Coaching For Success
Social Networking
Enhance Brand Recognition With LinkedIn’s Company Pages
Nov 18th
As an internet business owner, you need to take advantage of every channel available to you to increase the exposure of your business. LinkedIn, the professional networking service with a membership of over 80 million, recently launched an initiative called Company Pages.
Highlight Your Business’s Products And Services
Company Pages will make it easier for businesses to highlight their services, products and recommendations. More than 40 companies have already been profiled on LinkedIn, including Dell, AT&T, HP, Samsung, Microsoft and many others, all of whom now have a tab enabled for “products and services”. This feature will be made available to all businesses in the near future.
Recommendations Seen Throughout LinkedIn
What’s most significant about Company Pages is that it allows businesses to feature customer recommendations. Every time your services or products are recommended by members, those recommendations are made visible to the members’ connections. As well as displaying product and service recommendations, businesses can also use their Company Pages to display such things as targeted ads, videos and featured product information.
Accelerate Growth And Trust Of Brand
In this way business professionals can benefit from the thoughtful perspectives of the people they relate to and trust the most, those being the people they know. By having their most powerful recommendations displayed to potential customers on LinkedIn, businesses are able to take advantage of Company Pages to accelerate their brands’ growth and trust.
Hopefully your internet business already has a presence on LinkedIn as part of your overall search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy. If so you can now greatly enhance your presence through the use of Company Pages; if not, now would be the perfect time for your business to take advantage of the combined power of LinkedIn and Company Pages.
For help getting your company set up on either LinkedIn or Company Pages or both, consult a UK internet business coach who will be glad to assist you in increasing your brand’s recognition.
Facebook – Currency Is Going Virtual
Oct 19th
There’s a virtual revolution smouldering on the horizon for internet business owners. With Facebook’s recent announcement of Facebook Credits, the landscape for e-commerce retailers is about to change irrevocably, so, if you own an e-commerce internet business web site, you may want to sit up and pay attention.
You may be wondering a few things right now; “What are Facebook Credits?”, and “How do they work?” probably being foremost among them. You may also be thinking “This doesn’t apply to my situation”. All the more reason to find out more about something that is predicted to take the e-commerce sector by storm.
What Is Virtual Currency?
Virtual currency was set up to pay for virtual goods online like game credits or items needed to play the games, but is now an industry worth over a billion dollars and growing, so it’s something that you might want to start paying attention to.
Facebook Credits is set to take the virtual currency concept to a whole new level, being Facebook’s biggest initiative at the current time and one that’s bound to affect businesses on the web, including yours, as is the case with most of Facebook’s initiatives. After all, with half-a-billion eyes watching, how could it not have an effect? For online retail businesses, the only alternative currency that matters in future for online purchases may well be Facebook Credits.
Games Today, Everything Tomorrow
While Facebook Credits are only available for games right now, that will be changing very soon. Actually, it’s changing already, because major companies like Google, Amazon and Apple are keenly interested in developing a presence in the fledgling virtual currency industry, which means internet retailers especially should be keeping an eye on that space for future developments.
But, Facebook’s got a head start on those companies, having already established its own currency. Right now that currency can only be used for games and similar virtual purchases on Facebook, but the logical progression is that, through the Open Graph and Facebook Connect, physical goods will be available for purchase over the entire internet, presenting mind-boggling opportunities for e-tailers, from small, one-man operations to major worldwide brands.
Get Your Facebook Credits Here
Facebook Credits can be bought through the network itself and now at Target stores, since an agreement was entered into recently. More retailers are in negotiations and it shouldn’t be long before some of them, such as Best Buy, are offering Facebook Credits for sale. When buying credits online, they can be purchased using major credit cards, PayPal or even mobile phones, with 15 currencies currently accepted, including pounds, U.S. dollars, Euros, Danish Krone, etc.
While Facebook Credits and PayPal are partners today, that may change eventually as Facebook Credits seeks to change the way online payments are made and may end up competing with and perhaps threatening PayPal’s current online payment dominance.
Although Facebook Credits are still in their relative infancy, it’s a fair bet that it won’t be long before they’ll become part of the everyday online vernacular when it comes to making purchases online. So, if your internet business is involved in e-commerce, now would be the best time to learn all you can about this revolutionary new virtual currency and prepare your business for the next online tsunami.
If you’re unsure how this can impact your online business, consulting with a UK internet business coach would be a wise move so you can position your business to make maximum profits from this new method of handling online transactions. Otherwise, you may be left looking at your virtual balance sheet, and thinking, “What if….?”.
The virtual currency revolution is not a science fiction fantasy, it’s happening now, so don’t get left behind.
What Shopping Topics Are Hot On The Social Networking Scene?
Oct 18th
Are you advertising your internet business on Facebook? Does your company have any followers on Twitter? Are you taking advantage of the massive and constantly growing opportunity presented by social networking sites? Of course, having a presence for your business on the major social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook should be part of your search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy, but making the most of that presence is a different matter, and one that deserves close attention.
And here’s why: a recent report conducted by ROI Research Inc. concerning the impact of social media takes a close look at how advice they get from social networking sites influences consumers’ purchases; whether or not consumers post content on those same networks that’s specific to various industries, and how consumers post advice on products and companies.
Most Discussed Industries
According to the ROI Research Inc. report, the most discussed industries on the social networks were automotive, travel and entertainment, discussed by 61 percent, 60 percent and 57 percent of users taking part in the report respectively. When you consider there are over half-a-billion users on Facebook alone, this represents a massive amount of discussion and recommendations and potential future customers, so, if you and your business aren’t part of the discussion, you’re missing out on a veritable avalanche of possible sales.
As far as recommendations on local retailers sought and offered by social network users, it seems that home furnishings comes out ahead, even beating out the automotive industry.
More Hot Topics
This is just the tip of the social media discussion and recommendation iceberg, and there’s plenty of talk going on about other topics, so let’s take a look at more of the leading contenders, according to this study.
- 56 percent of Facebook users were fans of appliance retailers or brands, again a sizable vote for household items
- 49 percent of users rely on social networking sites for advice on purchasing electronics
- 49 percent of users discuss apparel and compare apparel prices on social networking sites
- 49 percent of users are followers of automotive retailers or brands on Twitter
- 38 percent of users take advantage of social networking sites when giving advice concerning home furnishing and financial services products or companies
- 26 percent of users are inclined to purchase an automobile after reading a recommendation that had been posted by someone on a social networking site (higher than any other industry)
- 23 percent of users are fans of or follow one or more travel companies on Facebook or Twitter
The results used to produce this report were compiled from 2009 to 2010 and show just how large an impact social media is having on the retail landscape. Marketers are now beginning to sit up and take notice with the news that businesses’ spending on Facebook advertising has increased 20 times year-over-year.
The results should also make it clear to you, as an internet business owner, that social media should no longer be ignored as far as your search engine optimisation (SEO) and the potential to increase your profits are concerned. For help with making the most of social media and its vast opportunities, consult a UK internet business consultant, who will analyze your business’s current situation and map out a social media strategy to get your business included in the purchasing discussions and recommendations being made on social networking sites.
6 Reasons Why Should Publish A News Feed For Your Internet Business
Sep 16th
If you have a website, you know how difficult it can be to get fresh, relevant content without being a slave to your site and writing everyday or paying out large sums for someone else to write for you. It is well know that search engines see fresh content posted regularly and promote these sites higher in search results. This post looks at 6 reasons why you should publish a newsfeed.
An RSS newsfeed can provide your Internet business with a few additional opportunities for increasing your website traffic. If you publish your own newsfeed it can help you to be found and potentially read/ heard above the noise of the burgeoning email box that seems to be the norm these days as it allows you to get your message straight to your target market.
Many people online seem to think of newsfeed in the same way as a blog but in actual fact a newsfeed has far more wide ranging uses like news alerts, upcoming events, new articles, new resources, search results, or top 10 best sellers i.e. for example Borders and Amazon use newsfeeds for product categories. Newsfeeds have far too many applications to name them but the point being made is that it goes way beyond a blogging face, in fact in-house here at The Internet Business Coach we sometimes use it for Project Management.
Every Internet business owner should be considering having a newsfeed in exactly the same way that they consider autoresponders and newsletters. Think about what autoresponders and newsletters can potentially do for your business, the same is true of a newsfeed. So back to the six reasons to get a newsfeed like RSS:
No. 1: Great for linkbuilding
Newsfeeds are great for link building. The use of an RSS as part of a link building strategy, can quickly help to produce results. If you are not using newsfeeds then you should look into it.
No. 2: More free traffic to your site
A frequently updated feed can bring your site large volumes of traffic in the short term i.e. for any given update, people’s interest peaks if the topic is interesting enough to click and has pull power to attract potential people to stay tuned in. If you apply your keywords well when sending out feeds your result improve.
If you submit your newsfeeds to directories this will again increase your potential to reach new audiences and visitors to your internet business site, this is a great strategy to pull visitors to your site especially if you are new online as it allows you to advertise yourself and hopeful generate leads for your business.
An extra tip for you here, your website’s RSS feed can often do better in feed directories like Yahoo’s Directory than potentially a regular search engine and this is because your inclusion into it is instant.
No.3: Great way to repurpose old content
If you run a blog and you have lots of older articles, or a business site that is not a blog with a fair few articles, product or service reviews and even your old newsletter you can use these to build great new content for your newsfeed as long as the information can still be seen as useful and relevant to what you do, clearly an article review for a product or service you no longer sell is not going to do anything for your reputation but all relevant content is there all you need to do is rehash it to attract new visitors and potential clients/customers. Click to see more help on repurposing your content
No. 4: It’s a freewheeling, relaxed way to update your audience
Lets face it no one wants to do more work than they necessarily need to. If you have a newsletter you know how much work goes into maintaining your list and ensuring that that your newsletter does not get spammed and even after you check, remove, maintain, format etc the job is not over as the following newsletter the process starts again.
With a newsfeed you can push those updates to your audience without worrying with all the above and you can even push the benefits of your newsfeed via your newsletter to get your audience to subscribe to your feed instead which will give them access to your latest news more efficiently and far more frequently than in a normal newsletter which helps sustain interest in what you are doing.
No. 5: RSS gets visitors to click through to your site whenever you update
In order to get these clicks when you update your target audience will need an aggregator (posh word for a newsreader). When instructed, the aggregator asks all the servers in its feed list if they have new content; if so, the aggregator either makes a note of the new content or downloads it.
A person may see a headline from your internet business website they want to read, they can view your summary, and then click through to your site to read the rest of the news article without leave the application they are in or view it in a new window.
Basically each time you update the reader will notify them that you have a new headline, it is this constant awareness of your updates that keep your audience coming back to your site.
No. 6: It’s easy to do
If you can fill in a form then you can get an RSS feed, it is easy to use even for the non-techies and most of all it is effective.
The benefits of a newsfeed for your internet business are great, if like many site owners you invest time in SEO, Traffic and website updates as well as content updates it seems crazy not to add something else to your arsenal to help generate interest in your business and attract potential new clients.
8 Tips To Help Your Tweets Stay Fresh
Aug 25th
Tweeting is never easy especially when you have been doing it for a while trying to find something interesting to say that promotes your internet business website or blog in 120 characters can just gets harder each time.
So today we have posted some inspirational tips to help you keep on top of your tweeting and still inject, humor and life into your social network, traffic building techniques on Twitter.
1, It is best to have more than one person doing tweets for your internet business this is because it adds spice and variety to the way the tweets look, sound and feel.
2, When you are promoting one of your blog posts, try to explain what’s coming or ask an inspired question to get people thinking about the post so they click the link.
3, Staying with questions, Twitter is a great place to ask them if the topic is spicy or contrervasial you will get opinions but be ready for positive as well as negative comments.
4, Find interesting people to follow, if their tweets interest you see who they are following and follow them too, chances are people following them, will follow you.
5, When answering other peoples tweets to you try to answer in a way that allows you to ask what interests you, what has got your attention right now. Not only will this get you a response it will also help you stay on top of current topics and trends especially if your Twitter followers are targeted.
6, When you are discussing your own stuff, do not over do it or blow your trumpet to loud, make any information you give useful i.e give advice, discuss a helpful blog even if it is not yours, give images or stats but only if it helps them.
7, Try to find interesting articles from other people that maybe useful to your following and tweet about them, this does not help your business directly but shows the depth of your knowledge on a subject gaining you more respect this can help you later on with promoting a product or service.
8, Ok, you know your human, but let others know it too, share your human side or the human side of your internet business.Tweeting is all about social interaction and human connectedness so share that side of what you do.
Obviously there are lots of other things you can do to stop tweeting becoming mind numbing for you and the people reading your tweets, these are just a few ideas to help you keep your internet business tweeting fresh.
