Social Media Marketing: Where to Begin?

By Tabitha Jean Naylor 

The buzz on social media is that small businesses are succeeding more and more, thanks to websites like Facebook and Twitter. Of course, the buzz is all over because of social media websites.
There are many reasons to utilize social media for marketing, as many business owners are already aware. Beginning to advertise can be stressful enough, but finding how and where you’re going to market is another step in the direction of confusing.

To make matters worse, with all of the social media outlets available, you’re left with the mind-blowing question: where the heck do you start?
Knowing the pros and cons of the social media outlets available for marketing can help provide assistance in choosing where to begin your advertisement process.

Facebook

Facebook is usually the first place to begin advertising and marketing on, because it is used so often on a daily basis by a number of users, including you.
Some of the pros for marketing on Facebook are:

• Marketing on Facebook makes it easy to target an audience. In fact, Facebook now has ads that appear in the suggested interest of each user, so targeting is almost inevitable.
• With the continuously growing use of apps on Facebook, choosing the right apps can help promote your business. A lot of the apps available are great for driving traffic towards your page.
• Facebook allows users to easily access information about your business as well as its employees and owners. It can give you the option to remain personal or completely anonymous when uploading information onto your business page.
• Commenting and sharing gives users the option to spread the word about your business or company, bringing more potential clients your way.

Cons of Facebook marketing are:

• A lot of communication is required, especially if users are consistently sending messages to your company. Your lack of a response can make the consumer think you’re unavailable or not interested in their business.
• It is time consuming to set up the perfect page as well as respond to all of your followers.
• You must pay to advertise on Facebook and their advertisement prices vary.

Pinterest
Pinterest is another new and developing social media outlet to market through.
Some of the pros are:

• Marketing is mainly visual. This allows the readers to get the picture rather than reading through a boatload of text.
• The audience available to market through seems endless. There are so many different kinds of people who use Pinterest, so the ability to market to people you hadn’t intended is possible.
• Whatever your business or company is selling or marketing can be specifically searched, making it easy to find. If the user types it in, or even a keyword attached to it, it can be found.

Cons:

• Your pins can get lost or go unseen. It’s almost like rankings on search engines. If they’re not frequently viewed or re-pinned, it’s almost like they disappear.
• Your page requires a lot of updating because users want to see new pins from you regularly or you’re just another follower on their list of friends.
• Liking and repining can get confusing and may not actually bring the attention your page needs.
• The rules of Pinterest read along the lines of ‘no self-promotion’. This can make things fairly difficult.

Twitter
Last, but certainly not least, is Twitter. Twitter users can be a great audience to market to.
Some of the pros are:

• Tweets are easy to see because they immediately pop up and are not hidden by other posts or long written stories from other users.
• Everything is straight and to the point. Whatever it is you’re trying to say, the reader will be able to digest because of the 140 character limit.
• The Twitter world is like Pinterest: endless. There are so many users on Twitter, many of whom are willing to follow anyone because of their following count.

Cons

• The 140 character limit can also make it difficult to get in what you need to, to persuade interest to your business.
• Twitter is not good for visuals. Unless you’re a celebrity or close friend, clicking on links to visit the picture is almost too inconvenient.
• Twitter must pre-approve you to promote your business. Like Pinterest, that can make things very difficult if you’re unsure of the process.

Read more at business2community.com/social-media

The 4 Habits of Great Content Marketers

Great content marketers aren’t born, they’re made.
Want to stand out from the crowd? Develop the following habits.

1. Follow a Routine

Routines can be a powerful tool for artists, politicians, CEOs, content marketers, and just about anyone else who is trying to build something extraordinary. There’s no blueprint for what routine is going to work for you. But if you’re embarking on a creative project, it’s in your best interest to develop one.
Have your best ideas before bed? Truman Capote embraced the fact that he was a “horizontal author” who couldn’t think unless he was “either in bed or stretched on a couch and with a cigarette and coffee handy.”

Everyone has different daily rituals. There’s no one-size-fits all solution. Figure out the habits that help you produce your best work, and schedule time to support those habits.

2. Read

In the world of marketing—like most worlds—knowledge is power. And we marketers operate within an environment that is constantly changing and innovating. The best way to ensure your content is contributing to the signal and not the noise is to read—about digital trends, about top campaigns, about the companies our industry leaders celebrate.
If you don’t understand what separate good content from great content, you’re not going to be very successful.

3. Embrace the Struggle

In an interview with the Paris Review E.B. White said, “A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper.”
Creating a well-oiled content marketing operation is hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The best content marketers embrace the struggle. They push through outdated processes in the name of innovation. They buckle silos. They see the chaos and miscommunication rampant within their marketing team and roll up their sleeves.

4. Don’t Assume

In 2012, Harvard Business Review published an article revealing three common assumptions marketers make when it comes to identifying what customers want:

1. Most consumers want to have relationships with your brand.
2. Interactions build relationships.
3. The more interaction the better.

The findings revealed in this article proved that all three assumptions were dead wrong:

1. People want relationships with their family and friends, not a business.
2. Shared values build relationships, not interactions.
3. There is no evidence to suggest the more interactions a brand has with a customer, the more likely that customer is to purchase.

It’s not the content marketer’s job to build warm and fuzzy friendships with the people they hope to do business with. It’s the content marketer’s job to figure out what their target audience needs and what questions they have. With that information, they must meet those needs and answer those questions with highly-targeted, high-quality content.

10 Benefits of Social Media for Business Every Skeptic Should Know

By Kristina Cisnero 

Sharing content with thousands of followers at once isn’t the only benefit of social media for business. Small businesses all over the world have been discovering the ways social media can contribute to success and growth in all areas of their companies. However, there are still skeptics who still don’t see or understand the benefits of social media for their business. In this post, we go over 10 benefits of social media for business that will turn skeptics, like your boss (or even yourself!), into believers.

Here are 10 benefits of social media for business

1. Social media is an easy way to learn about your audience

For businesses in any industry, the key to success is knowing your audience. Social media makes this possible, and easier to accomplish than ever. With tools like Facebook Insights in Hootsuite you can learn the dominant languages spoken among your social media audience, as well as their age and gender. This knowledge can help you cater campaigns and product offers to your target audience, which will provide you a better return on investment.

2. Social media helps target audiences more effectively

Geo-targeting is an effective way to send your message out to a specific audience or demographic based on their location. Social networks like Facebook and Twitter have tools that allow you to communicate the right kind of content to your audience. For example, in Hootsuite you can target by ‘Location’, ‘Language’, ‘Age’, ‘Gender’, ‘Relationship status’, ‘Interested in’, and ‘Education’ on Facebook, and ‘Country(s)’ on Twitter. For example, if you want to send out a post to people who speak Spanish, geo-targeting is an easy and effective way to do it.

3. Social media helps find new customers and expand your audience

Social networks like Twitter allow small businesses to locate their current customers or seek out potential customers. For example, if you open a new coffee shop in the neighbourhood, you can create a geo search in Hootsuite to locate anyone tweeting about needing a morning cup of joe within your area. After locating those tweeting about coffee, you can start reaching out to them, and invite them to come try a hot bevvy at your new coffee shop.

4. Social media allows you to receive instant feedback from your customers’ perspective

Social media for business gives you instant access to positive or negative feedback, which provides you with valuable insights on the customer perspective. For example, if you launch a new product and share it on social media, you’ll instantly learn what your customers think of it. Another way to gain customer perspective with social media is by learning how they use your product; brands often base new products or services on their customers’ original ideas.

5. Improve market intelligence and get ahead of your competitors with social media

With social media monitoring you can gain key information on your competitors, therefore improving your market intelligence. This kind of intel will allow you to make strategic business decisions in order to stay ahead of your competition. For example, you can create search streams in Hootsuite to monitor mentions of your competitor’s name or product. Based on your search results, you can improve your business to offer something your competitors are missing.

6. Social media can help increase website traffic and search ranking

So you built a website for your company, now what? One of the best benefits of social media for business is using it to increase your website traffic. Not only does social media help you direct people to your website, but the more social media shares you receive, the higher your search ranking will be. For example, if every person who follows Hootsuite on Twitter retweets this post, it’s more likely to rank higher in Google’s search engine results page for variations of “social media for business.”

7. Share content easier and faster with social media

In the past, marketers faced the challenge of ensuring their content reaches their customers in the shortest possible time. With the help of social media, sharing content got easier and faster. When you use social media for business, specifically for sharing content about your business, all you need to do is simply share it on your brand’s social network accounts. But keep in mind that getting your customers to share your content with their followers means you need to make sure your social media content aligns to your brand and interests your audience.

8. Social media helps generate leads for one third of the cost

Social media is an easy way to generate leads. For example, Hootsuite’s marketing department was built around content and social platforms, and Twitter ads has allowed us to scale, increase reach, and fuel demand generation. Hootsuite promotes two types of content via Twitter Ads: ungated content (free content requiring no email address for access) and gated content (free content requiring an email). Sharing gated content on social media is a great way for any company to generate leads.

9. Create meaningful relationships with customers through social media

Social media is great for creating meaningful relationships with your customers. For example, social media allows tourism brands to create dialogue with travellers, therefore creating relationships with customers before, during, and after they have booked a trip with the company. This kind of social media dialogue between brands and customers is something traditional advertising will never achieve.

10. Social media lets you increase brand awareness and reach with little to no budget

Social media for business has allowed companies to increase brand awareness and reach of their brand at little to no cost. The costs associated with these strategies are a lot higher with traditional advertising methods. Recently, marketing departments across companies started hiring community managers to increase brand awareness and reach through social media. Community managers foster relationships with online audiences in different regions. At Hootsuite, we have community managers for each of our three regions: APAC, EMEA, and The Americas. This helps us make sure we keep expanding the reach of our brand to those regions and maintain relationships with key stakeholders.

Read more at business2community.com/social-media

NEW 2014 UPDATE: Facebook Page Layout & Tabs

Tabs under your cover image have been removed in the latest Facebook layout update. It may be time to edit your landing page navigation.

To edit your App pages, go to Settings>Apps.

Added Apps
You can Edit Settings clicking on the link.
-Custom Tab Image (111x74 px)
-Custom Tab Name

APPS panel now appears on the left side under the ABOUT profile panel.
Click Manage section to move APPS layout position.
Drag to reorder.

To rearrange APPS order, click Move on top navigation bar under Cover Image.
Move>Manage Tabs
First APP will appear on top navigation bar that should be linked to a primary landing page.

Most traffic on Facebook comes from a News Feed, a post you create or ad you run - via mobile devices!

Cover Image
Your Cover Image banner should be 851x315 px. Page title text appears over the bottom of the image.
You can add a 64 px tall shadow across the bottom that will appear behind the title text.
There is about 667 px between the Profile image to the end of the Cover Image.

Embed Links
Active links can be put in 3 places.
Add links to image descriptions for your About, Image Cover and Profile photos to drive traffic to a post or page.

Your website link will not be visible in the About section for mobile devices. Include a link in the About text that will be visible for mobile users.

Third Party App Creators
Many are not viewable on mobile devices!
Use 22Social for creating Facebook Apps that are mobile friendly. First app is free, then $22/month. Get for free with 3 paying referrals.

5 Ways to Increase Facebook Traffic

Here are a few tips to increase "Likes" on FB.
Giveaways don't attract users who stay.

1. Ask a question...
Builds community.
-What should I do? Preferences?
Wondering How..? Want To..?

2. Share your life...
People like to know about you.
-Who are you?
Share something unrelated to your business.
-Insert Instagram posted photo into FB.

3. Share complimentary products...
-Share a photo of a product and link to it, but not in direct competition.
-Let person know that you shared their work.

4. Behind the scenes...
-Take photos while working.
-Post to Instagram and then FB.
Shows people your process and hard work that goes into your business.
Can combine with a question.

5. Facebook Fan Special...
-Offer 5-10% off a particular item or range of items
24 Hour Special, short term with nice payoff
-Promote around other social networks to drive to FB page.

Ads on Facebook Using Page 'Likes'

Build Lists - Make Sales - Make App Ad Pages on Facebook

Sell your Affiliate products.
Get higher conversions for shares, sales and leads.

List Growth
-Write copy results based
-Give good reason (free giveaway, report)
-More tangible the result, the better

Facebook Insights show demographics of visitor traffic.

Advertise on Facebook
-Page Likes
60% cheaper than Website linking ($1.10 vs. $2.50)

Show Advance Options:
-Include colorful image
-Text: "If you like this, press Like."

Landing View:
-Sign Up Page to FB Tab App squeeze page

AUDIENCE
-Set Age demographics...
-Active credit card user
-Purchase behavior
-Interests:  

lower case interests are more precise for higher CTR

Create FB Tab for landing page
-Build Opt-In list. 

"Intro-enter your name, your email, click to GET INFORMED," to auto responder
 

-2 Step Opt-In on bottom of content post.
"Click to stay informed. Starting with our free Recipe Book."
 

-Use animated GIFs in ad posts to attract attention
-Include video in posts to increase shares

Schedule posts

Use crowdbooster.com to schedule future automatic posts

Create an Ad on Facebook Fast

Here's how to quickly create on ad on Facebook.

Go to facebook.com/manage

Click on "Create an Ad" button at top right.

Advertise on Facebook:

-Page Post Engagement

for business page to run post as ad that shows in News Feed

-Page Likes
See Ads on Facebook Using Page 'Likes'

-Clicks to Website

Insert a photo of something happy or pleasurable

-Choose Mobile News Feed

70% of FB ad traffic comes from mobile users and is cheaper

-Click Remove from Desktop News Feed

-Type in headline that is clear and descriptive

-Insert text that is conversational and explains where it goes

AUDIENCE:

Target your visitors age...

-Create New Custom Audience by uploading an email list

Run split campaigns to test ads

-Interests

Think of your competitors. Target and narrow.

-Categories

Don't use as they are too broad

Bidding:

-Bid for clicks

-Pricing: Manually set maximum bid

Even bidding $1, may pay much less with good ad

(usually $.10-.30 per click)

5 Creative Ways to Write Persuasive Call to Action in Your Blog Post

By Anil Valvi

You might think that it is not important for you to write call to action in your blog post. But, is it so? 

 

If you want your readers to leave their comment on your blog, you write call to action. If you want your readers to follow you on Twitter and become your fans on Facebook, you write call to action. If you want your readers to sign up to your mailing list, you need call to action. The same is true when you promote your product to your blog readers. You need call to action. So, call to action is important for your blog, and it is necessary for you to learn about how to write it effectively. 

 

Here are 5 creative ways to write persuasive call to action in your blog post:

1. Don’t Be Afraid To Ask People to Do Something after Reading Your Post

Many bloggers are afraid to write call to action because they don’t want to come up as pushy and demanding toward their audience. But, this is just not true. When you write a call to action, you are not being pushy or demanding toward your audience. In fact, you are motivating and encouraging them to take the next action. You are not forcing them. You merely invite them to do so. So, don’t be afraid to ask people what they need to do next after reading your blog post. This is important, because when you feel afraid, you won’t be able to write an effective call to action and it will not be compelling enough to motivate your readers.

2. Tell Them the Benefit of Taking Action

You have to remind your audience about the benefit of taking action in the end of your post. It’s not about the benefit for you or your blog, but it is about the benefit that your readers will instantly get once they do the proposed action that you ask them to do. For instance, if you want them to sign up to your mailing list, you should tell them about the benefit of signing up to your list that they can get instantly. Remember, people will not be motivated to do something unless they can get the advantage of doing it. And it is much better if they can get the advantage instantly instead of later.

3. Make It the Next Logical Step

Make their action the next logical step that they should do after reading your blog post. It will go like this. If your readers love your content, logically they will want to get more content, right? Thus, if they want to get more content from you, logically they should stay tune with the latest updates on your blog. In order to do this, they need to follow you on social media because you will always post the latest blog updates there. So, it’s the logical step that they have to do. If your call to action can become the logical step that your audience can do after reading your content, they will just go with the flow. But, if the call to action is completely off-course for them, then they will not respond well.

4. Give Them Time Limit

People are constantly buying limited edition products because of one thing: lack of availability. The rarer something is, the more demand it will get, provided that it has good value to offer. So, it can be applied to your call to action as well. When you give your readers the time limit to take action, you will be able to encourage them to take action immediately. For instance, if you are giving away an exclusive offer to your mailing list subscribers for only the next 7 days, your readers will be willing to sign up to your list immediately just to get a grab on your offer. But, if there’s no time limit, your readers will not feel the sense of urgency to join your list. As a result, it will give less positive response for your call to action.

5. End with a Question

When you ask question to someone, he or she will naturally answer your question. Try it with your call to action. If your call to action is a question, then naturally your readers will respond to it. This is true when you are asking your readers to leave their comment. Once you write a full blog post, you will end it up with a question: “What about you? Do you have some other ideas that you want to share?” And it will automatically motivate people to write comment to share their ideas. Thus, the discussion will start. So, it’s a good strategy for you to end your blog post with a question in order to encourage people to take action immediately.

Those are some creative ways to write persuasive call to action in your blog post. If you want your readers to engage with you and become an active part of your blogging community, writing an effective call to action for your blog post is necessary. If you apply those creative ways for your call to action, you’ll get better response from your blog readers.

Webcasts: Enterprise Social Media Success Leadership by Example

Register to watch these Webcasts:

Enterprise Social Media Success Leadership by Example

See also:

• How to Effectively and Efficiently Leverage Social Media For Your Business
• Social Media Marketing: Separating Fact From Fiction
• The Future of Social Media: How Will It Impact Marketing, Sales & Customer Service?
• How to Prepare Your Brand for Today’s SoLoMo Marketing Environment

Is Social Media Necessary For Getting New Customers?

By David Cuevas

Being a successful entrepreneur requires the ability to develop potential customers by using any means necessary. If you are not currently active on social media marketing channels like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, you can bet your competitors are and they are producing significant results.

83% of marketers indicate that social media is important for their business.

The number of businesses that say Facebook is critical or important to their business has increased by 75%.

Social media has a 100% higher lead-to-close rate than outbound marketing.

Still think social media is a fad? Here are some usage stats for you.

• The fastest growing demographic on Twitter is the 55-64 year age bracket. This demographic has grown 79% since 2012.
• The 45–54 year age bracket is the fastest growing demographic on both Facebook and Google+.
• For Facebook, this group has jumped 46%.
• For Google+, 56%.
• YouTube reaches more U.S. adults aged 18–34 than any cable network.
• Every second two new users join LinkedIn.

Social media can also be used to help you find more details about your business than you ever imagined possible. An example of the power of social media is the use of hashtags and trending topics, which allow you to find specific information about your company, what people may be saying about it, or even find insights regarding the market in which you are involved.

Now What?

Social media is a vital tool that is readily available and will help your business reach new customers and grow in ways – and at speeds – that more traditional marketing can’t accomplish. As the statistics above show, social media usage has gone mainstream. Because people are spending significantly more time on social media sites, the battle for the attention of all of these eyeballs has also intensified.

Develop effective social media campaigns. 

Social media marketing is now becoming a necessity for most businesses.

Companies MUST move in this direction by allocating resources to sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Pinterest. While costs have increased, the rewards are significant. Social media has quickly become the best way to develop social influence and increase brand awareness on the web.

Be sure to implement social media into your marketing campaign today, as it will be the best way to keep up with those around you.

What’s the answer to generating more blog visits?

11 Ways to Boost Traffic to Your Company Blog

By Carter Hostelley,

Read more at http://www.business2community.com/b2b-marketing/11-ways-boost-traffic-company-blog-0812475#h26bioVYPSU1Wvey.99

 

Writing more posts seems to be the new clarion call (with the disclaimer that it still needs to be quality content) since you can only break through the tsunami of content your prospects are drowning in by pouring on more of your own, right? While there’s some truth to this, not all companies have the budget to hire dedicated content creation teams like the folks at Salesforce, Marketo and Hubspot.
What’s a content marketer to do? Here are 11 ways that companies of any size can use to drive much more traffic to their blog.

1. Start with SEO

I know you’ve got an SEO keyword list in someone’s Dropbox folder — you may even have an agency helping out to hone and manage the list. Just make sure whoever is responsible for writing blog posts has access to it and is referencing the list for headlines, section titles, links, etc.

2. Enable Social Sharing

Are you making it easy for blog visitors to share posts on social media? Are social sharing widgets prominently placed and easy to find? And don’t forget to offer the option to share on LinkedIn and Google plus. Include the sharing widgets on the blog summary page too, since many folks share based on headlines — even if they don’t end up reading the full post.

3. Write From Your Prospects’ Perspective

This one continues to be a struggle for B2B marketers. Here’s an easy way to think about it: write your blog posts from your target reader’s perspective (what helps them?) and write the call-to-actions with your company in mind (what helps you?). Making blog posts about prospects “pain” will keep them reading, and make them more likely to share with their social networks.

4. Focus on Getting Blog Subscribers

Over time, your most reliable source of traffic will be those that signed up to receive blog updates via email. Yes, email still trumps social media when it comes to driving visitors. So make email subscription your main call to action for the blog. Why not go further and set up a “light-box” to prompt blog visitors that linger on the page for more than 20-30 seconds to subscribe?

5. Leverage Social Media Channels

Your team has taken the time to build out a decent following on social media, so go ahead and use it. Share your company posts on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. And don’t think one-time. Instead, create a series of status updates and tweets for every blog post (think: three to five) and promote daily for the next week or so. This is where tools like Buffer come in.

6. Promote Your Blog on Your Homepage

Don’t treat your blog as the ugly stepchild and make it hard for people to find. Instead, it should be prominently listed and easily accessible from the main website navigation. Also consider highlighting the latest posts within a featured blog posts section of the homepage.

7. Make Blog Posts a Key Component of Email Marketing Efforts

Are you including your latest blog posts in your email marketing to customers, prospects and channel partners? If you haven’t been, now’s the time to start.

8. Promote in Relevant Communities and Forums

LinkedIn groups are a great place to showcase your thought-leadership posts. And most industries also have other communities and forums that reach your target audience. Make sure and share your latest blog posts in groups and communities that your prospects participate in. Having said that, just keep in mind the guidelines of any group on how best to share your blog posts.

9. Get Bylines and Do Guest Posts

While this is one is less about generating blog traffic, it’s still very much about getting your company’s blog posts read. In particular, those posts especially fine-tuned to help address the pains of your prospects. Industry publications and blogs that already reach your target audience are a great place to get a monthly byline or submit guest posts. Tip: run your post in the industry publication and then, a couple days later, drop it into your company blog.

10. Invite Your Employees to Share

I’m a big fan of employee advocacy. If your company is writing quality blog posts then why wouldn’t employees want to read and share them on Twitter and LinkedIn? Just imagine if you could get even 10 percent of your workforce to help promote your company blog. That could generate lots of traffic, right?

11. Post More Often if You Can

Not every blog post has to be about thought-leadership. For example, do a weekly roundup of industry news and other topics you found interesting and shared on Twitter. Also leverage your other content marketing and media campaigns for posts. You know, write blog posts about an upcoming webinar, latest white paper and company news. Just remember that every blog post should be written with “why readers should care” in mind. Don’t be surprised if you can generate three to five posts a week, or maybe even more!That’s our list, what’s yours? Any others you’d recommend or find work best?

7 Unbelievable Mobile Marketing Success Stories

Mobile is opening up a whole new landscape of communication that we can use to reach customers.

Have you thought about how your company can leverage mobile marketing to increase sales?
When the sky is the limit and the opportunities seem endless, it can be difficult to develop an initial strategy. Reading blog posts and reaching out to thought-leaders is a good way to gain knowledge, but how will you use that knowledge to craft a killer mobile strategy? Learning by example can help get you started.

Here are 7 mobile marketing success stories that will inspire your own mobile marketing efforts.

It's FBPro MARKETER

by Dave Guindon

A new Facebook automation software that hit the market...

It targets your traffic and promotes your products by building high converting Facebook pages.

It looks pretty solid..was built in Adobe Air, 

so it works on MAC or PC ...

Scroll down the page to watch the FBPro MARKETER demo here:
FBPro MARKETER

How to Build a Successful Brand.

Learn the common characteristics of all successful brands, the difference between your personal brand and your business brand, and how to build each one.

You'll learn how your employees affect your brand image, and how to leverage gamification to spice up your brand as well as audience engagement.

How Are Your Employees Marketing You?
Your employees are a direct reflection of your business. So, do you know what they’re doing when they’re representing it? This article discusses the common pitfalls of employee actions that cause negative brand perception, and how to avoid them.

How to Become a Great Brand Journalist to Augment Your Content Marketing Strategy
Brand journalism is rising in popularity as a way to augment existing content strategies. This article covers the who, what, when, where, and why of brand journalism so you can implement it within your strategy.

How to Create and Implement a Branding Strategy
Brands are loved, recognized, and appreciated. Businesses without brands have no personality, no distinction, no recognition. That’s why it’s vital to devise and implement a branding strategy. This guide will walk you through the steps necessary to do just that.

Download information files after agreeing to sign up for their newsletter at audiencebloom.com

How to Use Google's New Top Charts Feature to Improve Your Web Content

BY Eric Siu

As a webmaster, the more you know about your website visitors, the better able you'll be to target future promotions, stock changes, content and more to their needs. Google has a new tool that can help with this.

Conventional keyword research can make it difficult to identify overarching trends within your industry. As an example, suppose you run a website that recommends different credit cards and bank accounts to personal finance readers. You want to know which banking brands are trending among your followers, but when you use your keyword research tool, you get a jumble of results that are hard to interpret.

A keyword list was generated using the search term "bank" within Google Adwords.
SunTrust Banks was represented twice on this list using different spellings. In order to get a complete idea of how many of your readers are interested in SunTrust Banks, you'd need to add all the different SunTrust related keywords together and compare your total against other aggregate options.

This is where Google's new Top Charts feature comes in handy. 
Top Charts provides cumulative trend data in more than 40 categories. Essentially, these charts reveal the subjects that people in a given industry are most interested in based on overall search habits -- not on individual keyword volumes.

SEO Basics: Keyword Research Made Easy

BY Eric Siu

When it comes to optimizing your website for search engines, knowing the best keywords for your brand is critical. But sometimes the process of researching your keywords can get out of hand.

A keyword, or keyword phrase, is an easy way of referring to the queries people type into the search bars of their favorite engines. As a website owner, you want to know which keywords your customers are searching for so that you can use SEO best practices to optimize your site for them and improve your chances of appearing in the natural search results for these queries.

Say, for instance, that you run a pet-grooming business in Bloomington, Ill. You want your website to appear at the top of Google's list for the keyword phrase "pet grooming Bloomington, Ill."

You might have already read about the importance of things like keyword competition or keyword search volume when conducting your keyword research. But forget all of that for a moment. The only keywords you need to worry about when you're starting out are the keywords your customers are actually typing in to their search engines.

There are a few different ways you can find these keywords:

Use your customer research knowledge.
Nobody knows your market better than you do. Instead of relying on a third-party keyword generating tool, start writing out a list of all the different keyword variations your customers might be searching for. Following our previous example, a pet grooming keyword list might include "pet haircut Bloomington, Ill," "dog grooming Bloomington, Ill" and "pet grooming Ill."

Look in Google Analytics.
If you have Google Analytics installed on your website, log in and head over to the "Traffic Sources" menu. There, you'll be able to separate your organic search visitors and see a list of the keywords they used to get to your website. Unfortunately, a large number of your results will come up as "Not Provided" (thanks to anonymous browsers and Google's proprietary reasons), but add the phrases that you do see to your growing keyword list. You can also find similar information in your Google Webmaster Tools account.

Leverage Google's "Related Searches".
You can also head over to Google and conduct searches for each of the individual keywords you've come up with to this point. Then scroll down to the bottom of the results. There, you should see a separate section where Google lists other keywords that are related to your original phrase. If any of these keywords are relevant to your business, they deserve a place on your keyword list.

Once you have an initial keyword list compiled, you can start thinking about keyword search volume and keyword competition. Head over to the Google Adwords Keyword Planner, which recently replaced the External Keyword Tool. You'll need a Google Adwords account to access the tool, but you should be able create an account without funding it right away. Alternatively, if you prefer to use another keyword tool, such as Wordtracker (plans start at $69 per month) to research search volume, use that one instead.

Once in the Google Adwords Keyword Planner, select the option labeled "Enter or upload keywords to see how they perform" and paste your list into the text box that appears. Modify the targeting options if necessary and then click the "Get search volume" button.

The screen that appears will give you a rough estimate of the average number of monthly searches each keyword receives and how competitive Google thinks the phrase is. There's no hard and fast rule about the minimum number of monthly searches you should aim for, as your threshold will be determined by the size of your audience and the profit margins of your products.

For example, if your market is small and your website only receives an average of 1,000 visitors per month, a keyword with a monthly search volume of 100 visitors could be quite lucrative. But if you're serving a larger market and operate on miniscule profit margins, it might not be worth your time to optimize your site for keywords with less than 3,000 to 5,000 average monthly searches.

Search competition is similarly subjective. If you're in a competitive market, you might not have a choice but to target tough keywords. At the same time, just because a keyword has low competition doesn't mean you should optimize your site for it -- especially if it isn't well-targeted to your customers.

If you're struggling to get started with keyword research, I recommend not worrying too much about either one of these metrics. Start by tailoring your sites to the keyword phrases your visitors are mostly likely to use to find your site, assuming that their Keyword Planner results show at least a few monthly searches.

Only after you've cut your teeth on these introductory phrases should you start to worry about metrics-driven keyword research.

How To Find Profitable Amazon Niches

BY Chris Guthrie

The most important step in building a successful and profitable website is keyword research. Now in 2013 there continues to be more competition among niches. This is precisely why you need a tool that can help you find low competition niches in minutes!

(Doing this process manually can take hours to find the right niche)

  

Watch a demo of Long Tail Pro:

http://chrisloves.com/longtailpro
 

Spencer (Long Tail Pro creator) currently generates thousands of dollars per month from Adsense with niche websites and even though Google made massive changes in 2012 to their search engine Spencer is still doing well. So I did a bonus interview with him that you'll get access to after picking up Long Tail Pro. In this interview he shares the niche website strategies he's using for 2013.

6 Tips for Taking Your Video Ad Content Mobile

BY Matthew Toren

Make it snappy.
Moving your ads to the small screen means you’ll need a laser-focused message. Keep your mobile ad campaign short, engaging and low-key. Also, if text is required, make sure the font is readable and avoid images that require scrolling.

Placement is key.
While ads have generally been at the beginning or end of a video, YouTube recently enabled 'mid-roll' ads, meaning channels are allowing advertisers to play ads during a video. This new format could make sense for you, depending on your objective. For instance, placing your ad before a video will produce the most impressions, ads at the end will garner the highest click through rate and mid-roll ads will have the highest completion, according to the 2012 Adobe Digital Index.

Find your audience.
If you are looking to provide your mobile ads on a video platform like YouTube, scope out your target demographic. Users subscribe to a channel which provides consistently entertaining content that suits their needs. Use the demographic information of a channel to pinpoint channels that best fit your target. Once live, take advantage of analytical tools on the video platform.

Leave them with a smile.
People smile for many different reasons and the ability to capitalize on a happy emotion in a short amount of time, could lead to a lasting impression. Try to incorporate humor, an inspirational tale, an emotional moment or a slice of entertainment for impact.

Social media is only a tap away.
Mobile devices and social media go hand-in-hand. Make sure you have sharing components integrated into your video that allows users to post on social media networks, embed in their blogs and email to others.

Skip the Flash!
For content you want to release for mobile users, forget Flash. Back in 2011, Adobe announced it will not support a Flash Player plug-in for mobile, resulting in Flash videos not being accessible on smartphones and tables. Instead, opt for HTML5, as it will allow for resizing across various mobile devices.

ebooks are DEAD... or are they?

BY Dave Guindon

You may have heard that ebook marketing is old-school stuff and no longer works ..

BUT, that is totally wrong!!

One of my top Joint-Venture partners,Vic Johnson, has actually made $221,000 in a single 24-hour period from one ebook that he didn't even write!!

He describes his method of writing ebooks including how to use wordtracker.com to get subject ideas.

In fact, Amazon recently announced that they sell more ebooks than print books!.. and when you consider they have nearly 10 times more print books than ebooks ..

it's a HUGE opportunity with a lot less competition! .. but that's just the tip of the iceburg ...
http://www.daveguindon.info/recommends/vicbooks.php

Trust Jacking - New Innovative approach for quick results!

BY Dave Guindon

What is "Trust Jacking" ?

.. the idea is to harness the authority of hot trending news articles or other high-traffic sources such as top youtube videos.
.. and you get paid from strategically inserting an affiliate product over the hot trending web page!

And it's VERY clever .. and VERY effective ...
Basically, you install a new WP plugin being offered on the Warrior Forum called "TrustJacker" .

Then you find a hot trending topic using the Google trends tool. Simply search in Google for "Google Trends" to find it...
Next ... you match an article or video with an offer in a CPA network or any desired affiliate network such as Clickbank ..
Lastly ... you pop that into a new Trust Jacking campaign and you start sending traffic to your campaign link...

As a result, your web visitors are sent to the hot trending page ..
.. but when they attempt to leave the page, your affiliate offer will appear!

http://www.daveguindon.info/recommends/trustjacker.php?t=ibt1
( Scroll down the page to Watch the YouTube Video )