Why Twitter is Vital for Business

August 10, 2011 0 Comments

This is a guest post by ZK. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

Twitter is one of the best business tools in the internet. It now boasts more than 50 million visitors every month. The following are different ways Twitter can be used for business to increase traffic and revenue, reduce costs and improve services.

Keep track of real time discussions about your brand or company. This can help your management and marketing teams to see what people are saying presently about your company or your brand. Marketing campaigns can then be modified based on the monitoring.
Carry out real time searches concerning your niche, including monitoring the competition and seeing what people are saying about them on Twitter. Some of the tools that are useful for searches include Google alert and Tweetdeck.
Broadcast headlines and links that can generate traffic for your blog, website, YouTube channels and landing pages.
Enhance customer service by keeping track of discussions about your company or brand. You can then respond fast to address potentially detrimental PR disasters.
Communicate and interact within your business sector, niche or marketplace through direct messages, retweeting their tweets, or commenting on their blogs. This will help you connect easily with some people who would otherwise not respond to an email or take a phone call.
Run special promotions and deals on Twitter that will help you sell slow moving stock or drive traffic to your site.
Build your personal and company’s brand by presenting yourself as an expert or thought leader. Post great tweets regularly and embed links which direct readers back to your site or blog.
Connect with other leaders in your niche by following them and leaving comments on their tweets. With time, they might return the favor by following you and commenting on your tweets.

ZK is the co-founder of Internet Marketing Blog where accomplished writers and bloggers share their tips, strategies and stories. Follow him on Twitter at @webtrafficroi.

Why is it Important For Your Local Business to Get Registered in Google Places?

June 29, 2011 0 Comments

This is a guest post by Susan. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

Google started as a search engine but with the passage of time, it has evolved into something much more bigger than just a search engine. But still, many businesses still fail to utilize the outstanding features it offers for small businesses, the most noteworthy being, Google Places. Getting registered at Google Places can not only give your business better exposure in local searches and increase your chances of showing up when someone search with the name of city along with the business type at Google (e.g. New York Window Cleaning Service or Chicago real estate agent, etc).

There’s a reason why more than 50 million businesses are already registered with Google Places. If you are not one of them, get on board as soon as possible, and try to make the most of Google Places. Some of the benefits that you can expect are given below.

- Increase and manage your presence

Google is trying to get more and more social. Not just because it is trying to get some market share from Facebook but the truth is that they are just trying to follow the trend. Just like Facebook, small businessmen can update their Google Places on daily basis. These updates can be an announcement, new promotions, clearance sales or simply “the store is closed today”.

- Keep a tab on your competitors

What would be better than knowing the local business of your area and staying updated with what other businesses are doing to get more customers? Google Places allows you to do just that by, you can also look out for other suppliers or businesses that you can collaborate for mutual benefits.

- Using multimedia files to entice customers

Uploading pictures and videos in Google Place is a regular facet; the exciting picture feature can be used to show different sections of your shop to add credibility.

- Aim for decal

Based on the number of searches performed by your business name, Google will decide if your business deserves to be in the esteemed list of Google favorite places. Even though this feature is limited only for US businesses, but still getting registered at Google and being there will increase your chances of getting decal when Google decides to launch it in other regions.

- New Openings

Through regular updates, you would be informed about the new openings in your area, the new store and business added in the Google Places. Without wasting a second on online searching, you can get to see what’s new businesses are opening in your locality and if some of them can take some market share from you.

- Keep track of the visitors

Websites spends hefty amounts on figuring out how the visitors like their websites and how they can reduce their bounce rates. You can know a lot about how your customers perceive your business by keeping an eye on the analytics, and you can change your descriptions or add more features to increase your CTR.

All in all, Google Places is a necessity and the sooner you can get there, the better it is for your business.

Susan is a wholesale and B2B marketing expert. She writes frequently on the topics related to wholesalers, distributors, dropshippers and trade suppliers.

Managing Your Marketing Agency Expectations

July 26, 2010 2 Comments

The way that you manage expectations can have a lasting effect on how productive you are. Managing expectations does not end internally, but you have to do a good job managing your expectations for outside vendors. Not every company can handle all of the aspects of running a business in house. Sometimes you have to venture to outside vendors for help. A large swing for companies running an online business or even a presence is the use of an interactive marketing agency.

Interactive Marketing Agencies are a little different than what people think they are. They do not only handle your advertising online, but they also help with tasks such as brand strategies, overall marketing strategies, PPC management, content management, conversion optimization, social media, and pretty much any task that relates to running a successful business online. Agencies can be a breath of fresh air to an online business, but you have to manage your expectations for the agency.

Agencies of any size and type are not miracle workers. They can only provide services to companies that have realistic goals. While they can provide great services to revamp your whole business, you need to know where you want to take your company. You need to have an established goal and vision for where you want the interactive marketing agency to take you. If you contact an agency without having these goals in place, then you could be disappointed in what the agency accomplishes.

Agencies are usually really good at communicating what they are doing, so you need to make sure that you are on top of your own goals and milestones. I would recommend that you have the marketing agency help you create realistic milestones for your specific business and website. This way everyone will be happy when each mark is met and you are not mad for expecting more. Remember that managing expectations is an important aspect of running any business, so make sure you do it for your internal resources as well as any external resources.

This is a sponsored post

Search Engine Submission Reality

July 25, 2010 2 Comments

I received a question from a reader this week in regards to search engine submission. The reader asked that if they are starting a new website, would it be worth the money to use a search engine submission service. While I haven’t heard this question in some time, I figured I would address it for anyone thinking about using such services.

My short answer to this question is no to search engine submission services. While there is quite a bit of information on the web that would tell you that if you don’t submit your site to search engines, then you will never receive traffic. These such statements are actually comical and tend to be created by websites that provide search engine submission. Don’t let these companies trick you into thinking that you need them. Search engine submission is a very old way of getting search engines to look at your site. Webmasters do not use these services anymore because they do not work and the large search engines do not really accept submissions anymore.

If you are looking at search engine submission and you think that a service is going to submit your site to over 1,000 engines or more, then you need to leave the site immediately. While there might be thousands of search engines out there, there are only 3 that you need to worry about. Google, Yahoo, and Bing are the big three and are the only ones that you need to care about. I will let you know that Yahoo is now using Bing’s results for their search engine, so you really only need to worry about Google and Bing. There are many free search engines submission services out there, but don’t even waste your time.

The best way to get your new website into a search engine is to get links pointed to your website. The best links that you want to get would be on websites that are relevant to your website. There are many great link building services out there that could help your website receive quality links. I would recommend that you join a good webmaster forum such as DigitalPoint or V7N for great services and tips for the help on your new website. DigitalPoint is a great forum that has many different link building services out there that you can get for very little money.

So, if you have a new website that you want to get into Google and Bing, then check out some quality link building services to start the process. Leave the search engine submission to people that love to waste money and time. You should also join Google’s Webmaster Central and Bing’s Webmaster Toolbox. With both of these free services, you can enter your website information, get your website verified, and then submit a sitemap of all your website pages. This is also a great way to get your website included in the search engine’s index. If you do not have a sitemap, you can create one for free up to 500 pages with XML Sitemaps. Good luck to everyone that is just starting a website and congratulations on your new venture.

How Will You Treat Social Media in 2010?

December 24, 2009 1 Comment

As 2009 nears an end and 2010 begins, it is time for both online and offline marketers to get their agendas finalized and hopefully budgets together. As we look back at the struggles of 2009 with the recession, we see that one medium has thrived and will continue to thrive. Social Media has blown the gates down this year as many retailers start using it to promote their companies and provide deals and sales to their followers. The main question is will you start or continue with social media?

If you have thought about getting into social media, but just haven’t done it yet, 2010 looks like it is the year to start. With more and more people jumping onto social networks and following their favorite retailers, everyone should start getting a piece of the pie. A lot of companies have created new positions for social media in order for everything to be properly tracked and accounted for. It is easy for customers to post negative things about your company and you want someone or a team to be on top of that and provide real time action for those negative comments. This shows that you are dedicated to customer service and only Social Media provides that instant fire fight capability. Without it, you resort to trying to resolve issues the old fashion way. As more retailers and businesses join the social media ranks, it will become the mainstream way to handle customer service issues and the most cost effective. There have been some companies that have eliminated their phone staff for social media experts. This method does not work for everyone, but it can work for some.

If you are already participating in social media, how can you improve on it? Does your company provide exclusive deals via twitter or facebook? Do you offer product reviews via Youtube? Are your company updates visible to your followers and your groups? There are many ways to improve how you use social media, so think outside the box and use this medium as a way to improve your relationship with your customers. If you have the capability, it would be wise to assemble a team to improve your social media usage and increase its power for your company. 2010 is the year of social media, so jump on board and control your company’s brand a little better.

iMark Interactive