Category: Marketing

Twitter Engagement

August 23, 2015

Twitter – who wants to bother? who has the time?

The Twitter may scroll quickly through your life but it is worth participating in Twitter to get engagement and potential awareness for your brand. Also, you can connect with others who you might want to partner with when you converse on Twitter.

According to this Twitter study in 2014 by Stone Temple Consulting, you can get engagement!

If you are a well-known authority in your field, it will be easier for you to get followers.

It is true that image attached to a tweet will increase re-tweets and “favorited.”

Increasing hashtags in a tweet doesn’t make a significant difference.

Most interesting is that the time of day didn’t affect how much engagement was given.

As you can see, Twitter is worth sending out your messages in and there is training in The Business of At Home Business membership.

Please include attribution to www.stonetemple.com with this graphic.

Categories: Twitter Tags: Tags: engagement, marketing, twitter

Facebook Marketing

August 17, 2015 jgardner

Tips On Using Facebook For Marketing

Facebook’s popularity with Internet users has run into the millions since its acceptance of anyone with a valid email address in 2006. Most members play games, update their profiles and upload photos or videos for their friends to view. While planting crops on Farmville, drinking virtual coffee in the cafe or beating off snakes in FrontierVille is addicting, Facebook can also be a powerful marketing tool for Internet marketers.

Marketers, including those using the Internet to market their products, know that in order to attract potential customers, they need to announce the benefits of their products to a large audience and give their readers a reason to visit their site. Simply put, no Visitors = No Sales.

Facebook members make connections with each other, called Friends, and you are only allowed to contact or message those friends. Member profiles are only available to other Facebook members, which creates a loose pool to specifically market to. Some of Facebook’s most popular applications, those you probably use every day are specifically for Internet marketers.

In fact, marketers who know how to market on Facebook start that huge marketing process with their Profile, adding games, puzzles or videos that are interesting to other users. Facebook’s underlying purpose is to make the site a fun place to be. An RSS feature allows users to syndicate their blogs, increasing their exposure dramatically.

Users can use Facebook to promote products from Clickbank and Amazon as an affiliate, whether they have their own website or not.

Here are some tips to get you started and to keep you out of trouble with this very powerful social networking site.

Each user has a profile page and part of that page is used for The Wall;effectively a place to post messages for each user to see. If your “friends” have access to your full profile, friend marketers can post messages on your Wall. Perhaps a more effective application might be posting attachments to your Wall promoting products.

Application developers have found a home with Facebook and are happy to design applications that rapidly become standard Facebook apps, taking advantage of the Web 2.0 graphic and audio options available to users.

One feature that’s used by those who scan posts instead of reading them is the Status feature. This feature is a quick update on what you are doing and, used carefully, can be a powerful marketing tool. For instance, using Facebook’s format, “John Thomas just finished his new software.” A convenient link to that sales page for that software would get a lot of traffic just from curious members.

A Facebook Event is used for keeping friends aware of upcoming events. Here is where a marketer can advertise seminars, podcasts and ecourses, to name a few. Facebook’s rules about announcing an event should be carefully read in order to avoid being branded a spammer.

Videos are everywhere and have rapidly become the most popular method to use to market many Internet products. Videos can be added to Facebook with a Facebook Mobile application, which has a webcam feature. The videos cannot be shared outside of Facebook, but with the huge membership ranging in the 60 to 70 million users and growing daily, that shouldn’t be too much of a setback to a smart marketer.

Facebook is the perfect versatile application for creative marketers to increase their traffic and, therefore, their customer base. Simple processes can be powerful marketing tools and Facebook is no exception.

Categories: Facebook

Communication by Text

August 17, 2015 jgardner

Why Get It Transcribed?

Audio interviews and webinars, video PowerPoints, and how-to screencast demonstrations are no longer considered “new” in Internet marketing, but they’re communication mediums that are certainly here to stay.

Although audio and video work great for imparting information, the need for the written word is still there, especially to accompany the audios and videos. I’m talking about transcriptions; written documentation of what you’ve recorded verbally and/or visually. Why should you go the extra mile and the extra expense to have your webinar transcribed?

Here are a few reasons:

1. When you have your audio or video transcribed, you’ve just increased the value of your product. Perhaps your audio interview is free to your listeners, but if they want the transcribed version, they’ll have to pay for it. Or you could offer your product with the audio and transcription for one fee, and without the transcription for a “lite” fee. Another idea is to add the written document as a bonus to your product, or offer it in an upsell.

2. Even though audio and video are popular, not everyone likes this medium. Many people prefer reading over listening. It could be they’re fast readers and like to go at their own pace rather than be at the mercy of an audio that seems to be going too slow. Or maybe they are short on time and prefer to skip to the parts that are of particular interest to them. Some find themselves daydreaming or becoming distracted and can’t follow along very well.

3. There are times when people can’t listen, no matter how informative your webinar is. The timing may not work into their schedule – people are so busy with work, kids, chores, civic duties, etc. and if you lose them, you lose your chance to impart your wisdom, take your brand up a notch, make a sale, or whatever your reason for doing the webinar. Similarly, the person might not be in a location where they can turn the volume up (like at work, in a waiting room, while on the bus) and they don’t have earphones. After all your hard work of putting on the webinar, you don’t want to lose any potential customers. Offering a transcription of your webinar will make these people happy. It shows goodwill on your part.

Doing webinars, audio interviews, podcasts, and videos is great for business. It adds dimension to your brand, gives your sales page or website some punch and makes lots of people happy who like to listen. But take it a step further and make everyone satisfied by having your audios transcribed. It’s a good business practice that can affect your bottom line.

Categories: Text

Keep your Hat White in Internet Marketing

August 17, 2015 jgardner

What Color Is Your Hat – Black, Blue, Gray Or White?

Many people wear hats of different shapes and colors in their lives. While most parents and business owners might just consider those hats to be a necessary part of a work outfit or a fashion statement, on the Internet, specifically with Internet marketing, they have a very different meaning.

Knowing the differences between the “hat” colors and the risks you take when you chose one over the other will help keep you out of Google death as you attempt to manipulate search engines. Google has a very short tolerance for unethical practices that attempt to work around their rules.

It is commonly agreed upon that the safest techniques to follow in your marketing campaigns are the White Hat strategies. If you remember the old cowboy movies where the hero always wore the white hat and triumphed over the bad guys who wore black hats, you will see the implied differences in hat colors.

White Hat

A marketer using white hat techniques is not malicious in intent or actual practice. They follow business practices that are considered ethical and acceptable by the industry and do nothing that could be considered spamming others. They are not trying to find and exploit loopholes in the systems.

Grey Hat

Practices start veering off the benign white hat techniques when marketers start pushing the edges of legality and use somewhat shady methods to get what they want on other sites or to get around Google’s rules. Some of these techniques used might be reverse engineering of copyrighted or trademarked software, or copying small sections of articles and passing them off as their own. They may have found a loophole that will be closed once Google figures out what they are doing.

Blue Hat

This term is used by firms involved in computer security and refers to hackers hired to unearth bugs in a system before it is launched. When the blue hat hackers find unprotected areas of a client’s security, they quickly close the hole in the company’s software or report it to the security team.

Black Hat

A black hat can be a person who breaks computer security without permission to vandalize a site, steal credit card information, steal identities or pirate another marketer’s proprietary information or processes. A black hat marketer is someone who participates in illegal ways of getting better search engine rankings including keyword stuffing, spamdexing, spam linking, scraped content and article spinning of copyrighted material, hidden website links, excessive cross-linking, etc., that is for rank gain rather than for a better user experience.

Again, it is usually better to keep your White Hat on or you’ll always be looking over your shoulder for the Google police.

If you’re wearing a Black Hat, you may find yourself with a spike in results, but it won’t last and is not a steady income you can count on.

Categories: internet marketing, website

Pinterest Analytics

June 9, 2015 jgardner

Have you checked your Pinterest analytics? Did you know that Pinterest had measurements and analytics that you can use in your marketing strategy? This is a screenshare of my Pinterest Business Analytics from September 2014.

According to Pinterest here are some of the marketing information you can get from your Analytics.

Profile analytics show you how Pins from your profile are doing.

Filter by device: You can use the dropdown menu to filter profile data by device. Learn what people are seeing, clicking and Pinning from a particular device (like their phone), or from all devices combined.

Impressions

The number of times a Pin from your profile has appeared on any feed. You’ll see it first as a daily average, but you can use the graph to look at specific dates. Use the date picker to see data across different time periods.

You’ll also see the top 50 Pins with the most impressions, and the boards with top Pin impressions, for the past 30 days.

Tip: You can use this data to see which of your Pins are getting the most reach across Pinterest, decide what Pins will appeal to your audience, and add more Pins to your profile to increase impressions.

Repins

The number of times someone added your Pin to one of their own boards. Repins are how Pins get shared across Pinterest. You’ll see it first as a daily average, but you can use the graph to look at specific dates. Use the date picker to see data across different time periods.

Note: We started collecting profile repin data Feb. 1, 2014. Your data will go back to that date.

You’ll also see the most repinned Pins from the last 30 days and the boards with the most repinned Pins from the last 30 days.

Tip: These popular Pins on Pinterest can help you think about what content to create in the future.

Clicks

The number of clicks and unique visits back to your website. You’ll see it first as a daily average, but you can use the graph to look at specific dates. Use the date picker to see data across different time periods.

Note: We started collecting profile click data Feb. 1, 2014. Your data will go back to that date.

You’ll also see the 50 Pins with the most clicks, and which of your boards have Pins with the most clicks, for the past 30 days.

Tip: These Pins help you drive traffic to your website. You can use this information to think about how you might organize your products and other content on your website.

All-time Metrics

An assortment of metrics, including:

Your all-time most repinned Pins: This goes back to the beginning of your Pinterest account.
Best in search: Pins that are ranked highly in search. You can improve the search quality rankings of your Pins by writing quality descriptions, using Rich Pins and making sure all of your Pins link back to somewhere meaningful.
Power Pins: Pins with all-time high engagement from Pinners, using a combination of likes, repins, comments, sends and more. This goes back to the beginning of your Pinterest account.

Categories: Grow a Home Business, Pinterest Tags: Tags: analytics, pinterest

Youtube Card

June 9, 2015 jgardner

Before Youtube Cards were implemented by Youtube, when you created a video, you had to put a link as a visual link in the end of your video.
Now, Youtube has realized that there was a need by their customers to have a Call to Action in their videos so they created the Youtube Card.

In the Youtube Card, you can have a link to your website or thumbnails of your other videos that a viewer can click on to watch more videos.
I am creating some trainings on how to setup and marketing using various social media platforms from Facebook to Twitter to Youtube so I will have more information on these trainings later. Have a look at this Google post on what a Youtube Card is!

Categories: Youtube Tags: Tags: marketing, Youtube

Loyalty program

June 9, 2015 jgardner

Build Brand Loyalty with a Loyalty Program

Social Media Examiner has great article on how to increase the engagement of your fans to your brand.

With #facebook #custom audience tracking , you can create custom audiences to market to in Facebook.

Now, this idea of Points and Loyalty Program for your #Brand is similar to the Airline Loyalty Program – you know you pick one Airline because you get more Points! Why not use that idea to give visitors points and recognize their loyalty by giving them rewards.

Categories: social media Tags: Tags: facebook, loyalty

Facebook Organic Reach

June 2, 2015 jgardner

Facebook Organic Reach

Facebook organic reach has declined recently for businesses ( since April 2015) so businesses have to develop new strategies to reach their customers and get their engagement for their product or service.

At www.quicksprout.com, they do many studies on how to increase customer engagement and they developed this Infographic to explain some of the ways you can reach out to your customer without having to do direct adverting. It is a great infographic so I had to embed ( they gave the embed code) on my website.

How to Improve Your Facebook’s Organic Reach

Courtesy of: Quick Sprout

Categories: Facebook Tags: Tags: facebook, infographic, organic reach

Content Marketing on Social Media into your Marketing Plan

May 19, 2015 jgardner

As a business, why do you have to spend time creating and sharing content on social media? You want to spend your time selling and developing product or service to your customers! You don’t want to tweet, friend or google?!

Well,

It increases your followers for your social media platform, whether it is Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Linkedin, Instagram or Pinterest or any other platform that your audience hangs out, which increases your reach.

According to +Belle Beth Cooper of +Buffer in https://blog.bufferapp.com/10-secrets-to-finding-and-sharing-better-content-on-social-media

they “found that the optimal number of tweets to engage your followers is 1-4 per hour, and for Facebook it’s no more than 1 per day. ”

So, by doing the social media strategically by:

a: deciding where your audience hangs out

b: creating a presence on that platform with your business

c: finding out what social media posts they like on that platform

d: create an editorial calendar for creating the posts and how many you need and when to post them

You can increase your followers (or in business terms, your prospects) for your business.

2. Sharing content increases your authority in your field.

Whether you share your own content about your business topic or you curate other authority sites and add your comments, you can be seen as someone who is knowledgable and “top of your game”.

3. Your followers expect more content from you and if they are trained to open, they get more value from your content.

4. If you consistently post on a regular basis, good value content whether yours or you curate others content, your followers expect to see it and it becomes a habit for them to open and learn from you. Being a teacher in your field for others and giving them posts of value with tips and knowledge they can use, this increases your credibility too.

5. Your followers see you as a thought leader and your credibility rises which means your customers develop the habit of buying what you are selling as they see you as an authority.

As your followers expect your content in social media and you give them value and you become an authority in the field, your relationship with your followers (prospects) becomes closer especially if you reply to any comments about your post or you add some personal posts during this process.

People will get to know, like and trust you all through social media. Content marketing on social media is well worth doing as it is a free form of accessing people throughtout the world spreading information about you and your business!

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Categories: social media Tags: Tags: content, marketing, social media