

Tuesday

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

Check email / Leads 30 minutes

Blog commenting 30 minutes

Draft blog article 30 minutes

Publish blog article 30 minutes

Market blog article in social media

Wednesday

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

Check email / Leads 30 minutes

Blog commenting 30 minutes

Draft blog article 30 minutes

Thursday

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

Check email / Leads 30 minutes

Blog commenting 30 minutes

Draft blog article 30 minutes

Publish blog article 30 minutes

Market blog article in social media

Friday

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

Check email / Leads 30 minutes

Blog commenting 30 minutes

Draft blog article 30 minutes

Check analytics 15 minutes

Refine tasks 30 minutes

———

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

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

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

 

Further resources:

 

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Bloggers, Stop Thinking… “Just Do It”

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

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

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

Blogging Is Raw, Organic

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

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

Don’t Plan…Write

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

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

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

 

 About the author:

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

 

 

 

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4 Powerful Reasons to Start Your Corporate Blog

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4 reasons to start a corporate blog:

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Blog Economy

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

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

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10 Great Ways How to Reach Global B2B Customers with LinkedIn

linkedin_for_your_businessLinkedIn has about 100 million users from all over the world and the majority of 56% comes from outside the US.

As the biggest business related social network, LinkedIn offers large opportunities for B2B to get in touch with future and to stay in touch with recent business partners.

LinkedIn offers a wide toolset of features to get seen from future business partners. To list all of them would lead to far. But let me mention some which you can use right away.

For your profile:

You personal profiles are the first stage you have to reach. Register with LinkedIn and complete your profile. Take care to use keywords related to your business. This makes it much easier for the search engines to index your profile and for future customers to find it during their research online.

-Twitter stream

You can add your Twitter stream to your LinkedIn profile. This stream can encourage visitors of your to become more curious about what you do.

-Publications

Ad your publications and a web link where your profile visitor can read or download them. So you can lead visitors of your profile directly to landing page to get them registered as lead.

-Ad your blog

Here you can add your blog RSS feed and all blog articles you publish will also be visible on your personal LinkedIn page.

-Recommendations

A great way to capture attention is when other people talk about you and your qualities. Her you have the opportunity to ask for recommendations of your network members you already have worked with. This can increase your credibility with people who did not know you before.

-Additional Information

Here you can add your websites with up to three links, your Twitter with up to two links and your interests which can be made of keywords to get better found from search engines.

 

LinkedIn Company Pages:

This is where you can introduce your company to the LinkedIn audience.

-Overview

Here you can write a brief description about your business and how it benefits the future customer.

-Recent Tweets / Recent Blog Posts

As in the personal profile you can add your Twitter account to make your Twitter stream visible on LinkedIn as well and your corporate blog to show your blog articles on your LinkedIn company page.

-Careers

Here it is where you can post jobs on LinkedIn to find candidates on the world’s largest professional network.

-Products & Services

This is my personal favorite of all LinkedIn company page features. Here you have the great opportunity to introduce your products and services to you audience. You can add a description and a picture of the product or service. This is a valuable opportunity on the world’s largest professional network with it 100 million users!

-Analytics

To know what’s going on your LinkedIn company page is important for you. By this analytics tool you get a clear picture what going on, on your company page. So you can measure, observer and improve your LinkedIn marketing.

Keep in mind that all of the above described features are for free. The only thing you have to do is to make seriously use of them. By seriously use those above features you empower your LinkedIn to a powerful business outpost for your company. An additional toolset of chances to get attention, visitors to your website and business leads to increase revenue and profit.

linkedin-infographic

It is as simple as that! Get on LinkedIn be persistent and serious about the goals you want to achieve from your LinkedIn marketing time investment!

–What do you think about LinkedIn for business? I am looking forward to your comments below.

 

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3 Ways how to use Online Video for Business Lead Generation

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

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

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

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

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

Smartphone Trends Infographic:

INFOGRAPHIC_Smartphone

 

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

Watch this video:

 

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

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

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

Watch this video:

 

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

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

Online Video Facts Infographic:

YouTube_Infographic

 

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

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

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

Than do the next video and so on.

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

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

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

 

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Ten Simple Steps to make Twitter your Business Leads Machine

twitter for business lead generation Social media has become an important communication channel for businesses online. Its importance is growing by the technology developments for social media analytics which enable businesses and there for marketing responsible employees to exactly show the ROI of social media marketing to their executives!

Companies increasingly embrace social media and the other important strategies like content marketing and real time marketing an

Social media sites like Facebook with its more than 750 million users, Twitter with its more than 280 million users and the business network LinkedIn with its more than 100 million users offer wide opportunities for businesses, not matter if they are B2B or B2C, to get seen and to get in touch with their future customers.

One billion humans are online world wide and when you take a closer look at the numbers above you can clearly see that it looks like that almost every online user seems to be active in social med.

That leaves only one conclusion, that your future customer is active in social media as well! Which leaves a second conclusion, that your competitor is their also!

Take look at this Social Media Infographik:

business-social-media-infographic

  • “53 percent of people on Twitter recommend companies or their products in their tweets.”
  • “42% of companies active on Twitter report that they have got new customers through Twitter.”
  • “Dell was the first company which published their results of Twitter marketing. They made eight million dollars from their Twitter marketing within one year.”

 

Twitter has more than 280,000,000 users worldwide. So it seems that about 28% of the global online population is on Twitter. These people are all potential future clients for any branch of industry.

Do not cheat yourself by trying to convince yourself that your customers are not on Twitter. For sure they are, so you should hurry to get in touch with them there before your competition takes this opportunity because while you are hesitate.

So what can you do to take advantage of Twitter for your business?

  • 1st Register with Twitter and complete your profile and customize it.
  • 2nd Start to observe the conversation related to your industry. To do this you should download and install TweetDeck. Set you brand name and look if it is mentioned. If mentioned, respond in real time if necessary.
  • 3rd Go to Google Alerts and set Alerts for your name, your company brand, your products, your best customers and your top ten competitors. These alert will be delivered directly to you email box as news appear. This keeps you updated and by the way you monitor your brand name mentions, which offer you the opportunity to respond in real time if necessary.
  • 4th Lookout for your competition and invite their followers to your Twitter.
  • 5th Connect with your audience on Twitter and start the conversation.
  • 6th Share interesting and helpful content. Not only yours but other content from other sources as well.
  • 7th When you publish your own content include a call to action which directs your reader to dedicated landing pages.
  • 8th Do Twitter exclusive specific promotions for your Twitter followers. Direct them to landing pages for lead generation.
  • 9th Promote your Press Release on Twitter. To learn how take a look at HubSpot how they have published a PR on Twitter with its 140 characters.
  • 10th Incorporate effective landing page for lead generation. This will ensure a steady flow of fresh business leads for your sales team.

Incorporate the above for your Twitter marketing, test, measure and refine.

Take look at this Twitter Infographik:

twitter-infographic

 

— How are your experiences with Twitter for marketing and lead generation? Leave your comment below.

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