Promote U Guru Blog

Archive for the ‘social media’ Category

Bad Social Media Etiquette Could Be Killing Your Brand

March 19th, 2015

Hi All!

Back in 2012  I wrote a blog post entitled “Do You Suffer from Social ‘Me’dia Syndrome?”. It was picked up by tons of other blogs and also led to my being asked to write variations of it for several online business communities and magazines.

I bring this up because yesterday I spoke to a client of mine who was asking me about Social Media strategies. After my chat with her I realized that it was a good time to revisit this topic in 2015. Why? Because MANY people are still clueless about proper Social Media etiquette! And that impacts your Personal Branding!

Have YOU forgotten the word "social" in Social Media?

Have YOU forgotten the word “social” in Social Media?

Here’s the deal…you have to participate to make it work for you. If you make it all “about you”, you’ve lost the entire essence of what Social Media is about! I find that many new clients who come to me are not getting much out of their Social Media and online marketing efforts because they’ve forgotten ONE little detail…they forgot about the word “social” in their Social Media strategy.

Here are a few tips that will quickly illustrate my point:

1. Comment on other peoples’ blog posts. If you have a blog and want people to comment on your posts, you have to comment on OTHER peoples’ blog posts to start generating traffic to yours. It’s simple: If you read a blog post you like or have an opinion on, don’t just “keep it to yourself”. POST A COMMENT!

2. Retweet other peoples’ tweets: If you like a tweet from someone else, take a split second to click on the retweet button to share it with your followers. That’s why the retweet icon exists! To SHARE info with everyone and help cross-promote each other to help increase awareness for other people. It’s amazing how much more tweet-love and traffic you’ll get if you retweet, reply and comment on other peoples’ tweets. AGAIN…it’s part of being “social” in tweet-ville…and it’s part of Social Media etiquette!

3. Comment or Like other peoples’ posts on Facebook or in LinkedIn Groups: If you want more people to comment and/or click on the “like” button on your Fan Page or Profile posts, then do it more for other people! It takes less than one second to click “like” under someone’s post and sometimes just a couple of seconds to write a comment. Again, if you see a post that you like or find interesting, rather than just THINK to yourself, “That’s funny!” or “That’s cool!” or “That’s interesting!” or “That’s really helpful info!”, move your cursor up to the word “like” under it and simply click. Or type a short comment to acknowledge what that person posted!

This may all sounds like common sense BUT it’s NOT common practice…which is why millions of social media hobbyists and small business owners are involved in Social Media but frustrated with it. They constantly just focus on posting stuff about THEM, their businesses, their products or events, their books, their families, their vacations, their kids, the songs they like, food they like to eat, etc., but they rarely take the time to acknowledge what other people post and share online.

So…here’s my challenge to YOU: If any of this describes how YOU participate in the world of Social Media, make “improve my Social Media etiquette in 2015″ one of YOUR resolutions this year! You’ll be pleased with the results and will truly be participating the way the world of Social Media was intended.

Cheers & Happy Marketing!

Lisa

Share

10 Social Media Tips for Effective Book Marketing

August 31st, 2014

Hi All!

With the boom of self-publishing, most authors don’t have the backing of a traditional Publishing House to handle the marketing of their books. And, nowadays, even if you do land a book publishing contract, many Publishers don’t provide the marketing support they used to.Social media concept

So, regardless of whether you self-publish your book OR sign a book deal, you’ll find yourself having to be your own Publicist and Marketing Expert. Unless, of course, you can hire someone to do it for you. However most authors who contact me are on a tight budget and can’t afford a costly Publicist. That’s why authors hire me to provide them with customized strategies and plans that they can execute themselves and/or with the help of a cost-effective Virtual Assistant.

Please keep in mind that Social Media is just ONE strategy in your overall book marketing mix. You need to also include PR, media outreach, and other marketing strategies for effective book marketing. And I’ve written plenty of blogs and articles on those, too.

But in this article, I’d like to focus on 10 tips that you can use to promote your book, increase your book sales, and build your brand, using Social Media:

1. Embed a Retweet Button

Who doesn’t love a free sample? Give one chapter away for free to your audience and embed a retweet button in strategic locations, motivating readers to easily share it with their followers on Twitter. Side Note: Avoid just sending tweets that are all about “Buy my book!” with a link to it on Amazon.

2. Promote Your Personal Brand

Promoting your Personal Brand as the author is as important as promoting your book! So in your Social Media posts, make your prospects want to connect with you. Share stuff about your hobbies, interests, your writing process, and expertise. Let the audience (who could be prospective buyers of your book) get to know you as a person by not JUST focusing your content all about your book.

3. Ask Readers to Spread the Word

Ask readers of your book to tell their networks about it. This is something MANY authors don’t think of doing. Don’t think that just because someone loved your book they’re going to remember to share the news with others. People get busy and forget! Remind them about your book and give them a little nudge to tell their networks about it.

4. Network with Other Writers in Your Genre

Find authors who target the same audience that you do for your book. Don’t look at them as competitors even if those authors have written books on the same topic as yours. Promoting other writers can help attract readers to your book, and those authors may reciprocate. Get involved in their social networks: “Like” their Facebook Pages, follow them on Twitter and retweet their posts, and ask them to write a Guest Blog for your blog, and ask if they would accept a blog post from you for theirs. Building relationships with other authors in your genre is a great strategy for cross-promotion that benefits you both!

5. Create a Video Contest

Run a contest asking readers of your book to share a video about why they liked your book so much, and award the person who provides the best one with a $25 or $50 Gift Card (i.e. for Starbucks or a VISA gift card). You can then post the Top 10 videos (or all of them) on your YouTube Channel, your Facebook Page, on your website, tweet the links to the vids, share them in your e-newsletter, etc. Those videos all become marketing tools to promote your book in a wide variety of ways.

6. Use Hashtags

Use hashtags of your industry to promote your book on Twitter (and elsewhere) to reach a larger audience who are interested in your topic. Confused by hashtags? Read this great article for an overview and tips!

7. Participate in the Conversation

Monitor the conversation about your book online, and post responses to comments. Engaging with your audience will grow your audience base and encourage others to join the conversation. Again, it’s another strategy for people to get to know you as a person, and that can forge bonds with them.

8. Go Niche

Search Google to find social networks in the same niche as your book. Become a fan of these networks or pages. Participate in the conversations and when appropriate, mention your book. But be sure to avoid only posting comments promoting your book because that will annoy people.

9. Mention Your Book in Your Social Network Bios

I’m always shocked by how many authors who contact me DON’T have their books mentioned in their bios on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc. Your book, and a link to it, should be added to every online bio you have.

10. Add the Book Title to Your Email Signature

Again, this is another very simple thing to do that many authors don’t think of. Add your book title and a link to it in your email signature block so that EVERY person who receives an email from you sees it.

Share

Four Ways to Market Your Content (that Most People Don’t Do)

July 14th, 2014

Hi All!

You feel you have created a masterpiece in the form of your long-form content, such as an article or blog post. But it is of no value to you until others read it. You need to spread the word to attract traffic. So your content needs publicity; just like big brands that advertises products regularly to stay fresh in the minds of their target audience.

Here’s a phrase I use a lot because it’s true: This may all seem like common sense BUT it’s not common practice.

Everyday I’m contacted by small business owners, speakers, other types of self-employed people, and authors wanting to increase book sales, who want my help with their company or personal branding, PR, publicity, and

Do YOU Market Your Content Effectively? Most people don't!

Do YOU Market Your Content Effectively? Most people don’t!

marketing. So I can honestly say that the following tips are NOT regularly used because the people who initially contact me aren’t doing them!

How can you market your content? Keep reading:

Smart Use of Keywords

SEO is more about smart placement of keywords. There is no place for keyword stuffing in Google. Any articles that are flooded with keywords won’t rank well in the search engines. Therefore, proper keyword placement is important.

Let’s say you HAVE done your homework of accurately placing keywords at the right places in the content. But it won’t help much if you do not include keywords as #hashtags in your text. Remember to use your brand name, main topic, and subtopics as hashtags. However, avoid crowding your posts with hashtags.

Use Interesting Images

Your headline won’t always attract readers. With so many status updates and posts on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook from friends, relatives, colleagues, etc. flooding their profiles, most social media users simply move on unless you grab them. And oftentimes it’s an interesting pic that will get their attention first and cause them to pause to look at your topic headline.

Expert Advice

When sharing your content on social media sites, do not forget to make smart use of expert advice in your posts. Consumers today look for advice from experts in the industry, and if you can prove yourself as an expert, you will likely attract more readers of your content. You can also include the insights, quotes, and tips from other experts in your industry in your content to “enhance” your position as an expert, too. You’ll be “guilty by association” and that’s a good thing!

Share to Get Shared

Again, this may sound like common sense BUT it’s not common practice by most of the new clients who come to me. They spend all their time focusing on “them” versus sharing other people’s content. Bad move! How can you expect people to retweet your tweets, share your posts and spread the word to THEIR followers if you NEVER do that for them?

Several years ago I wrote a very popular article about how people suffer from Social “ME”dia Syndrome, and the concept is STILL relevant TODAY…if you’re suffering from that get help quickly and start supporting others in your social networks. Ya gotta GIVE to GET!

Cheers & Happy Marketing!

Share

Powerful Pinterest Tips to Help Grow Your Small Business

December 11th, 2013

Hi All!

As the third most popular social media network after Facebook and Twitter, Pinterest has over 48.7 million users, recording more than 25 million monthly visitors. And it has become a powerful social media platform for product-based businesses, bringing in more traffic than Yahoo and Bing.

Plus, statistics show that prospects are likely to spend 70% more money with you when they are driven to your website from Pinterest. That alone makes it all the more important to take this newer social media platform seriously!

That said, here are a few tips for using Pinterest effectively to grow your small business and increase your sales:

1. Increase Your Brand Awareness

Provide useful, educational information to your followers. Your purpose is to become a reliable source of the most accurate, valuable information; not just to promote your products and business. This will ensure that your followers see you as an authority in your industry and look to you as the go-to place for all relevant information about your niche. Done right, you’ll inspire interest and build trust online, and that can lead to increased customer loyalty, greater audience reach, and referrals from others.

2. Expand Your Reach

Other social media networks have given small businesses amazing tools to expand reach and grow business, and Pinterest does, too. Using the group board feature on Pinterest and collaborating with popular pinners, you can easily expose your brand to a greater audience and expand your reach. Make each board theme specific, with a catchy title and keyword-focused relevant content. As the audience follows the focused boards, your follower numbers will tend to spike.

3. Make Your Business Site Pinnable

The best way to spread the word about your business is to make your Pinterest site visual.  You may use Flickr, Shutterstock, Photo Pin, iStockPhoto, or Fotolia to find unique, interesting, exciting, and pinnable photos on a regular basis. However, don’t forget to check the copyright of images. Be sure to give credit where it’s due. The most successful pins are a combination of valuable content and great images.

4. Add Pinterest Logo to Your Website

Adding a Pinterest logo to your business website will help increase your fan following and remind site visitors to pin your content. Also, to ensure a positive brand image, send messages that express the real identity (the voice) of your business. So plan out your boards accordingly, keep your content organized across different boards, and clearly outline the information you want to share with your fans.

5. Engage with People

Engage with your audience to better understand what they want to generate better boards that they’ll like. Use the Repin option to stay current with what is trending on Pinterest by examining the pins of the most popular Pinterest users and keep your pins sharp, current, and targeted. Also, be sure to keep an eye on your competition to see what they are doing to attract traffic and create engagement.

These tips may seem like common sense to some of you, but they’re NOT common practice with many pinners! I constantly hear from people who ask me, “I’m on Pinterest (or Facebook, or YouTube, or LinkedIn, or Twitter)…but what should I be doing there?”

That’s more proof that opening an account on a social media platform doesn’t immediately make you a marketing expert. Learn the basics of Pinterest, get comfortable with using it, and then start experimenting with more tools and features they offer. It can work for you as long as you’re persistent and consistent!

Share

7 Tips to Create More Effective Tweets

September 16th, 2013

Hi All!

According to Brafton, a Content Marketing Agency, almost 80% of the B2B companies using Twitter are not driving business from it…but WHY? Many of them are not paying attention to the following tweet tips. Are you?

Whether you own a small business or oversee the Marketing and Social Media department at a large company, and regardless of whether your business is B2B or B2C, these tips can help!

Here are seven, basic yet effective, ways to compose tweets in order to build website traffic, business, and your brand:

  1. Use Proper English & Grammar: By using proper grammar, punctuation, and spelling, your tweet will be easy to read and comprehend. And it will create a positive impression for your brand. Basically, make your tweets clear versus clever!
  2. Create Appealing Content: Put yourself in the shoes of your audience and think like them to accurately craft a tweet that will connect, communicate, and appeal to them.
  3. Use a Call-to-Action: Tell your audience what you want them to do. The focus of many of your tweets should include a call-to-action for your audience. This gets them to “engage” with you versus keeping it a one-way communication process.
  4. Link to Something: You can link your tweet to your blog, website, an online article, or social media page. Using link shortening services, such as bit.ly, will not only save space, but also create better looking tweets. And research reveals bit.ly links generate maximum retweets.
  5. Include #Hashtags: Including 1-2 hashtags relevant to the message is a good way to improve tweets and increase reach among prospects (who are not yet followers of you). Those hashtagged words that become popular are trending topics and you can use them to piggy back for views. Warning: Using hashtags too often is a bad twitequette and will not serve you well. The search engines will see you as a spammer and the whole process will become counterproductive, thus potentially harming your social media marketing efforts.
  6. Avoid Abbreviations or Slang: Avoid using text-speak and slang in your tweets. You’re not sending a private message or text to a friend; you’re primarily creating professional messages for an audience that can impact your business.
  7. Focus on Size: An ideal tweet should include (approximately): 100 characters for the message, 20 characters for the link, and 20 characters for retweets or the info source.

Take the time to focus on these tweet tips, as well as be consistent & persistent in your Twitter efforts, and you’ll be one of the business’s that DOES benefit from Twitter by increasing your sales and leads!

Cheers & Happy Marketing!

Lisa

Share

7 Ways to Improve the Stickiness Of Your Website

April 21st, 2013

Hi All!

The following article is a Guest Post written by Michael Fleischner, an Internet marketing expert and the President of MarketingScoop.com. He has more than 12 years of marketing experience and had appeared on The TODAY Show, Bloomberg Radio, and other major media. You can visit MarketingScoop.com for further details and more marketing articles including tips on how to improve search engine rankings for your web site.

Check out this great advice from this seasoned pro!

7 Ways to Improve the Stickiness Of Your Website

Today more than ever, consumers are overwhelmed with choices, and distractions. The cost of attracting users to your website continues to increase and keeping them engaged is more important than ever.

Engagement doesn’t end with an individual browser reading content or clicking on an ad. Rather, engagement is an ongoing process that results in loyal customers who come back again and again, becoming more vested in your web site.

How can you make sure you’re engaging and keeping customers?

In order to create a loyal following, there are some basic principles you need to consider. From first impressions to life-long membership, put yourself in the shoes of your browsers and make their experience a valuable one.

  1. Reduce Clutter. How many times have you visited a website only to be overwhelmed and confused? What is this site about you may have asked yourself. Or perhaps you found yourself asking, ‘Where is the information I’m looking for?’Don’t ask your browsers or potential customers to figure this out. Make your site clutter free and create a visual priority that emphasizes the information, resources, or actions your browsers want. By reducing obstacles you build trust among new web site visitors and allow for simple decision making – which benefits everyone.
  2. Make Navigation Intuitive. There are many ways to navigate a web page but intuition rules the day. Don’t try to get fancy with your navigation or overuse java script. Basic navigation that follows current convention is the best way to lead individuals through your web site to the information they’re looking for.
  3. Make The Initial Site Interaction Relevant. When a browser reaches your web site, you have less than seven seconds to get them engaged. Making your initial site interaction relevant to what individuals are looking for is essential for keeping them interacting long term.If you are promoting your web site with Google Adwords, or any pay per click advertising for that matter, be sure to create customer landing pages that are truly relevant to the individual who clicks-through your ad. Once you’ve established relevancy, you can move them deeper into your content, tools, and resources.
  4. Ensure That Your Content Is Up-to-date. Web site content that isn’t up to date does not serve your audience and browsers are likely to move on. One way to ensure that information is timely is by providing a feed of relevant news or information. If including static text on your web pages, try not to include specific dates. However, if you must publish dates, be sure to update this information on a regular basis.
  5. Start An Interaction With Your Users. Each time a browser views your web page, you have an opportunity to interact with them. Don’t let this opportunity pass you by. One great way to interact is to offer something of value at no cost. This can be a white paper, access to an exclusive list, or simply a 30 day free trial. Be sure to capture an individual’s valid email address and include them on your mailing list. An auto-responder is best if you wish to engage these individuals on an ongoing basis.
  6. Provide Plenty Of Support. Don’t hesitate to offer support right from your home page. Prominently display your 800 number, support email address, and additional information for your prospects and customers such as mailing address. This information is viewed favorably by search engines and also creates a sense of legitimacy. Contact information builds trust among prospects and elicits interest in your company.
  7. Make Sharing Easy. Once you’ve made your web site easy to use, don’t hesitate to offer browsers the ability to share your web site with others. This can be in the form of a simple widget that allows users to bookmark your page, subscribe to an Rss feed, or submit your content to popular news sites like Digg.com.Individuals are much more likely to visit a web site based on a friend’s recommendation versus some other type of marketing initiative. Leverage the power of viral marketing with easy sharing tools.

Your web site can be your greatest asset. Unfortunately, many marketers and website owners are so focused on increasing traffic that they lose site of the audience that’s already visiting their web pages but are simply not converting.

Don’t make the same mistake. Improve the quality of you site through relevant content that is up-to-date and easy to find. Once you’ve engaged users, encourage them to share. Doing so will make your site perform better, increase conversions, and deliver value for all involved.

Thank you, Michael, for sharing that great info! And I hope all of you found it helpful for increasing awareness and respect for your personal and business brands!

Cheers & Happy Marketing!

Lisa

Share

Simple Strategies to Get More Business on Facebook

January 13th, 2013

Hi All!

Social Media is an area that I not only conduct workshops and seminars on for small business owners, speakers and authors, but one that I provide private consultation on with every single client who hires me.

Now, I realize that to some of you Social Media may not be a mystery for building your brand, lead generation  and increased sales, however I will tell you it IS a huge mystery to most anyone who contacts me.

The common questions I hear are: How can I get more followers on Twitter and attract customers? I have a Facebook Business (Fan) Page but how do I use for marketing to get more clients? I have no idea how to use LinkedIn, Pinterest or YouTube for business, so what should I be doing? How can I use social media for book or product marketing?

And on and on and on…I’m not exaggerating when I say those types of questions are posed to me several times a week.

Obviously each one of those inquiries could each be the topic of its own book (and many have been!), so I’ll narrow this down to ONE of those topics and tackle the others in future posts I write.

Today I’d like to share an excerpt from an informative article written by Angela Stringfellow, a Business Writer who just had this article published on American Express’s awesome website for Small Business Owners and entrepreneurs, OpenForum.com. Her article is entitled: “10 Tips for Using Facebook to Boost Business”.

To avoid copyright issues, here are just the first three tips she shares and then you can click on the link to read the final seven:

Here are some innovative ways small businesses can use Facebook and capitalize on the power of this social giant.

1. Integrate Facebook connect buttons into your company website. Website visitors can easily connect to Facebook with the click of a button, enabling small business owners to maintain contact with potential customers even if they never return to the website.

2. Be responsive. Josh Grossman of e-Coupon service SavingStar says his company uses Facebook to communicate with customers and makes a point to respond to every question and comment promptly. Small businesses often thrive on personal interaction, and Facebook is a useful tool.

3. Make it easy to share content. Grossman explains, “Every coupon we post on SavingStar has a Facebook like button. Each coupon gets dozens or even hundreds of likes, helping to spread the word with users’ Facebook friends. All of our blog posts also have Facebook like and send buttons, and we use the Facebook comments plugin to make it easy for users to comment and share those comments with their Facebook friends.”

The tips that Angela shares in her article are dead on, so I highly recommend CLICKING HERE to read the other seven!

Cheers & Happy Marketing!

Lisa

Share

How to Optimize Your Press Release for Major Traffic

December 15th, 2012

Hi All,

There’s one key marketing and branding tool that most client who come to me have never used in their mix: Press Releases. These are critical to get mass awareness for you, your company, your products, your events and your services. Plus, if you write them yourself, the only cost is to deploy it through a service, like PRWeb.com. And the coverage you get after that is FREE publicity for you!

But, aside from writing a well-crafted Press Release that has newsworthy information to share, you’ll want to optimize it so that the Media and potential clients, on an on-going basis, through online search, can find it.

Inc. recently posted a great article with easy tips to do this, entitled: “The Perfectly Optimized Press Release” written by Aaron Aders, Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Slingshot SEO.

In the article, he provided six strategies to optimize your next Press Release. Here are three of them but click on the article link to read the final three. You don’t want to miss all of them!

1. Use direct links with natural anchor text.

Be sure that your chosen online wire service does not redirect links within your press releases to another server before sending them to your website. Wire services typically do this to track the visitor through a cookie that is tracked during the redirect. This is good for the wire service, but bad for you. Just hover over a link in your press release and make sure the URL points to the desired page on your website to confirm a direct link. Also, in anchor text, it’s a bad practice to force keywords where they may sound a bit unnatural to the content of the article. Use keywords and phrases that are relevant to the article only.

2. Don’t use too many links.

Follow these simple guidelines when using links inside your press release. Use no more than one link if your press release is less than 250 words; two links for up to 400 words; three links for up to 750 words; and five links for up to 1,000 words. It’s good practice to keep your online press releases under 1,000 words. Using too many links can make a press release appear ‘spammy.’

3. Take advantage of multimedia attachments.

Press releases with multimedia typically have higher click-through rates. So, if your wire service allows multimedia attachments such as videos or pdf files then be sure to take advantage of this extended functionality. Here’s a little known trick: don’t forget to optimize the file names and titles of your multimedia attachments to your press release. This will boost the press release’s SEO power. Again, use keywords and phrases that are relevant to the press release only.

CLICK HERE TO READ ALL OF AARON’S GREAT ARTICLE!

Cheers & Happy Marketing!

Lisa

Share

Valuable Lessons for How (Not) to Market on Facebook

October 05th, 2012

Ever since its initial public offering in May, Facebook’s life as a public company has been scrutinized, analyzed and commented on by the hour. During the lead up to their public debut, everything seemed rosy for the social media bandleader.

Even General Motors pulling out of their $10 million ad campaign the week before the campaign didn’t do much to slow the company’s initial roll up to $38 a share. Unfortunately, the gaping problem that GM pointed out hasn’t gone away. Facebook’s sidebar ads suffer from a dismal click-through rate. Although the internet average is just .1 percent, Facebook’s click rate settles around a pathetic 0.051 percent.

So is marketing on Facebook worth it? Of course! But not in the manner you might have previously thought.

Social media is all about engaging. The point is to start a dialogue with customers. Just like your blog, the posts on your Facebook wall, Twitter feed, or Google+ page should be insightful, thought-provoking, and most of all, useful.

Whether you’ve had success or failure in the past with social media (or you’re just getting started), remember these integral lessons whenever you’re launching or updating your campaign:

Don’t Be a Broken Record Player

Although tools that allow businesses to aggregate all their social media accounts in one place are useful, recycling a post across different platforms, this isn’t always the wisest approach. If a consumer likes your post on Facebook enough to follow your Twitter account as well, they might soon unfollow you if they’re bombarded with the same messages from multiple outlets.

Of course, some outreach is best shouted from the rooftops. In general, however, treat each platform as its own.

Make Each Post Unique

The broken record player analogy works individually within an individual outlet like Facebook, as well. A week-long sale shouldn’t be touted in the same way each day (3 more days! 2 more days!). Try to think of a witty or relevant post to highlight the sale each day. If you’re a shoe store, post a photograph of yourself in a favorite pair and solicit follower feedback. Or, if you own a spa, reward followers with a Facebook-only giveaway for users that ‘Like’ your post that day.

Don’t Over-Market

Facebook recently launched ‘promoted posts,’ allowing business pages to pay a small fee in order to maximize the number of their existing followers they reach with a status update. Although this tweak can be highly useful when you’re hosting an event or a major sale, it doesn’t change the rules about what you post. If your update is a blatant and boring marketing pitch, it won’t convert the extra views into further sales. Use your website to promote your products directly, and use Facebook to talk about them.

This spring, Facebook even launched a paid post beta program for regular users in New Zealand, allowing posters to make their updates ‘stickier’ on their friends’ news feeds for an extra dollar or two. If these become a regular option around the world, it could change the way our news feeds work, increasing the pressure even more for marketing content to be of a high quality that stands on its own, sales pitch aside.

Stay Engaged

Many businesses make the mistake of devoting themselves to a social media marketing plan and committing to a certain number of posts each day or week. But is it better to post three posts each day that get zero comments, or one post that results in a long stream of back-and-forth between followers?

Ask questions in your posts and invite followers to ask questions in return. Be quick to reply when they post, helping to foster a conversation that will promote you as an expert in your field, building trust that translates into sales. Not to mention, the more comments and ‘Likes’ a post receives, the higher it ranks within Facebook’s news feed algorithm.

Sometimes You Say it Best When You Say Nothing At All

Are you totally unmotivated to post to your Facebook account today? If you simply can’t think of anything good to say, keep your mouth shut. The last thing you want is to lose followers due to boring posts or updates that shamelessly try to sell product. If you’ve got a case of ‘poster’s block,’ just log out and don’t post anything. Something good will come to you later.

With Facebok struggling to further monetize and convince investors that it’s worth more than $20 a share (where it’s been hovering for most of August), there’s no telling what changes may be in store. Whatever alterations Facebook does make to its marketing options for businesses, the rules offered here are universal — with social media, start a conversation, establish yourself as an expert, and trust that the sales will follow.

Blog Post Courtesy of: Senior executive Anita Brady is the President of 123Print.com.   They are a leading resource for high quality customizable items like business cards, letterhead and other materials for small businesses and solo practitioners.

Share

Basic Steps to Creating an Effective Google AdWords Campaign

August 30th, 2012

Hi All!

The following Guest Blog post is another good one courtesy of Craig Robinson, an online Marketing Expert and the Editor for Qwaya, a Facebook campaign tool that runs through a web interface.

In this article, Craig is going to take you through the basic steps and tips to create a winning AdWords campaign. It’s loaded with great info, so let’s jump in!

Basic Steps to Create an Effective Google AdWords Campaign by Craig Robinson

When you’re ready to take the big step into online marketing, you will undoubtedly be creating an AdWords campaign with Google. Of course, there are many other ad services out there to choose from, and you should always spread your eggs out instead of putting them all in one basket, but Google is the biggest service around and it demands your attention.

However, only the best campaigns on Google are going to succeed, or at least have a greater chance of succeeding. But there is an endless amount of competition using AdWords campaigns, so you have to create great material or else your competition is going to bury you.

So let’s discuss how you can get ahead of your competition, and improve your branding and sales through an AdWords campaign…

Steps & Tips:

Target Your Market

This is the first step in the process and perhaps one of the most important. You want to ensure that you have the proper market targeted if you’re hoping to use AdWords to generate sales.

When you’re creating your AdWords campaign, think about whom to target both from a keyword and geographic perspective.

Your keyword portfolio decides when and where your ads will show. You need to balance great reach with high relevance, so think about the market you’re targeting and play to their needs.

Best Ways to Write Copy

This is something that can seem rather difficult at first. The goal is to command the reader’s attentions with your copy, and there’s a careful mixture of art and science involved here. For instance, you may want to ask questions that appeal to the users. You can also hand out simple instructions, tell a short story, offer up a teaser, etc. You want to create an air of intrigue, but you also want to come across as trustworthy.

Although good copy depends a lot on what you’re advertising and to whom, the key is always relevance. How can you make the ad as relevant as possible looking at the keywords you’re buying clicks for?

Here are examples of quick-hit messaging you’d want to follow when writing your ad copy:

  • Current promotion: “Right now only $50”
  • Specific product: “iPhone 5 in stock”
  • Review: “Best in test”
  • Your unique selling point: “Largest phone retailer in the US”

A Strong Call to Action

With a call to action, you’re looking to entice someone to click through on your ad and act on your offer. You’re not trying to order them to do something, however. So save those multiple exclamation points, the huge promises (i.e. lies), and other gimmicks used.

If your copy is written well enough and if the ad is relevant for the chosen market, a simple “Purchase online today” or something similar is as “strong” as you need for a call to action.

Creating Relevant Search Phrases

For Google’s particular system, this is an incredibly important part about effective marketing. You need to make sure that your keyword portfolio matches search phrases that are actually searched by people. There’s no “best guess” feature with AdWords.

You’re going to be paying the freight here, so make sure that you do your research.

(Note: It helps to have a service delivering these ads that will help out in search term generation.)

Lowering your CPC

Yes, playing the game with Google AdWords is going to cost money. It’s worth it if you have an effective campaign. You’ll receive a nice ROI. But if you’re interested in lowering your cost-per-click number, you need to focus on three main areas: long tail keywords, uncompetitive themes, and relevancy.

Long tail keywords are far more descriptive and thus have less competition. The same goes for the uncompetitive category. You should be able to find some really popular phrases, relevant to your ad’s message, which aren’t “over” competitive.

Lastly, make sure that your ads are using keywords that are as relevant as possible. Nothing lowers costs like actually making money!

Doing things the right way with Google can make your campaign a huge success and can help your business to grow exponentially. The above guide isn’t as thorough as it could be, but it does give you a general run through in terms of creating effective ads. Expand on each tip as you need it. And if you’d like more tips on search engine marketing, visit keybroker.com.

Thanks, Craig, for contributing another helpful article. And I hope all of you learned something here to make YOUR AdWords campaigns more successful…done right, they are a great way for small business owners to not only increase sales but build awareness for their brand, too. So I don’t care if you’re selling books online or want to promote your services, try some AdWords campaigns in your marketing plan.

Cheers & Happy Marketing!

Lisa

 

 

Share
« Older Entries