Posts Tagged ‘Online marketing’

How To Use Facebook For Your Small Business

Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011 by jrajani

 By Kandice L Day

Leveraging Facebook to generate leads, increase site traffic, and even make a little money is every Arizona small business owner’s goal. But in most cases, it’s not as simple as getting on once a week for an hour, posting a bunch of ‘interesting’ information, and getting on with your life hoping that the leads will start flowing in. Facebook is a remarkable tool for creating a ‘buzz’ about your small business and inviting new friends to check out your services, but done in the wrong way Facebook can also hurt your overall brand image.

Facebook reaches millions upon millions of people: 500 million to be exact. And 200 million Facebook users are mobile, getting their Facebook fix from their Android and iPhone and Windows devices. According to the Facebook Press Room, in 2010 the average Facebook user was connected to 80 community pages, groups and events, created 90 pieces of content each month and shared more than 30 billion links, news stories, blog posts and pictures.

Marketing your business on Facebook is no longer a ‘maybe we’ll do it this year.’ It’s nearly a requirement to establish your brand as credible, available, and trending. We’ve put together the top three things you must do on Facebook to be successful, as well as the top three things you absolutely should not do on Facebook. Let start with the bad news first and end with the good news.

Top 3 Mistakes Small Business Owners Make on Facebook

1. Over-Posting – I see this mistake made over and over again. In most cases it happens because the small business owners has great intentions and wants to be active on the social networks, but they either don’t have time throughout the week or they just plain forget. When they do remember, or do have some marketing time, they jump on Facebook, don’t join any conversations or start news ones, but post about five status updates, links and news information in a 15 minute time frame.

2. Not Enough Time – Maybe 15 minutes is all the time that you have for Facebook, and if that’s the case then you might want to consider adding some help to your marketing team. By over-posting, you’re not giving followers a reason to be interested in your company, you’re giving them a reason to “unfriend” you. Take your time with posts. If you do only have 15 minutes on Friday evening to get your Facebook marketing done, put up your most interesting status update in the first minute, spend 12 minutes seeking out new friends and conversations, an in the 15th minute post your second most interesting status update.

3. Unbranding Your Business – Facebook is a great resource for keeping up your Arizona small business brand. It’s important to ’stay in character’ and to ’stay in business mode’ while spreading information about your business brand. Playing games, talking about personal issues, or posting inappropriate pictures will kill your brand. Spending time on Cityville and Farmville from your Facebook business pages will only show that you’re not professional and not concerned with how your business brand appears to others.

Top 3 Things A Small Business Owner Must Do On Facebook

1. Brand Your Business – Send a clear message with every status update, photo upload and conversation piece about your brand. For example, a client of Linwright Design happens to be in the field of pain management, and a lot of patients are living with things like RA and fibromyalgia. So we seek to join conversations around these topics, spreading our overall brand message by suggesting information from our website and our branded blogs on these conditions. As an Arizona small business owner, your profile picture can be your logo with information about your business, or if you are proud of your team and want to make your brand a bit more personal it can be a “family” photo of your employees.

2. Seek Out Conversations – Don’t be over-active in ‘friend requesting’ strangers. For one thing, you will get penalized and possibly even blacklisted from Facebook all together, which is the last thing you want. See out conversations in your industry by doing searches with keywords. For example, for our pain management client mentioned above we search keywords ‘fibromyalgia’ (and more) to listen and join conversations that people are already having about this condition.
(Tip: Go to the search box at the top of your Facebook Page. Enter the keywords that you are searching for. Go to the bottom of the search results where it says “see more results.” Look to the left and click on “posts by everyone.” This will take you to the world and all conversations on Facebook regarding your industry. Listen to what people are talking about, get ideas for blogs, and join conversations.)

3. Be Consistent – Facebook, as with any other social media platform, is all about consistency. So you only have an hour a week to spend on Facebook? Spread that hour out throughout the entire week. Even 15 minutes every day will help more than one hour all in one day. You have to be available to your Facebook friends and you have to be able to monitor your brand. If someone leaves a comment or asks a question, you need to be able to answer those or respond. Even 15 minutes, at the end of your day, every day, will make a small but crucial difference over time.

Kandie Day is founder of Linwright Design, specializing in digitial development and distribution. Mainly Arizona SEO, social media marketing, branded content development, and in-depth analytics.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kandice_L_Day

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Facebook Marketing – Top 10 Tips For Success

Saturday, January 29th, 2011 by jrajani

By Greg J Scott

Facebook marketing can be successful, but you need to take into consideration that Facebook is a social media platform. Use it to gain recognition and credibility in your chosen niche, but don’t go overboard on the selling.

Read these top 10 tips for some great ideas:

1. Add A Like Button To Your Website

If you have a wordpress blog then you can add a plugin to your blog that places a Facebook Like button on your blog. Visitors to your blog can then click on the like button and it will show on their Facebook newsfeed and raise awareness of your blog! If you don’t have a wordpress blog there are also plenty of options for adding it, just do a search on google for Facebook Like Button and you’ll find plenty of options. Facebook have their own page where you can just put in your url and they’ll give you the code to copy to your website.

2. Create A Page

One of the most effective things you can do in your Facebook marketing campaign is create a business page. Unlike your profile page which has a limit of 5000 fans, if you create a Facebook Page you can have an unlimited number of fans. You can also have unlimited pages. Your page needs to be compelling, so keep it updated with valuable content. Include news in your industry, whats happening in your business, but above all make it targeted towards your visitors and make it fun and engaging for them to be there. Make sure you link your page to all your blogs and other social media accounts.

3. Put An Optin Page On Your Facebook Page.

Want to generate more leads? Put an optin tab on your Facebook Fan Page. To do this you need to use Static FBML You’ll find that under apps when you’re creating a page. It works exactly the same as on a website. You grab the optin code from your Autoresponder like aweber or get response, paste it into the FBML box, and you’ve got an instant lead capture page! You can give away videos, free ebooks or whatever you think is of value to your customers, and add them to your mailing list.

4. Keep Your Newsfeed Clean

Block anyone who is spamming. Delete any posts you don’t think are appropriate for your Facebook marketing campaign. Don’t use foul language and keep away from topics that could offend your readers. Just use your common sense.

5. Don’t Ask For Friends Until You’ve Interacted With Them.

Don’t just randomly send friend requests. Search for groups relevant to your niche. Then post relevant information, comment on other peoples posts or like them, then ask them to be your friend. Facebook is all about being social so keep it mind.

6. Have A Great Profile

Make your profile professional but give people information about you as a person. Ultimately, people don’t buy a product unless they like the person. Have a photo of yourself taken by a professional photographer. Put links to your other websites on your profile.

7. Setup Facebook Events

When you set up an event in Facebook (very simple to do), and people respond saying they will attend, their response appears on their newsfeed and all their friends get to see it. This is an excellent Facebook marketing strategy as their friends are made aware of you without you having to friend them. What do you put in an event? Well, you could have a webinar, maybe a product price reduction for a limited time, or give away free reports for a limited time.

8. Don’t Be A Spammer

This is the best way to blow away any credibility you have and is NOT Facebook marketing. Don’t try and sell to people unless you’ve built a relationship with them first by providing value. One of the worst things you can do is randomly tag people in videos or photos that they don’t even appear in. Just don’t do it.

9. Import Your Email Contacts

Yes, Facebook lets you import your email contacts into Facebook from most of the major mail clients like gmail, yahoo etc. When you import them, if the person is active on Facebook they will receive a friend request. They’re your contacts and customers so a perfectly legitimate way to get friends.

10. Place A Facebook Ad That Very Few People Will Click On.

Huh? Whats the point in doing that? Well, if you put your picture on it, and target the right people it’s going to build awareness of you on Facebook. Have you ever noticed how some ads seem to follow you around wherever you go.? That’s the effect you want here. Be warned: There’s no way of telling if it will be popular or not, so make sure you set a low daily budget!

There’s a ton of other tips and tricks you can use in your Facebook Marketing. Above all, make sure you’re always within Facebooks guidelines. The last thing you want to happen is have your account banned after all the hard work and effort you’ve put in!

Learn more about Social Media and all aspects of online marketing by visiting The Six Figure Mentors. The Six Figure Mentors is an internet marketing training company whose main aim is to help you build a successful and profitable online business.

Check out these awesome videos for some great ideas on creating your online business.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Greg_J_Scott

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7 Things That You Should Never Do When Marketing On Facebook

Wednesday, January 26th, 2011 by jrajani

By Ryan C Martin

If you are using Facebook to market your business, then there are a few things that you do not want to do. Some of these things may seem obvious, but there is a surprisingly large amount of people who still make these mistakes.

If you follow these 7 guidelines you will be much more successful with your marketing, and you will build a solid reputation for yourself as well.

Here is a list of 7 things that you should not do when using Facebook to market your business opportunity.

Don’t…

1. Spam people’s profile page with your links

This is a huge mistake because it is not only ineffective, but it will annoy a lot of people if you do this

2. Use a company logo as your profile picture

You should be forming relationships on Facebook. If you have a logo as your profile picture it makes it hard for people to get to know YOU

3. Pitch your opportunity before getting to know someone

No one likes to be pitched on an opportunity. It may come as a surprise, but everyone thinks their opportunity is the “perfect storm of greatness”. People do business with people they know, like and trust. So focus on getting to know people rather than pitching your business.

4. Talk about touchy subjects such as religion, politics, sex etc…

If you are using Facebook as a business tool, then you don’t want to ruin your reputation by posting controversial things.

5. Send friend requests without a personal message

You will get much better results if you take 30 seconds to type a personal message with your friend requests. And it will give you an opportunity to get to know someone better.

6. Expect to get anything without adding any value

If you are not adding value with your content, then this is just like pitching someone you don’t know. You are not offering anything, but you expect something in return.

7. Be afraid to be yourself

People are attracted to unique, authentic people. You don’t have to be some boring business person, you can be yourself and people will be attracted to your authenticity.

Overall

You should use Facebook as a place to meet new people and build relationships. You should not be using Facebook just as a place to spam your links and pitch your opportunity to everyone that you meet.
If you follow these guidelines your marketing will be far more effective, and you will build more relationships.

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To learn more about Facebook and Social Media Marketing you can go here for much more free training: Social Media Marketing

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ryan_C_Martin

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Lessons From the 2010 Holiday Season For Online Retailers

Thursday, January 20th, 2011 by jrajani

A recent study from Baynote found 55% of consumers rate their online shopping experience as “good”. “Although there are numerous studies leading up to the holiday season that attempt to forecast what retailers can expect, few explore how consumers actually thought online retailers performed immediately after the fact,” said Carlos Carvajal, VP of marketing at Baynote. “The results from the Baynote Holiday Online Experience Survey indicate that while consumers had a satisfactory online experience this season overall, in very few areas did retailers exceed customer expectations, with site search and navigation being called out as the top areas for improvement. Also interesting are the study’s findings around mobile and social commerce, which indicate that consumer behavior still lags retailer’s investments in these areas. Next year we expect to see many more consumers using these channels as part of their holiday shopping experience.”

Additional highlights from the study include:

Retargeting and Privacy:

Shoppers Unwilling to Disclose Personal Information for More Personalization:

Eighty-four percent of consumers are either hesitant or unwilling to share their personal information with retailers to personalize their online experience. The remaining 16 percent said they would definitely share their personal information to have a more personalized online shopping experience;
 
Retargeting Widespread but Damaging Brand Equity: 

58% of holiday shoppers recalled experiencing retargeting, which refers to the practice of targeting consumers with advertisements after they clicked on a product or promotion on a website but did not make a purchase. Fifty-four percent of shoppers said they felt that this season’s surge of retargeting was an invasion of their privacy. In fact, 48 percent said that retargeting turns them off of retailers.

Offers and Promotions:

On-Site Promotions Heavily Influenced Retail Sales: 

71% said e-commerce website promotions, such as ad banners, influenced their buying decisions. E-mail was a very close second, with 70 percent of respondents saying such promotions either heavily or somewhat influenced their purchase decisions;  

Promotions Can Be More Relevant:

Nearly 43% of respondents said the relevance of retailers’ promotions delivered to them was average, fair or poor;
 
Non-Traditional Promotions Showing Promise:

In the battle of the social sites, 31 percent of respondents were influenced by promotions through Facebook while only 17% were swayed by those on Twitter. Twenty percent of respondents said mobile-based promotions influenced their holiday shopping.  

Mobile and Social Media:

Mobile Purchasing Showing Promise:

13% of respondents used their mobile phones to make holiday purchases this year while 18 percent used them for comparison shopping. Of the people who purchased a gift with their mobile phone, convenience was the biggest reason for doing so (68%). The second largest factor was because they were offered a time-sensitive promotion (46 percent). Consumers who did not make mobile purchases indicated it was mostly because their computers were more convenient, at 51 percent, and 26 percent said it was due to security concerns;

Few Shoppers Shared Their Purchases Through Social Media:

Only 15% of respondents said they shared product links with their friends on social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter. Although clearly not in the mainstream yet, 16% still purchased an additional product based on their Facebook friends “liking” or purchasing a product.  

Product Merchandising:

Holiday Shoppers Struggle to Find What They’re Looking For:

Retailers did not do a great job this season helping their customers quickly locate the items they sought, likely impacting revenue margins. 57% of respondents said they would like sites to improve their site navigation and 54% said the same for site search. Of product recommendations, site search, site navigation and product reviews/ratings, excellent site navigation is the most valued by consumers, with 58% saying it is very important to them, followed by site search at 53%;
 
On-site Product Recommendations Drove Additional Purchases:

Among consumers who purchased something different and/or in addition to what they originally intended, 42% said they were drawn to a complementary product displayed near the product they were looking at;

Poor Search Results Leading to Site Abandonment:

55% of consumers abandoned sites mid-way through an online shopping session this season. 50% of shoppers said it was because of misleading search results, and 48% said they abandoned sites because they couldn’t find the products they were initially looking for once they arrived on retailers’ sites.  

Methodology:

The survey was conducted online over a three-week timeframe leading up to December 28, 2010. The survey pool was comprised of 500 U.S.-based individuals who shopped online during the holiday season. Margin of error: +/- 4.4 percent.

Source: Baynote

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