One of the reasons why people waste time on social media is because their objectives are:

• Not clearly linked to their business strategy
• Inappropriate for the environment of social media

Don’t be surprised if you find you need to participate in social media for a little while before you find the right way to use it for your business objectives.  Take the time to observe your audience and learn how to connect with them on social media.

Return on time investment: Before you see any return on your time investment in social media, you need know what your business can get out of it.

Don’t jump into social media with both feet and no business objective. Develop your social media presence with one clearly defined business objective in mind.

2. Find the Right Social Media Strategy for Your Business

The main reason people fail in social media is lack of a strategy. There’s so much confusing and conflicting advice out there, it’s easy to get lost in the social media jungle. By having a clear objective, developing a strategy to accomplish that objective, and measuring milestones along the way, you’re bound to have better results.

• What can you say on social media that would interest your audience?
• How should you say it?
• Where should you say it?

Many businesses choose to use a blog as their central social media hub. The truth is that your social media strategy needs to be tailored to the particular message you want to convey to your audience.

Return on time investment: When you include a clear objective in the social media strategy most appropriate for your business, it boosts your overall marketing strategy.

Don’t waste time using other people’s social media tactics. Find a social media strategy that connects your business to your audience.

3. Make Your Presence Social

Once you have defined your social media strategy, the process does not end there.  It will only work if your presence is truly social and, you need to also “focus on being good online neighbours.”

Return on time investment: The right message aligned with your business objective in a social media marketing strategy can save your business time spent elsewhere on sales and marketing.

Don’t waste time sending inappropriate messages. Find the right message for your business and, above all, be social.

4. Stay Focused on Your Business Strategy

Social media can be a particularly dangerous time waster because:

• It is a social environment.
• Businesses need to create a social presence and it can be hard to find the balance between business and social.

Don’t fall into traps when adapting your marketing to social media. The question of friending and reputation is difficult in the face-to-face world, but it’s even harder online.

Return on time investment: Social media marketing creates stronger relationships with the people in your market.  You can use it to build trust and loyalty with more people and in less time than with most other marketing tactics.

Don’t waste time by getting sidetracked. Adapt social media to work for your business.

5. Adopt Social Media One Step at a Time

Trying to be everywhere on social media is a big time waster. Social media is made up of numerous different places where people hang out, and these places all have different environments.  You cannot try to be everywhere all at once and know how to act and what to say.  You need to take things slowly:

• Research to find out where your business should be present.
• Observe and learn what to say.
• Listen and learn how to adapt to each different site.

Be sure to add your own social touch to all of your social media communication

Return on time investment: When you choose your actions wisely and add some social juice to them, they can give you back much more than you put in.

Don’t try to jump into all social media platforms at once. Find the social media sites that work best for your business.

6. Get Extra Mileage Out of Your Social Media Marketing

Many businesses look at what the social media “stars” are doing and think they would never have the time to do the same thing.  Here is the scoop: You need to get into social media before you can fully understand how your time spent can multiply in value.

Once you get your basic social media presence up and running, something very interesting happens.  You begin to see little things to do to get a much wider presence on social media.

Return on time investment: The good news is that you can get extra mileage out of your daily social media actions as soon as you begin.  One of the very first things you need to do when you begin marketing using social media is to set up professional listening activities.  The time you spend on this aspect alone usually adds much more value to your overall sales and marketing activities than you can imagine.

Don’t waste opportunities for more visibility and buzz. Adopt the social attitude.

7. Avoid Social Media’s Fatal Attraction: The Shiny Bells and Whistles

The truth is that there is a lot of movement in the social media arena.  New social media tools, applications and platforms hit the news every week.  And you just do not know who the key players will be this time next year.  It’s natural for businesses to hesitate in investing time in such a climate.

Return on time investment: The key is to focus on developing social skills and to integrate these into your marketing strategy.  This is how you can spend your time wisely and be well-prepared as:

• Marketing becomes social
• Media habits change

Don’t focus on the social media tools. Focus on developing the social skills you need for your business to create a strong social presence.

Use Social Media to Add Extra Value to Your Current Marketing Strategy

Social media helps businesses to create stronger relationships with their clients; for instance, by creating trust agents.  This trust factor can be so powerful it removes the question of time investment.

Social media marketing can save your business time when it is included within your overall marketing plan.  When you add the ability to build trust, social media becomes a powerful marketing tactic not to be ignored.

These are just some examples of how to integrate social media into an overall marketing strategy to save businesses time.

Posted By Cindy King

Doing business on the Internet is no different than doing business in “real life”… Image is EVERYTHING! Don’t allow your website to make an unfavourable first impression! It is no longer simply good enough to have a website. Your website must capture the visitor’s attention in the first 5 seconds or they will be off to your competitors website.

When was the last time you took a look at your website to make sure it’s still the efficient, powerful brand-management tool you envisioned it to be?

A stagnant website could lead to stagnant sales. On the other hand, redesigning a website isn’t something you should take lightly or approach haphazardly. It requires time, thought, energy, and money, so you need to make sure that you’re doing it for the right reasons.

There are seven questions small businesses should be asking themselves to determine whether or not to launch a website redesign. If you answer “no” to any of them, your website may be ready for an overhaul.

1. Has Your Site Grown Gracefully?

Has your website stood the test of time? It might have worked exactly the way you wanted it to a year ago, but what about now? You may have made navigation changes, and you’ve probably added content.  Some of these changes may have been tacked on, and your existing site structure may not have accommodated them seamlessly. Over time, these types of organic changes can make a site unwieldy and impact conversion.

2. Is Your Site Flexible?

Ultimately, your website should be easy to update and maintain. It should be mouldable to your evolving business needs. Changing an add-to-cart button from green to red and implementing a quick A/B test should be feasible without five meetings with your IT department. If your site isn’t keeping up with your business, you may need to get on to a more agile and robust platform for change and growth.

3. Does Your Site Succeed in Representing Your Brand?

The visual design of your website is your public face. It may not be easy to develop one that attracts users, speaks to your brand, and fulfils your business goals, all at once, but it’s necessary. If your site feels stale, uninviting, and unmemorable, it probably is, and it’s time to change. You’d do the same thing for your physical office [space] or reception area.

4. Are You Listening To Your Customers? Your customers are always talking to you; you just need to listen. What are they ordering online? How are they ordering it? (For example, if a fair percentage of customers are picking up the phone to place their orders with a customer service rep instead of ordering online, that tells you something — negative — about the online ordering process.) Customers also send you feedback and communicate with customer service, right? Keep your website user-friendly by observing and listening to your customers. Their expectations will evolve as they’re exposed to newer things on the web, and as technology allows for better user experiences. Redesigning around customer feedback is essential.

5. Is Your Site Shopper-Focused?

Consider the following questions: -Do you truly understand your shopper? -Do you know the various shopper types and their respective personalities, aspirations, backgrounds, preferences, and tastes? -Where do your shoppers live? -How do they think and interact in the real world? -What is their communication style? -Are your shoppers experts? Or do they need hand-holding?

Your website design must cater to your customers; your content and labelling should speak their language; and your navigational structure should allow for customers to shop the way they want to shop, not how you think they should. Be there when they need you, and get the heck out of their way when they don’t.

6. Are You Using Social Media?

Let’s face it: People’s decisions are influenced by the opinions of others — whether friends, family, or the latest edition of Consumer Reports. It’s a fact, so you might as well embrace it — or, rather, embrace the machines that feed our cravings to socialize and consult with others. (Think Facebook and Twitter.) Almost every company, no matter its size, can benefit from adding social networking features to its website. The time when you could ignore social media is gone. Brands are now regularly leveraging this channel and enjoying increased sales and mindshare

7. Are You Capitalizing on New Technology?

The important thing here is to make technology work for your customers — and for your business. Your site can actually define how you run your business, giving structure to your business processes. The magic of the web is the constantly evolving technical possibilities, and the evolving consumer expectations [that result] that every small business should at least consider speeding up their page-load times, introducing new search and browsing methods, integrating product/service reviews, and adding location-based functionality.

If this has this convinced you that it’s time to have your website revamped, please get in touch ?

SEO is arguably the most misunderstood area in online marketing. The basics may be relatively simple: get a site, get it listed in search engines and up goes your traffic and customer count. Or at least it seems that simple.

With literally billions of pages out there it gets difficult and complicated very quickly… even for those of us that do this day in, day out. So how does the average business owner get going with SEO on their own? (I’ll give you a hint: it has nothing to do with buying links or starting a new site every 3 months.)

Patience
Since we live in a time where feedback is practically instantaneous and instant gratification is at every turn, patience is something some of us don’t have. But it’s one of the most important things to remember and practice with any SEO strategy (regardless if you do it on your own or hire an expert). Once you’ve optimised your site, it could take 6 months or longer to see any significant results. Can it happen sooner? It’s rare, but it’s possible.

Words
Starting any SEO strategy involves educated guessing (yeah, sorry to burst your bubble) when it comes to optimising for specific keywords/search terms. Once you’ve gotten it going for a while though, guessing isn’t enough. You need to keep tweaking as you move forward. This involves a lot more than just doing some Google searches. You’ll need to take a look at your web statistics and see what keywords people are actually using to find your site – it makes a big difference!

User Experience
Ranking high and getting a high amount of traffic means pretty much nothing – zip, zero, zilch, nada – if your visitors aren’t sticking around to read, buy, click or call. Maximizing your site’s design, usability and content is absolutely critical. Nothing will send a user running to your competitor faster than a poor user experience. And while I may be biased and it may not be something you want to hear, the fact of the matter is, you’ll probably need to hire a professional web designer to help with this.

If you keep all this in mind you’ll have a good chance of being successful with your search engine optimization strategy. And don’t forget to continually monitor and tweak (little by little) to ensure that your site is improving – in all areas – over time. Don’t forget: the goal isn’t to rank #1 or get a gazillion visits – it’s converting visitors into customers.

Over time, your branding may start to look dated. Design trends change. Tastes evolve. It may be time to freshen up your look to be more in touch with current trends. For example, websites often start to look dated after just a couple of years because the web is evolving at such a rapid pace.

Or maybe your logo was designed during a time when a certain graphic element or style was popular—but eventually became so overused, now it’s considered cliché.

As we get closer to year’s end, some of you may be considering a change in your branding to kick off the new year. And of course, we’re not just talking about logos. But the question some of you will forget to ask is whether you want a complete revamp of your brand or just refresh, repair and  revitalise your brand.

It’s incredibly tempting to scratch everything and start fresh, but it can be time-consuming and quite costly. More importantly, it’s not always necessary. we’d even go as far as saying it’s rarely necessary. For those instances, a refresh of the existing brand is the better choice. And less expensive.

So the question is, when is either one the right choice?

When your brand is ready for a complete branding overhaul, it’s usually because:

• The business has gone in a completely different direction than when you first started (i.e., repositioning);
• There’s been a merger of your brand and another;
• Negative perceptions have hurt your brand and there’s no way to recover;
• Your company name has changed.

But 9 times out of 10 a refresh is more appropriate, such as when:

• Certain aspects of your brand, like your logo, tagline, mission statement, etc., are not as in line as they used to be;
• You’ve added major components to your brand or business that change the perception you’d like to have;
• The visual aspects of your brand are out of date;
• Portions of your visual brand need refining and cleaning up for different media (e.g., a logo that doesn’t scale well for smaller applications).

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that a refresh is often better as it keeps things familiar for your existing customers.

The World Wide Web is one of the greatest inventions of all times. It has also greatly helped businesses to grow. Through websites and emails, we are able to run a business, network, advertise and keep in touch with our customers. In today’s information technology world, internet marketing is the option for your business as it’s affordable for small businesses too. It requires low funds compare to TV, radio and printed ads. Many products do sell through internet marketing.

There is a vast difference between internet marketing and print advertising. There are few strategies to reach customers and get them online. There are different types of internet marketing that can help get potential customers. Internet marketing company USA offers effective online marketing services that help boost your sales. Let us check these most popular and effective internet marketing techniques.

• Google Ad sense: It is a type of a program that allows you to generate revenue by placing other people’s image ads or text ads on your website and in turn have your ad appear on the pages of sites related to your product or service.

• E-Commerce Newsletter: The newsletter helps you develop relationship with your clients and let them know about new products or discounts. You can start with few emails and then can build a vast database for the same.

• PPC Campaign: This is a quick way to bring traffic to your site. By using pay per click programs, you can create ads and link them to keywords. Both yahoo and google have these programs available. You only pay when someone clicks on your ad. The more you pay per click the higher your ad appears in the search engines.

   

• Online Magazine: These magazines offer ad space for a fee and may appear for the duration of the current issue of the magazine. By opting for a magazine that relates to your products, you are able to direct your ad to your target market rather than a generic audience.

• Banner Ads: Banner Ads are usually animated, colorful graphics that go horizontally across the top of a webpage. Skyscraper ads are similar but they run vertically on the left or right side of the page. Both ads link to another website (yours) and entice the visitor to leave the page they are on to see what the other site has to offer.

   

• Website Lead Generation: This provides you with qualified leads at a set price per lead. These are generated by telemarketing companies who do cold calling to find potential customers for you. Lead Generation Services guarantee a particular level of ROI (returns on investment).

   

• SEO (Search Engine Optimization): It is the most popular part of internet marketing. SEO is the best way to increase traffic to your website. This means that your website is clear of any obstacles that would deflect traffic and has plenty of keywords and metatags to attract search engines.

In the nutshell, no matter what online marketing strategy you use, make sure it produces enough sales to cover the ad costs and make a profit.

• Posted by Kathy Green on September 21, 2011 at 3:32am

Here are 7 steps for using social media to build links to your site:

1. Write The Best Very Articles You Can – the key to building links using social media is to write quality articles that provide extreme value to your readers. If you feel that you are giving away too much quality information then you are on the right track. The more you give your readers the more natural links you will receive in return. Keep in mind that the article has to be so good that it compels people to take the time to link to it from their own blog or website.

2. Create a Facebook Page – rather than sharing your content to your friends and family, create a company Facebook page and share your articles through there. Make sure to promote your Facebook page on your website to get as many fans as possible. Unlike email, where you are battling with spam filters and open rates, sharing content on your Facebook page will appear directly in your fans’ news feed right away.

3. Share Your Content On Twitter – Twitter has been the fastest growing social media site in the last two years. Open an account with Twitter and share your articles through your status updates. Make sure to use a good headline that really stands out from the crowd and include a link to your article. You can open an account with bit.ly or su.pr to measure real time traffic from your status updates.

4. Share Your Content On Other Social Media Sites – there are literally hundreds of social media sites on the Internet, including LinkedIn and Google Buzz. Time permitting, create accounts on as many social media sites as you can manage and then share your articles through there, similar to Twitter. You can use services such as ping.fm to update all of your statuses at once.

5. Share Your Content On Social Bookmarking Sites – social bookmarking sites are a little different to social media profiles because they are simply a way to share links to websites that you like. Submit your articles to the top social bookmarking sites including Digg, Delicious, Mixx and Stumbleupon. Make sure to use a headline that really captures people’s attention.

6. Add Social Media Functionality to Your Blog – including links to the top social media and social bookmarking sites at the end of each article makes it easy for your readers to share it with their network. Using the Tweetmeme plugin for your blog allows your readers to share your article through their Twitter account with a click of a button, without ever leaving your site. There are Facebook and Google Buzz WordPress plugins for as well.

7. Become a Guest Blogger on High Traffic Sites – there are many blogs that rely on fresh, quality content published on a regular basis to drive their advertising revenue. If you have examples of high quality blog posts you have written in the past, many blog owners will be happy for you to write an article for their blog. Becoming a guest blogger on high traffic blog will increase your social media presence, the number of fans and followers you have and the number of people that subscribe to your blog. Some guest bloggers will also allow you to include a link back to your site within the article. Of course, make sure you share any guest blogging articles across all of your social media and social bookmarking profiles as well.

Using social media to build links is about creating quality content and then promoting that content online. Social media link building not only increases your SEO rankings but also positions you to start taking advantage of the massive amounts of traffic available across social media sites… which will only continue to grow over the coming years.

by Alex Cleanthous

Over the years we have tested many different areas for improving the performance of a website – some of them easy to implement, some of them difficult. Here are 10 easy ways to improve the performance of your website…

1. Write better headlines - you would be surprised at how many websites still say ‘Welcome to XYZ company’. When a prospect visits your website for the first time they are looking for something specific so make sure to say what you offer in the headline of each page. Write in terms of the benefits to your prospects.

2. Write more sales copy - many website owners get stuck into writing less words so that their visitors don’t have to scroll to read all the wording on the page. The outcome is usually not enough wording to sell the prospect into taking action. It is far better to write more sales copy than less, as long as you ensure that your copy is concise. You can use sub-headings and bullets to make longer copy easier to read.

3. Add a call-to-action above the fold – with a well written headline and a good opening paragraph many of your visitors will have enough information to take action right away. By adding a call-to-action above the fold (ie before your visitor has to scroll) you make it as easy for them to take action as soon as possible… and they do!

4. Include a testimonial – establishing your credibility so that your visitors believe what you say is difficult. One of the best ways of doing this is to add testimonials of past clients on your site. The more information you can provide about the client giving the testimonial (eg name, company, website etc.) the more believable it will be.

5. Include a relevant image – using the right image on the page can make it easier for your visitors to understand what you offer. The best type of image is one that is relevant to your offering and relates to your sales copy. Using the wrong image won’t help at all and can actually hurt your website’s performance.

6. Include a form on the same page – each time you ask a visitor to go to a different page on your site there is the possibility that they will leave – maybe the page doesn’t load or maybe they change their mind. By including a form at the bottom of each page you make it as easy as possible for your visitors to contact you. Importantly, the call-to-action above the fold should link directly to the form at the bottom of the page.

7. Add a phone number at the top of the page – many of your visitors would prefer to call you, and these are usually the prospects that are in a hurry to buy. By adding a phone number to the top of each page you make it as easy as possible for your visitors to contact you. Even if they don’t call you they will feel more confident in using your site as you are saying that you are a real business that is available to talk by phone.

8. Make every page a landing page – if you are running SEO and PPC campaigns effectively, you won’t be driving all of your prospects to your home page… you will be driving them to the most relevant page on your site that matches their search query, which is most likely one of your internal pages. By ensuring that every page on your site has all the information a visitor needs to make a decision (ie points 1 to 7 above) you will make it as easy as possible for any of your visitors to take action on your offer.

9. Use Google Analytics – Google Analytics will show you how your visitors are interacting with your website. Find pages on your website with a high bounce rate or a low conversion rate and use split-testing to start improving them.

10. Start split-testing – Google’s website optimizer is one of the best split-testing software applications on the market. Use this software to continually improve the performance of your website over time.

You can improve your website’s performance by implementing just one of these suggestions, but the best results will be achieved by implementing all of the suggestions above.

by Alex Cleanthous

Should I buy a domain name that includes a keyword in it?

Having keywords in your domain name only makes a difference to your SEO when your domain name is the exact-match keyword that you want to rank for AND is the .com or local .com version (eg .com.au) of the keyword. Two examples of this are homeloans.com.au and travelinsurance.com.au, which both rank at the top of Google for those exact keyword phrases, which are highly searched for.

It’s important to note that using any other keywords in the domain name will negate the ranking benefit of having the keyword in the domain name. For example, mytravelinsurance.com.au will not have the same ranking effect for ‘travel insurance’ as travelinsurance.com.au but it will rank for ‘my travel insurance’.

Additionally, having a .net, .biz or any other extension apart from the .com version will not assist with your SEO rankings – you must have the .com or localised .com version (eg .com.au) of the domain name to rank highly for that keyword.

When is having a keyword phrase in a domain name helpful for SEO?

Only when the domain name is the exact match .com / .com.au version of the keyword you want to rank for, and only when the keyword has significant exact-match search volume to warrant using a keyword in your domain name rather than your company name.

Should I use my business name in my domain name?

Yes. In 99% of the time your business name is the best keyword to use in your domain name as it is easy to remember, builds trust and credibility and it will often be typed directly into the address bar to visit your site.

Should I get the different domain extensions for my domain (eg .net, .biz, .tv, .cc etc.)

No. The only domain extensions worth using are .com or the local version of the .com (eg .com.au). From an SEO perspective, no other domain extensions will help directly with SEO rankings. From a business perspective, you might want to get the other extensions for your business name, but realise that the only one that really matters from your customers’ point of view is the .com / com.au version of your business name.

Should I get a variation of my competitor’s domain name?

No. Aside from possible trademark violations, cyber squatting on a variation of your competitor’s business name lacks integrity and will negatively affect your online credibility, which is one of the most important elements in your online marketing performance.

Should I use dashes in my domain name?

No. If possible try to get an easy to remember and easy to type in domain name. As mentioned earlier the only domain names that help with SEO rankings are those that are the exact-match version of the keyword you want to rank for… and this does NOT include dashes. Using dashes in your domain name also makes it extremely difficult to type in and will work against your branding the larger your business grows.

What is the best domain name extension for my country?

The local version of a domain name (eg .com.au) is the best type of domain name for ranking highly in a particular country. You’ll find that .com domains rank highly for informational keyword searches and for searches where there aren’t local providers, but localised domains (eg .com.au) will always outperform the .com domains, all things being equal.

Can my domain name rank in every country?

No. A localised domain name will usually only rank in its country for short tail competitive keywords. It might rank internationally for longer tail keywords or informational searches, but not for keywords that will drive profits and sales.

Can a .com domain name rank in a local region for a transactional keyword?

Yes, but only if the region of the domain has been set within Google Webmaster Tools. A .com domain name can rank above .com.au domain names if its region has been set to Australia and it has a stronger SEO campaign, but a .com.au domain name will beat it every time (all things being equal, which they never are).

Should I change my domain name?

Only if it’s new and doesn’t have authority or links pointing in to it. Domain age is an important trust factor for Google’s ranking algorithm so it’s always better to keep an existing domain name than to create a new one. Of course, if you can get the exact match domain name for a competitive keyword then it might be worth the move… just make sure you setup 301 redirects to pass on as much value as you can to the new domain.

I have purchased a number of different domain names. If I redirect them to my website will it help with my rankings?

No. The only benefit you’ll receive is if somebody types the domain name directly into the address bar, and then gets redirected to your site. The only time that redirecting a domain name will help SEO is if the domain name has been around for some time, has some good authority and good incoming links.

Using 301 redirects in this instance will give your SEO rankings a boost.

I have the exact match domain of the keyword I want to rank for. Why aren’t I ranking?

It depends on what keyword you want to rank for. Having the exact match domain name of a competitive keyword gives you a big SEO advantage, but you will still need to implement good SEO to rank at the top of Google for that keyword phrase. For example, travelinsurance.com.au ranks #1 on Google for ‘travel insurance’ not just because it has the keywords in its domain name, but because it also has implemented SEO over many years.

I received an email from a Hong Kong domain registry to register my domain there to safeguard my trademark. Is this true?

Probably not. This is a very enticing email marketing strategy that preys on people’s fears. If you are concerned about protecting your trademark across the world, then go right ahead and purchase the 100+ domain names for every country, and then renew them yearly. Seriously, just focus on getting the .com version of any local domain where you will be setting up a website and marketing your products or services. Aside from that, just ignore these emails.

A competitor is cyber squatting on my business’ domain name. What can I do?

You can take them to the Association of Dispute Resolvers (leadr.com.au). It will cost about $5000 in legal costs and tribunal fees and there is no guarantee of success. But if you have a trademark on your business name then you’ll have a good chance of success.

by Alex Cleanthous, August 9th, 2010