Coaching For Success
Posts tagged social media
Internet Business Facebook Fan Pages
Feb 14th
In the pursuit of more potential customers and more visibility for your Internet business you should have at least looked into social media platforms once. Top of the list should have been Facebook, and how you can use this platform to reach those customers.
Please understand one basic fact about Facebook Fan Pages and that is they are great for internet marketing to promote your business, key features for online promotion include; discussion hosting and wall, messaging to members (great if you have a promotion or special offer on), video and photo public exchange, related event creation and promotion with social ads.
Fan Pages use features such as group contact, which allow messages to be sent to the group and they show up as a tiny link or “Update” in the upper right-hand corner of your Facebook Home Page. There are also many tools like targeted Message sending, you can filter by age, sex, country, etc. then you send the message to them, interesting for business you can use these options to specifically target your audience sector or group, collect stats and even promote your internet business site or Fan page using ads.
The main reasons a Facebook Fan Page is better for your Internet Business is it will help drive traffic and find a larger more targeted audience for your products and services, it can also help you build long-term relationships with your fans, customers and readers. Facebook and SEO are more connected than ever which both Google and Bing admitted in December last year they both stated that Twitter and Facebook impact rankings.
Fan pages are visible to unregistered people and are thus indexed and are a source of traffic – from search engines and from within Facebook itself. Building trust and credibility is important and you need to engage people on a personal level. Fan Pages are great for reputation management, as they are perceived as more personal and inviting than your standard Internet business web pages.
If you have an Internet business you should love the idea of reaching an unlimited audience, and the possibility of that audience growing all the time, then a Fan Page is what you need, since that also avoids any connection to a personal Facebook account.
The main point here is that your Internet business needs to establish a presence on Facebook as part of a complete internet marketing strategy, to gain you results and grow your internet business, if you are still not sure how to get the job done then speak to a UK internet business consultant here at The Internet Business Coach who can help you create a great Fan Page for $300
Bing Becomes Friends With Facebook
Oct 22nd
It’s been bandied about for some time now in search engine optimisation (SEO) circles that social media must be part of any well-rounded search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy. But the need to implement social media campaigns has taken on a new level of importance with the announcement by Bing of the expansion of its partnership with Facebook.
You’ve Got To Like These Results
What’s happened is that Bing is introducing enhancements to its search results by including Facebook Likes. In other words, searches in the “new” Bing will include information shared by your friends on Facebook, if relevant to your search query, that is. This new feature is known as “Liked Results”, and the idea behind it is to spotlight items your friends on Facebook have expressed a liking for. For example, if you search for Indian restaurants in Bradford, the results will no longer just show restaurants delivered by the web, but also places your Facebook friends like. And they’ll appear in the top results, thanks to the social signal that returned them.
It’s supposed to be a more personal reflection of what takes place in real life, i.e. you tell a friend you’re looking for a good dentist, and they recommend someone to you. So, since these Liked Results come from Facebook friends of yours, the assumption is that the results you receive will act like personal recommendations for you for the search terms you entered and, maybe, as a result, help you discover new areas of interest you might also like.
Bing states that Liked Results won’t appear for all search queries, but that the additional social information from friends will enrich the online search experience by helping the user make decisions that are more informed thanks to the shared experiences of like-minded people.
The Right Profile
Quite a few search queries (over 4 percent) involve trying to find people online, and most of the results returned are the same links for people with the same or similar name making it hard to narrow down the search to exactly the right person. This is where Facebook Profile Results comes in.
If you’re searching for a friend, say Brian Jones, you’ll see plenty of entries about famous guitarists, balloonists, etc., but where’s that old secondary school chum of yours? With your Facebook friends following you over to Bing, finding the correct Brian Jones will be much easier. And, once you’ve tracked them down, the Bing results will give you the option to add them as a friend in Facebook or send a message to them to make sure you’ve got the right Brian.
There Goes My Privacy!
Well, not according to Bing. Apparently, the results they’ll display are the same results available from content that’s designated as public, and, so, available to anybody looking directly at their own Facebook network. The advantage that having this information presented through Bing brings is the addition of relevancy to particular search queries.
And you’re not obliged to “opt in” to the new Bing-Facebook initiative, since Bing will allow you to disable this feature or learn more about it before deciding whether or not you want to take advantage of it.
Bing assures users that their search queries are private and will not be reflected back to Facebook, so no-one will be able to see your queries.
Even though Google began offering social search results about a year ago, Bing’s version promises to be a lot more powerful and accurate than Google’s with results being highly personalised thanks to the friends connection.
While Bing still lags well behind Google as far as overall search market percentage is concerned, it still represents a significant search volume, and if you and your internet business want to take advantage of this new initiative, the sooner you make your presence felt on Facebook, the better.
When it comes to maximising your business’s presence on the various social media platforms, as part of your search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy, there’s little doubt your best option is to enlist the services of a UK internet business coach, who’ll work with you to ensure your internet business is highly visible in Bing’s new Liked Results category.
Social Media – Getting The Big 3 Working Together For You
Sep 21st
These days, there are so many options that help you maintain a relationship with your customers, or potential customers. But, most communications are done via one or other of, or a combination of, Facebook, e-mail and Twitter. So, does it matter which you use to get your internet marketing message across? Well, you wouldn’t think so, because, on the surface, aren’t they all variations on the same theme, the theme of social interaction? Yes, they are, but there’s a certain “x factor” that makes each one special in its own right; the trick is, how to make them all work together as an internet marketing team.
It’s In The Numbers
A recent study conducted by Exact Target Research Series did a breakdown of the numbers involved with some surprising results. Of the online consumers surveyed, 93 percent stated they find at least one permission based e-mail in their inbox per day. They’re the subscribers. 38 percent claimed to be a fan of at least one brand on Facebook. They’re the fans.
But, here’s the big surprise – only 5 percent of Twitter users say they follow at least one brand. But, of that 5 percent, 37 percent said that they would be likely to buy something from a brand they followed, compared with only 27 percent of e-mail subscribers and 17 percent of Facebook fans. I tend to spend a good deal of time on Facebook, so I’d have thought the Facebook number might be higher, but that could be just because I spend more time there.
Regardless, you don’t need to be a maths wiz to realize that there are a lot more people receiving and being influenced by e-mail as opposed to Twitter and Facebook, but all three show excellent rates of success so it’s a matter of getting them all to work together for you.
Make Social Media Campaigns Consistent
One of the problems with branding across the various venues is consistency, which is leaving many users confused as to where to go to get the information they want. So, if I want a company’s monthly discount coupon, can I get it by becoming a Twitter follower, or a Facebook fan, or an e-mail subscriber? The answer is to use cross-promotion so that users are using all three venues – by announcing Twitter contest winners via e-mail, tweeting about the latest e-mail offer, letting Facebook fans know they can get a coupon via Twitter, etc.
All this takes time, of course, and there’s cost involved, two commodities most businesses don’t have an abundance of. So, it’s important to decide where to put your time and your money, so try different strategies and monitor what works and what doesn’t. Abandon the campaigns that aren’t working and try something different. The whole social media environment is so new that there’s no tried and trusted methodology to follow to success, so be a pioneer and blaze a new trail via social media. But, what is certain is that social media should be an integral part of your internet marketing strategy.
Give The Customers What They Want
Even though there’s no proven formula for success using social media, users have expressed preferences for how they’d like social media campaigns to be conducted, so here are some tips to follow based on users’ preferences:
- Make the experience worth their while
- Acknowledge and act on their preferences
- Make a genuine show of gratitude for their business
- Deliver products of the highest quality
- Be honest and upfront
- Provide first-rate customer service
You’re probably already doing all of the above in your business, right? But, it doesn’t do any harm to be reminded about what your customers, and potential customers, want, and, if you’re not already doing all these, maybe it’s time to re-think your approach. But, the important question here is, are you covering all these points in your Facebook, Twitter and e-mail campaigns? If not, that’s where your focus needs to be.
In the long run, what matters are the statistics you see after running a social media marketing campaign, but you can start by putting your efforts into areas that you feel may be of most interest and benefit to your customers. If your customers are more socially active, chances are they’d enjoy community events and interactive games on Facebook; if they’re always on the go, Twitter may be a better way to connect with them, rather than e-mail.
Again, this is a whole new arena, and adjustments will no doubt be necessary, so, as with any other internet marketing campaign, be sure to check your campaign statistics regularly to make sure you’re investing your time and money wisely.
Social media is playing a greater role in business today and in internet marketing in particular, and getting your marketing message across all available social media platforms in a consistent manner should be your goal.
Show The World Who You Are With Video Marketing
Aug 30th
Video marketing is now one of the quickest and fastest ways to let potential clients and customers know who you are and what your business is about. It is also very cheap to produce and easy to upload to the web and in most cases has virtually an immediate impact on your websites traffic.
Did you know that up to 75% of Internet users prefer watching videos online to reading articles? In other words, all they need to know about you and your business can be summed up in a video presentation that gives your internet business all the jump-start it needs to keep them coming back for more. People talk about video marketing as an effective means to conveying your marketing personality and brand.
Videos work better more often than text because more people tend to respond better to visual representations. If you think about ads on your TV even though you may go and make a cup of tea through them the fact is 65 – 80% of people have full recall of an ad. The reason for this is simple – people’s attention spans are short, so are the ads. Generally speaking a TV ad is 30 secs – thats all the time any advertiser has to make an impression and get people to recall their product or service, this is all the time they have to turn a potential customer into a paying customer.
You as an internet business owner should be thinking the same, your video marketing campaigns should be , short, sharp and to the point if you want it to be remembered. if you cannot say it in a minute then you need to rethink your ad. On the internet a video can make the difference between being good and being great, being visible and being invisible.
Some internet business owners have beautiful text based sites which bring in customers no problem, others have not so good looking web sites that have video which bring in even more customers this is because the video made the difference. Search engines love videos and generally videos show higher in search engine results and online, visibility is everything.
Statistics Clearly Show A Rise in Internet Video Viewing - Image Courtesy of eMarketer.com
If a picture can tell a thousand words! Imagine how much more a video marketing your product or service can do for you. You can have spoken content in your video conveying your product or service, there can be inviting music in the background to give listeners a mood lift, you can showing your expertise in your field to selling your brand and most importantly you can use footage of your clients’ experience savouring your products or services. All this with just a one minute video clip!
A site that is text based relies on visitor’s attention being caught by visual images or by reading the text, which is no problem if you can get them to stop long enough. Any good internet marketer or internet consultant will tell you you have approximately three to five seconds to make an impact on your site opening or people will leave.
Now most business owners believe that putting a video online is difficult or has to be some work of art but this is really not the case and should not hinder any small business from using video, I mean it’s no big deal to grab your camcorder and film scenes of your business’ day to day natural life. This creates a wonderful effect of being right there, where all the action is taking place, just by viewing a presentation video.
How do you publish the video? – Simple! – There are many huge sites like YouTube, Vimeo, Livestream and Google Video where your infomercial can really stand out. You can use theme to your advantage by publishing your videos on multiple platforms which is a common strategy, as it increases your exposure seven-fold so you become highly visible and not only that!
People are attracted to video it is natural for most people to be pulled by things that stimulate the senses, in the case of video marketing it is sight , sound, and mental perception. Video marketing can keep your customers informed and ensures potential customers see you in a better light.
Only you can make your internet business a marketing success, you need to add video marketing to your arsenal and get your company more visible to grab those clients. Are You Ready? Get set… GO and try it out!
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.
