Since the inception of the Internet, how a business has shaped its Internet presence has changed from simple webpages to flashy websites and full-fledged social media fueled marketing campaigns. Companies must not only consider how they present themselves, but must also be cognizant of the methods used to make their presence known.
SEO Factors
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is important if a business intends to make money online. Even a business that uses the Internet just to establish a presence or announce themselves an expert in their field has to carefully choose its keywords, and make sure it presents content that is not only search engine friendly, but reader friendly as well. Since Google changed its algorithm, one of the newer SEO trends has been for a company to start a blog and use it to attract customers. Blog posts are more search engine friendly, and allow a business to combine offering pertinent information to its customers with optimum keyword search capabilities.
Internet marketing Orange County Style
Internet marketing in Orange County and around the world is user-specific. It is very similar to word-of-mouth advertising, since customers who like a product or service will tell their friends, but instead of these conversations occurring while chatting on Main St., the conversations are taking place through tweets on Twitter and in Facebook walls. To execute an effective Internet marketing campaign, businesses have to go where their clients are, so knowing your customer demographic and social networking sites this demographic frequents is an important factor when developing an Internet marketing campaign.
Website Design California Style
The newest website design trends revolve around mobile marketing. With smartphones and tablets becoming all the rage, businesses are developing web design platforms that run correctly on a smaller screen. This is an emerging niche market; so many designers are using website outsourcing to have this portion of a business’ web presence completed.
How Jim Rohn’s Art of Exceptional Living Applies to Businesses
- If you plan to begin a business or are a current owner, be sure you are mentally prepared for the challenge. Unless you prepare yourself first, you will have a difficult time starting and/or maintaining a business, regardless of how much time and money you invest in it.
- Everything begins with your philosophy. For business owners, having a personal and unique mission and/or objective is a reflection of their philosophy.
- If you wish to be successful, study success. If you wish to be happy, study happiness. Study whatever you wish to achieve. For your business,
- Don’t be discouraged if you’re experiencing a slump, or worse. Become proactive by studying the cause, and formulate a solution. For example, if sales are unusually low during a certain period, examine causes and formulate a solution. Maybe you need a fresh look to an existing product? Maybe its a matter of chance? Whatever it may be, the ability to analyze and respond to periods of difficulty defines good businessmen.
- Observe how other businesses became successful. Study the details and understand the underlying ideas that lead to establishing a successful business and use them as a model. Don’t just study the positives; recognize the negative aspects as well. Learn from others’ mistakes.
- Before embarking on the journey to becoming an entrepreneur, be sure you are thoroughly acquainted with the necessary knowledge. You cannot know everything, but having a solid foundation will provide you with the structural support – so to speak – for your business. The rest you will learn from experience.
- When faced with adversity, don’t point your finger at others or at the circumstance; take it upon yourself to improve and become better fit to overcome the obstacle. Learning to handle adversity well will serve you well for years to come. No business will climb the ladder of success without being challenged. Learn to embrace adversity and use it to improve yourself and your business.
- If you are an employee, realize you’re paid for the value you bring to a business, not for the number of hours you spend. Even business owners must realize this if they wish to succeed. Investing unproductive hours will lead to nothing but frustration. Turning everything into value and equity is the biggest challenge.
- Don’t dabble in trifle matters. Focus your attention on what matters and accomplish your goals. If you waste time on insignificant ordeals, you’ll be taking away vital time from more urgent matters – a potentially catastrophic mistake for any business. For example, investing superfluous time and money on modifying your car will detract from more important things like attending to clients needs or formulating a better business plan, etc.
- Understand that failure presents the ultimate opportunity to succeed. But as an entrepreneur, you must take initiative and exploit the opportunity, or risk watching it waste away.
- Always be observant. Absorb everything that happens around you from the news and sports to the stock market and politics. There are lessons to be learned from everything. Never stop searching.
If ten years ago someone had told you that your brand would be interacting with your customers on a one on one level every day, you would have probably laughed at them and called them crazy. Today, Twitter has become a medium to do exactly the same thing. Brands are being forced to create a presence on Twitter so that their customers can interact with them on a one on one level.
This has several implications. Online reputation management is becoming an industry of its own where in brands are hiring agencies to handle their web presence such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter accounts. Twitter is being used as a technique for brand building. It allows you to talk to your potential customers on a one on one level. They can tell you if they have any suggestions or problems with your product or service, or talk about the experience they had with your brand. You as a brand need to address them and validate their concerns.
You will also find several people looking for products like yours on twitter. You can suggest your product to them without seeming too pushy. In recent examples, Kingfisher gave five crates of beer to one of their most loyal tweeters on his birthday. This is an excellent exercise in brand building. Many companies also have contests and quizzes on this platform.
A trending topic on Twitter is one that people are talking about in a certain place or around the world. During the Royal wedding the words Royal wedding were a promoted trending topic meaning that it had been paid for so that a certain number of tweets appeared on twitter. This is another brand building method. Often, you don’t need a promoted trending topic and can make your topic trend organically by creating the right contest.
By allowing constant interaction between brands and consumers, twitter is changing the rules for brand building and marketing, especially in online terms. It is giving companies a reason to be on the minds of their customers, audiences and potential clients all the time.
A recent infographic released by mashable shows that almost all small businesses have accounts over all channels of social media. They are actively involved too. Almost 62% of these businesses post 8 plus comments a week.
- 78% of them have twitter accounts
- 75% of them have FB accounts.
Does it make business sense?
Yes it does. On an average a business profile gets around 5 comments a day while a personal profile may get 3 comments a day. The level of engagement on twitter is more compared to facebook. But surprises of surprise- a facebook link get more clicks to your website compared to Twitter.
So be at both places. While twitter encourages one to one conversation and interaction, facebook targets customers who would like more information.
So, you there?
Okay guys, I know I have been on and on about social media in the last two posts, so I now want to wrap it up with some uhmm.. advice (of what you probably know).
- Being too direct in your sales pitch could scare people away. So, think passive, think indirect…help people with “how to’s” “why’s”. Listen, share and be humble. Bragging about the money you are making is not going to win you friends.
- When people add comments in response they might need a response from you. If available, follow or subscribe to the hot feeds that you have contributed to. This is vital to retaining customer loyalty and satisfaction.
- Make it easy and non-threatening for your audience to participate. Not only does your content matter on the social web but your personality matters, too. In other words, you need to be accessible and approachable in all of your social media marketing communications. Don’t talk at people, talk with them, and do so in a manner that makes it clear that you want them to join the conversation.
- Acknowledge and recognize your audience. The power of social media marketing comes from the relationships you develop with your online audience (who will become brand advocates and will talk about your business, champion it, and defend it against naysayer). With that in mind, you must acknowledge people when they reach out to you.
- Integrate all your marketing efforts. All of your marketing efforts should work together to present consistent brand messages and lead to your ultimate marketing goals. You should also cross-promote your various marketing efforts. For example, feed your blog content to your Twitter and Facebook profiles using a tool like www.Twitterfeed.com. Promote your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn profiles by including “Follow Me” buttons in your blog’s sidebar that link to your profiles. Include your Twitter ID in your printed ads and link to your blog and social media profiles in your e-mail signature.
- Do not harass your followers with a constant flow of updates.
- Focus on relevant promos that will appeal to your customers.
- Give free stuff… a lot of it.
