Online Marketing

  • Blog Marketing for Small Business

    Blog Marketing

    Blog marketing can be quite complicated for anyone that has never even blogged before. If you are considering getting into small business blog marketing, you will want to first have a blog and see what that is like before you get into something more. Blogging requires dedication and patience. You have to update your blog on a regular basis in order to keep your readers happy. Doing so will keep them coming back for more to check out your latest post.

     

    Blogging for your small business consists of writing about your business. It definitely is a great tool that you should use to get your business out there and known by others. However, you will need to be patient because it can be a long process that will require much of your attention. Just because you have a blog does not mean that someone is going to find it and read it. You are going to have to make it known. Nowadays most people combine their blog with their website. If you have them separate make sure that your readers are aware that you have both and refer them to each other.

    Blog marketing is something that anyone can do.

    Having a blog and keeping it up to date with the latest information is not hard. All you need to have is a plan and you will be set to market any type of business from your blog. This plan should definitely include an idea of who your ideal client is. Narrowing this down from the start will save you time and money. There is no use blogging to a market that is not looking for what you have to offer.  Whether you are selling a product or a service, it does not matter. A blog that is marketed the right way will be beneficial to any business whatever it might be.

     

    So you are probably wondering how you are going to accomplish this blog marketing. When you are marketing a blog, you pretty much do it the same way that you would market a website. It is going to need keywords, great titles, eye candy (great photos) and content. Remember when using photos that you need to have the right to use them because it can get your business in trouble if you don’t. Just because it’s on the internet doesn’t mean you can use them. Play it safe and use a reliable source like rtf123 or Fotolia. Be sure to read their licensing to be clear on how you can re-use these pictures in the future. Some companies will allow you to use them on social media for instance while others don’t. These resources are inexpensive and can make your blogs pop.

     

    You can write your own content or have someone write for you.

     

    Keep in mind that you can write the content yourself but if this is not your gift you can pay someone else to write it for you but be sure that your personality shines through by infusing your voice into the content. Also, be sure that the content is relevant to your followers so that they will want to read it. This will keep them coming back. Also, make sure that the content is written using keywords that work for your market because this will be how new readers will find you on Google and other search engines in the future.

     

    Once you have chosen the type of content that you want to be noted for, and gotten some content and photos published on your blog, you will be ready to get it out there some more. Using social media platforms is a great way to share your blog. Choose the platforms that will attract the type of audience that holds your ideal blog follower. An example, is if you’re a Mompreneur who loves blogging about cooking and crafting then you might find great followers on Pinterest and Facebook.

     

    One of the best compliments you can get is to have a comment.

     

    Blog Marketing

    Another important thing to remember when you are blog marketing is that if anyone leaves you a comment, you should acknowledge it and respond as soon as possible. You can also comment on other blogs that are relevant to yours, and leave a link to your blog as well. This will help bring in visitors to your blog, and you will begin to see more and more traffic.

     

    Blog marketing for your small business is not rocket science, however someone that has never marketed a single thing before in their life may have problems. Be sure to visit our resource page for additional information to help your business. Remember be persistent, consistent and don’t give up.

    At Strategize Your Success we help entrepreneurs, small business, coaches and consultants with all their online marketing needs. If we can help you please contact us. We can take the pain out of figuring out how to do things right.

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  • Email Marketing Autoresponder Options

    Email Marketing
    When it comes to email marketing businesses are concerned on whether they should use a single or double opt-in option. Some will say that using a double opt-in makes them lose subscribers – after all, how many people really take the time to click a link to confirm their subscription? That may be a good argument but it’s really a weak one if you think about it.

    Anyone that is interested in receiving the information you’ll be sending is going to take the time to click the confirmation link. It’s pretty normal and standard these days so people are aware they have to confirm if they want to be added to your list.

    There are several reasons you should use the double opt-in function.

    1. Canada’s new Anti-Spam Law. With the recent changes Canada has made and the implementation of their new Anti-Spam Law, double-opt in should be an absolute mandatory part of your email marketing campaign. To learn more about the new law (for Canada), check out this article: What You Need to Know About Canada’s Anti-Spam Law (CASL).
    2. Less chance of being flagged as a spammer. When people are required to confirm their subscription, your emails have less of a chance of being marked as spam.
    3. Better open rates. When people are required to confirm they want to receive your information and are willing to not only sign up for your list, but click that confirmation link, you know they truly want to see your emails. This means you’ll have better open rates.

    These are just three of many reasons you should (or at least consider it) use double opt-ins for your email lists. It truly is the best way to not only protect yourself, but to ensure that only people who really are interested in what you have to say and want to be on your list, end up on your list.

    If you need more proof that double opt-in is the way to go, look at some of these organizations that require people to confirm (double opt-in) when they sign up for their lists:

    • Oprah
    • IRS.gov
    • Microsoft
    • Whitehouse.gov

    And that’s just a few!

    One other thing to keep in mind – yes, some people will sign up and still not click the confirmation link, it happens. But don’t fret. When it comes to email marketing and building your list, you want quality over quantity anyway. If you find that it’s happening often then you might want to put a note on your thank you page (You do have a thank you page you send people to after they sign up right?) telling people that they will receive an email shortly and to be sure they click on the confirmation link in it. Remember, sometimes people just need to be told what to do!

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  • Email Marketing and Your Aweber Stats

    If you’re growing your mailing list and emailing on a regular basis, that’s great. But there’s a little more to email marketing than just growing your list and sending your subscribers some emails that you hope will get them to do something – buy a product, purchase a service you’re offering, attend an event you’re putting on are some examples.

    You need to know some statistics on those emails to figure out what’s working and what’s not. We have a lot of clients who use Aweber but don’t quite understand how to find their stats or how to interpret what they mean once they find them.  So we thought that others may have some of the same questions.

    With Aweber, you can easily see some basic stats about what your subscribers are doing. On the main page once you login to your account you’ll see recently sent broadcasts. This will show you the percentage of opens, clicks, bounces and complaints. While these stats are good, you can get even more specific than that.

    Here is an example of a broadcast. To find your stats click on ‘view stats’.  A new page will pop up that looks like this:

    Aweber

    Now you can see that there were a total of 161 emails sent to this campaign list, there was 1 bounce (email was undeliverable), zero complaints, 3 clicks and 1 unsubscribe.  I purposely skipped mentioning the 41 opens you see on the blue arrow because it’s a bit more complicated than that. Let’s break it down:

    Opens

    The 41 opens (which is a 25.6% open rate for this particular email – not too bad, but definitely could be better) are what is known as unique opens (as shown in the green box above on the graph). Unique opens are when someone views your email in HTML format. (Note: if someone opens your email more than once, Aweber doesn’t keep counting that as an open, they’re counted once.)

    But if you look at the blue box on the graph, it says there were actually 56 total opens. So where do those other 15 opens come from and why don’t they show in unique opens?

    Great question!

    Those other opens are the people that view your email in the plain text format instead of HTML. 

    One neat thing about this stat is you can scroll down the page (you have to click on 41 opens on the left hand side of the box first) and see the names of the people that opened this email. From there you can create a segment based on these people (this is good for if you want to send a follow-up to just those that opened it).  

    Clicks

    In order for Aweber to track how many clicks are made on a link you’ve included in one of your emails, you have to enable this option within Aweber.  For instructions on how to do this, see the article:  How Do I Track Click Throughs on Links in My Messages?

    As you can see from the stats above, there were 3 clicks on a link I included. If you click on that (3 clicks) and scroll down a little ways it will show you what link those 3 people clicked on. 

    Sales

    We do not currently use this portion of Aweber stats. If you would like more information on how it works and how you can set this up, see How Do I Set Up Sales Tracking?

    Web Hits

    Again, this is another portion of the stats that we don’t use and don’t have set up. You can learn how to do it by visiting How Do I Install Email Web Analytics?

    Unsubscribes

    This statistic is pretty straight forward and doesn’t need much explaining. It simply shows you who unsubscribed from your list via this email message. Keep in mind that unsubscribes are counted in your total subscriber pricing programs with Aweber so getting them off your account usually makes sense so you can make room for people who want to hear from you.

    As you can see, Aweber statistics can show you a lot about your subscribers and what they’re doing. This is helpful information for you to know and can help you figure out which email strategies are getting you better responses than others.

    We hope you found this information helpful. If you’re thinking about working on growing your email list and strategies we recommend checking out our “15 Day Email Challenge” which is currently on sale.

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  • 4 Tips to Help Make Sure Your Emails Don’t Get Sent to Spam

    4 Tips to Help Make Sure Your Emails Don’t Get Sent to SpamYou work hard to get people to opt-in to your mailing list.  Once you get them on your list the last thing you want is your emails to end up in the dreaded spam folder. Here are some tips to help make sure your emails get to where they need to be – in their inbox.

    1. Do not buy lists! Sure, we all want huge amounts of subscribers but it’s not worth your reputation to pay for those subscribers for a few different reasons. One, it’s not a targeted list of people. Out of say 1,000 people maybe a handful of them will actually be interested in what you have to offer. And two, these lists have the potential to get you blacklisted. How? If people don’t recognize you and mark it as spam or there are a bunch of bad (dead) emails that start bouncing back these are red flags and can quickly classify you as a spammer. When it comes to protecting your reputation and your mailing list, please stay away from lists of names you can purchase!

    2. Pay attention to the from field. When setting up your list(s), it’s important to pay special attention to the from field. You want to use your name or business name so that people will recognize you right away. As mentioned above, if someone doesn’t recognize the from name (and even the email address you use), it’s way too easy for them to mark your email spam.

    3. Clean up your lists regularly. It doesn’t take much, at least not in Aweber – the service I use and highly recommend – to go through and clean up your lists. What do I mean by cleaning up a list? Removing those subscribers that have been inactive for long periods of time or bad email addresses.

    4. Don’t use words that are considered spam. When writing your subject line, it’s imperative that you skip words that look like spam. One of the most obvious words is free (and that includes writing it like this: FREE. In fact, don’t ever use all capital letters period). If at all possible avoid using this word in your emails. But there’s also some other words that can send an email straight to the spam folder:

    • Sales
    • Satisfaction guaranteed
    • Click here
    • Act now
    • Risk free

    4 Tips to Help Make Sure Your Emails Don’t Get Sent to Spam

    These are just a few of the suggested spam words you should skip. Here’s  The Ultimate List of Email SPAM Trigger Words to check out.

    15 Day Email ChallengeNeed help with your email marketing. Check out our latest product. This challenge will take you by the hand and show you how create a winning list of subscribers.
    “The 15 Day Email Challenge”

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  • Step Outside Your Comfort Zone

    Step Outside Your Comfort Zone
    Stepping outside our comfort zone can be one of the hardest things any of us can do. Some people experience panic attacks or freeze up just thinking about trying new things. Have you stepped out of your comfort zone lately?

    I like change and learning new things but I still have my comfort zone. So what I purposely do is make myself step outside the zone all the time. I’m not going to lie sometimes its scary and nerve racking but well worth it in the end because I know that’s were awesome happens. You end up gaining new skills and experience that otherwise you may have never mastered.

    Many successful people will tell you that challenging yourself and trying new ideas and strategies doesn’t always work but if you’re not learning or growing you will never experience awesome!

    Being a marketing coach and consultant I find that change is a constant in my marketplace. My job is to help my clients stay current and also step outside their box. Just this past week I worked with my one of my clients and together we both tried something new. She had not really done much video marketing and I had never produced anyone in a video (besides myself) so together we did it!

    Step Outside Your Comfort Zone

    What a great time we had with the camera crew and the staff at GMLCPA. We both made our debut, stepped outside the zone and gained experience. What more could you ask for, right? Well now I’m ready to do more of these and so is my client because we got over the scary part of trying something new.

    I’d like to challenge you to take time this week and step outside your comfort zone and push your personal boundaries. Try something new. Stretch yourself. Push yourself to do something even if it’s a small step and be the brilliant, talented and brave person that you know you can be. Please be sure to share your experience with us here on the blog.

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  • Top 10 Ways that You Can Engage Your Clients thru Social Media

    One of the best things about online marketing is the advent of social media. Social media lets you promote your content, expand awareness of your brand, and engage with your clients and potential customers. But you can’t just send blind updates without doing just a bit more to ensure that your audience wants to engage with you. Getting your audience to respond to your calls to action is all about engagement. After all, social media is supposed to be social, right?

    Top 10 Ways that You Can Engage Your Clients thru Social Media

    1. Update Your About Pages &  Social Media Profiles

    First things first – start updating your “About” pages on your websites, and all your social media profiles. You want there to be no mistake what your brand stands for, and who you are. In addition, every change you make is a chance to cross-promote on other social media. Your About pages, Contact pages and Social Media profiles are great places to cross promote.

    2. Provide a Blurb of What’s to Come When Promoting Content

    When you share any content, whether yours or someone else’s, always provide a little blurb to help pique interest and make your audience curious. For instance, if you’re sharing a Top 10 Ways that You Can Engage Your Clients thru Social Media article, you might say something like “Pay special attention to tip number 2” in your promotions. This will make your audience want to click through to read the blog post or article. In addition, ask them “What’s your favorite tip? Come back and share here in the comments.”

    Top 10 Ways that You Can Engage Your Clients thru Social Media

    3. Use Multiple Types & Forms of Content to Keep Your Audience’s Interest

    Don’t only share one type or form of content. There are so many forms of content to choose from, such as images, text, eBooks, articles, blog posts, infographics, memes, videos and so forth. There are also many types of content (such as evergreen content) that will be current for a long time, and then there is newsworthy timely content that you will want to share as soon as it occurs. Keep your audience interested by being exciting and different.

    4. Never Forget Your Call To Action (CTA)

    When you share anything on social media, always remember to put a CTA. It’s also important to vary the CTA. For instance, sometimes you might say, “share this with your friends” another time you might say “comment if you disagree, like if you agree” or you might say “buy now” as your CTA. Whatever you choose as your CTA, don’t overwhelm your audience with too many choices. But always include one, and make it different than the last time.

    Top 10 Ways that You Can Engage Your Clients thru Social Media

    5. Show Off Your Personality (Let Your Helpers Do So Too)

    Consumers want to feel as if they’re engaging with real people. Since you’re a real person that should be easy. But, we often get so tied up with automation (which is wonderful and useful) that we forget to engage with people. If you outsource to anyone who is handling your social media, they don’t need to act like robots. Let them show their personality too. Keep your business’s mission statement handy not only for yourself but for those who represent your brand. As long as you stay on message, it’s okay to let your personality show through.

    6. Use Your Metrics To Improve Your Efforts

    What posts, updates, and sorts of shares are your fans currently interacting with the most? By knowing what the numbers say, you can use that information to increase your efforts in a smart way so that you avoid doing what isn’t working, and do more of what is working. Not every audience will respond the same to every type of content that you share. But it’s impossible to know without looking at the analytics. When is your audience online? What types of content do they like, share, respond to the most? Never rely on guesses; rely on the facts and figures that you can obtain.

    Top 10 Ways that You Can Engage Your Clients thru Social Media

    7. Use Apps & Technology to Improve Your Connections

    There are so many apps that you can use to schedule, study, and interact with your audience. Did you know that there are custom apps that you can use for Facebook that will help you run contests, encourage email sign ups, add a storefront and more? Try Heyo to create mobile optimized campaigns for Facebook. Want to create useful Facebook Tabs, awesome cover photos, scheduled posts and more? Try Pagemodo.com. There are apps that can do so much, the best thing for you to do is ask your colleagues what they use, or simply do a Google search.

    8. Keep Conversing With Your Audience

    Speaking of apps, you can put apps on your smartphone that enable you to speak with your audience at all times. You want to talk to them at “off” times as much as “on” times. You might seem too robotic if you only post on Monday through Friday during business hours. It’s also great to post from different locations; it shows that you’re a busy person who nevertheless cares about your audience. Be sure to use some automation for this, such as using apps to schedule weekend updates.

    Top 10 Ways that You Can Engage Your Clients thru Social Media

    9. Add the Right Metadata to Your Websites & Pages

    Metadata is information that essentially summarizes data on your site, like the title, description, author, date and other things such as identifying images and more. The thing to remember is which metadata is important to include on your website so that when you share a link on social media the right information is presented in an attractive way. This will make your audience want to click through.

    a. Titles – This is the keyword rich title of your article or blog post. On Facebook, it will show up in bold above the link.

    b. Description – This shows up under the link and is usually the first words of your article or blog post that are NOT header text.

    c. Image – You can use the code of your page to specify the images that are allowed to show up in the thumbnail.

    d. Canonical URL – Within the code of the site you can ensure that everyone goes to the same home page when clicking through to your site.

    It’s important to consider these factors when creating your WebPages and blogs so that when you or others share articles or blog posts they find interesting on their social media sites, it looks good and gets the message across that you want.

    10. Ask Your Fans What They Want

    Finally, never forget to ask your current fans, connections, and followers what they want from you. You can send out a survey, answer questions, and more to find out what your connections what. The more you give them what they want, the more they’re likely to engage with you in social media.

    Use social media to communicate the story of your brand. As you use these top ten ways to engage your audience in social media, try to remember what your business core values are, what the benefits of your products and services are to your clients, and your point of being on social media.

    Top 10 Ways that You Can Engage Your Clients thru Social Media

    Let us help you brand your business. Visit our services area on our site to find out how we can make YOUR BUSINESS more visible and unique. If you don’t see a service that you need let us know how we can help you GROW your business.

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  • How Baseball Coaching Compares to Business Coaching

    Baseball
    My husband and I at Chase Field.

    It’s Springtime and that time of year that I actually like to participate in watching some LIVE baseball games at Chase Field in Phoenix, AZ. Anyone who knows me well knows that sports are not usually on the top of my preferred list of what I like to do but baseball is a game that I understand.

    Since we transplanted our lives back in 1998 to Tucson from the East Coast we have followed the Arizona Diamond Back team thru their ups and downs. We don’t get to go as often as we like but nowadays when we do go we usually can garner some tickets from my husband’s boss. He has season tickets on the first row behind third base, SCORE!  These seats definitely beat the ones we used to get when my son was a toddler and we sat in the nosebleed section although we always had fun when we went.

    So baseball games got me to thinking about coaches and how baseball coaches have a lot in common with me when I coach a client.

    Baseball
    You see Coaches matter both in business and in baseball. If a business owner works with a great business coach they can excel and grow their bottom line. In baseball, a so-so team can be taken to an unimaginable level based solely on the coach they have. Coaches in baseball like a coach in business serve many roles.

    1. They see the big picture. A catcher or first baseman may see the game only from their limited perspective; the coach sees everything on the field and how all the pieces fit together.
    2. They have the wisdom of experience. The average coach has lived through more games than the average player, and they’ve seen things that some players haven’t. They bring that experience to the team.
    3. They are invested in the outcome, but they are in it for the long haul. Just as kids can’t see past the end of the school year, players sometimes can’t see beyond the end of the season. The coach can put things into perspective.
    4. They inspire. Because they care deeply about the players and the game, they are able to connect with the team in a way outsiders cannot.
    5. They get you in shape. No one WANTS to do stadium steps or run sprints, but the coach knows that these exercises are what’s needed to whip the team into shape.

    Just as you’ve never seen a winning team without a coach, you’d be hard-pressed to find a winning business person without a coach as well. As a coach I get coached by people who are many steps ahead of me.  This broadens my knowledge base which in turn helps me to be a better coach for those that I work with.

    A business coach can perform many of these same roles that a baseball coach does. They can help keep things in perspective, guide you from their experience and wisdom, help you think past the next fiscal quarter, and motivate and inspire you to move forward. They know what needs to be done, and in what order, so they keep you from wasting time and energy on unnecessary tasks.

    The best coaches get personal satisfaction in helping you succeed, so choose wisely. Find a mentor with a history of successes not just in the field you need help with but as a coach as well. You wouldn’t want a baseball coach who was still reliving his glory days as a Major League player and felt in competition with the players on his team; you also don’t want a business coach who feels threatened by your success.

    Ask around for recommendations, the best candidates come from referrals. Also, in today’s world taking a look on Google can help you gather information on someone’s qualifications. Please be sure to share how you have found a great mentor or business coach on this blog page.

    If you’re looking for an online marketing coach please feel free to contact me for a complimentary 30 minute consultation. I’d love to hear about your business.
    https://strategizeyoursuccess.com/coaching-consulting

     

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  • 10 Ways that Social Media Can Drive Traffic to Your Website

    When you realize that the entire point of social media is to drive traffic to your website, which should be the center of your online marketing world, you start to use social media correctly. Social media is not supposed to be the destination of your followers. No, social media should only be the beginning of a long relationship that involves sharing, interacting, learning, and engaging.

     

    Use social media to remind followers to visit your website for more information, products and services. Use social media as a way to listen to what your audience wants. Use social media as the method by which you become an important industry expert from whom your audience seeks information. The following tips are used by industry experts, large organizations and businesses alike to drive traffic from social media to their websites. No need to reinvent the wheel, these ten tips work.

     

    1) Become a Thought Leader

    It may seem strange that the more popular you can become off the Internet, the more popular you will be on the Internet and the more people will connect with you, follow you, and then go to your website. Spread yourself around, write for other popular blogs, magazines, and newsletters then cross promote. Accept speaking engagements outside of the Internet but record them, and put them on YouTube.com, embed the recordings or links on your site, and share via social media. Write a book, and use that as your calling card.

    2) Create an Interactive Community

    People love to talk to each other about issues that affect them. If you really want to offer a huge benefit to your customers and potential customers, form a community around them. Create a message board that is interactive and generates a lot of visitor activity and participation. Promote the board, which will promote your website – thus gathering not only more traffic the first time you promote the forum, but if it’s active people will also come back again and again.

    10 Ways that Social Media Can Drive Traffic to Your Website

    3) Don’t Forget SEO

    Search engine optimization is a very important component in any online marketing strategy. Optimize for social media by including the right keywords, the right metadata, and including information about images, content, and more, so that you can be found. Remember to focus on both on-page and off-page SEO for best results.

     

     

    4) Engage on Social Media

    You can’t just open a social media account, fill out a profile, start blasting updates and expect any results unless maybe you already have celebrity status. You need to start with a plan, understand your goals, choose your tactics, and then seek to engage with others on social media to ensure that your plans happen and your goals are met.

     

    5) Listen to the Buzz

    A really great way to use social media is to use it to listen to the buzz about your business. But don’t just listen. When you find something about your industry or product in general, or your business in particular you want to ensure that you respond with the right answers, links, and information so that you can get your message out to participants. If you don’t find any buzz, create it. Make your own groups, start your own discussions, and share, share, share.

    10 Ways that Social Media Can Drive Traffic to Your Website

    6) Track, Measure & Adjust

    Find out which types of content get more shares, more comments and more action. Know what your customers want to read. Ask them what they need to know. The more you can track the success of your campaigns the more you can improve. You can actually adjust and improve any campaign in progress if you have the right information.

     

    7) Use Strategic Paid Advertisements

    Paid advertisements can be very expensive if you aren’t sure why you’re doing it. When it comes to social media, run an advertisement to get more signups for your newsletter or more likes on your Facebook Page. Then market your products and services to them that way, rather than using the ads as a way to market your product directly. While at first you may not notice much of a change in traffic, you will over time because you’ll have them in your marketing funnel.

    8) Use Varied Content on Social Media

    Mix up what type of content you share and add to your social media updates. Use newsworthy content, evergreen content and content in different forms like video, infographics, and text. You want to write a blurb before each share in order to pique the reader’s attention and share high-quality, relevant content on a regular basis.

    10 Ways that Social Media Can Drive Traffic to Your Website

    9) Work with Influencers

    There are always going to be “rock stars” in every industry that are well known and who can highly influence your audience. Researches who these people are, connect with them, and find ways to engage with them in a way that helps you leverage their audience to spread your message. If you can get an influencer to recommend your products and/or services to others, your traffic will explode.

     

    10) Present Content with Strong “Call to Actions”

    Never send out any content on social media without a call to action (“CTA”). Your CTA must be varied, and to the point. Don’t beat around the bush. If you want your audience to share your infographic, ask them to. If you want your audience to “like” your post, ask them to. If you want your audience to click through to read the rest of something on a website, ask them to. Finally, if you want them to buy something, ask them to buy it. Tell them the benefits of doing so, and ask them to do it.

    It’s clear that social media can be an important avenue to gain more traffic to your website or blog. But, it’s not going to happen automatically. You are going to have to work a little bit more to get the ball rolling. Fortunately, these tried and true tips really do work. By using them you will drive more traffic to your website from social media. Not only that, if you’re clear on your message you’ll drive targeted traffic that is ready to answer your calls to action.

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  • How to Make the Most of Your Website or Blog

    Chances are you’re putting a lot of time, energy, and effort into your blog or website. Are you getting the results that you want? Are you achieving your online business goals? If not, you may not be making the most of your website or blog.

    How to Make the Most of Your Website or Blog

    Test, Test, and Test Some More

    The best way to make the most of your website or blog is to test what works and what doesn’t. There are many different things you can test and ways to test. Test headlines, test calls to action and test different content formats. 

    For example, your audience may respond more energetically to video content than they do to print content. Or maybe they prefer reviews over “how to” articles. Testing is the only way to know what your audience is responding to. Once you know, then you can adapt your strategies and tactics. Split testing is often the easiest method to test.

    Analytics

    Analytics are almost a website or blog essential. They tell you who visits your site, how long they stay there and what pages they navigate to. Analytics can also tell you the organic keywords used, or the link used, to find your website. Google Analytics is a free tool that makes it easy to create an account and then literally cut and paste a piece of code into your site’s code. 

    Just cutting and pasting code isn’t enough, though. You need to also review the analytics and base your strategy and decisions on the information. For example, if you find out that the majority of your visitors come from the south then you might create more content, promotions, and offers that appeal to that region. 

    Facilitate Engagement

    How to Make the Most of Your Website or BlogIf you’re not encouraging participation, comments, and interaction then you’re missing out. Create systems and opportunities to connect and allow conversation. Blog commenting is a start. 

    However, the posts need to ask questions and motivate responses. Even more, you want to reply to comments in a thoughtful manner that motivates more comments and feedback. Plug-ins that create forums, chats, and social media participation are another means to facilitate engagement. 

    To make the most of your website or blog, you want to create a stronger connection with your audience and visitors. By testing, using analytics to track the results, and by creating opportunities for conversation, you’re able to take your site to the next level. It strengthens your relationships with your audience and helps increase traffic, opt-ins, as well as conversions and sales. 

    What have you found to be helpful in developing your web presence? Are you blogging? I have found that sharing my blog posts on my social media platforms works well for my business perhaps it might help you if you haven’t tried it.

    Confused on the best ways to approach your online marketing? We offer one-on-one coaching to help you with navigating the sometimes confusing options of online marketing. Contact us today! https://strategizeyoursuccess.com/coaching-consulting

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  • LinkedIn is a Great Source for Social Networking

    LinkedIn is a specialty social networking site. It’s much more specialized than the others due to the audience it attracts. LinkedIn is specifically for professionals. If you’re looking for a job then it’s a must. However, business owners looking to attract prospects and connect with industry professionals can also utilize LinkedIn in a productive and prosperous way. LinkedIn is a platform that has worked exceptionally well for me to reach my target audience. So let’s take a look at this platform a little closer.

    What Is LinkedIn?

    LinkedIn is a Great Source for Social Networking

    LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with 225 million members in over 200 countries. It’s a social networking site that offers professionals a number of benefits and features. It began in concept in the living room of the owner and was launched in 2003. Ten years later it is a thriving social networking site that can be used in a number of business building ways.

    The Many Features and Benefits of LinkedIn

    Company Pages – The first element of LinkedIn is that it allows business owners to create Company Pages. Unlike Profile Pages, Company Pages comes with analytics as well as an ability to share meaningful content and promote your business. If you have a business and are on LinkedIn I’d advise taking this extra step.

    LinkedIn groups – This feature may be one of the most beneficial because it allows you to join groups that are specific to your audience and your industry. Within a group you can connect with other professionals and prospects to build an audience. Groups support conversations, article posting, polling, and display group icons on your Profile Page to further enhance your connections. If you feel comfortable enough with LinkedIn you can start your own group. 

    Advertising – Like many social networking sites, LinkedIn offers advertising options for members. You can reach a targeted audience with ads that you can test and track for best results. 

    Marketing solutions – LinkedIn offers a professional membership that goes above and beyond the standard membership. You can then utilize features like their Marketing Solutions program that also lets you create specific messages for your audience through targeted content marketing.
    Integration – Finally, LinkedIn is a site that understands you want to make the most of your social networking efforts. You can integrate many social media management sites with your LinkedIn pages. Integration saves time and maximizes your results so you can write and schedule posts, manage comments, and monitor analytics from one place. However, being active in the conversations that occur in groups for instance is key to having success on LinkedIn.

    Creating Content for LinkedIn

    LinkedIn is a Great Source for Social Networking
    It’s important to remember that while you can integrate your social marketing efforts, LinkedIn has a unique audience. It often makes sense to create unique content for LinkedIn followers. They tend to be professionals and their needs may be different than your general audience.  
    People tend to trust the information they find on LinkedIn more than other sites. This simple fact can help you build tremendous authority and credibility in your niche. If you’re not using LinkedIn to grow your business or you’ve let your profile lag, consider giving this top rated social media site the attention it deserves. 

    Looking to create a brand on social media? We can help. Check out our social media products for more information.
    We make it easy.

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