POSTS TAGGED : online marketing

Three Key Steps To Starting a Web-Based Business

keys tip to starting a web-based businessAs an online marketing specialist, I’ve seen too many online businesses go bust due to poor planning. Trust me, you don’t want to blindly dive into the world of online business.

If you don’t know what you’re doing from the get-go, it doesn’t take long to lose your investments. These three steps will help you on your way.

1. Research your market carefully.

Whether you plan to sell a product or service, you must be sure there’s opportunity to turn a profit in your specific online market. For example, my boss initially wanted to start an insurance brokerage “” until he realized that thousands of individual insurance companies were already vying for the same customers online.…

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5 Ways To Use Google+ For Business

5 Ways To Use Google+ For Business

Google Plus is not only for social communication but has proven to be an effective tool for business. Whether it is used in cost reduction efforts or to save time, Google Plus has numerous features designed to improve business productivity and efficiency. Businesses should try Google Plus to determine how the tool can facilitate business growth.

1. Google Plus Hangouts for Video Conferencing

Google Plus Hangouts allows users to collaborate and meet with remote clients and employees. A face-to-face meeting is often more personal than just the phone. Google Plus Hangouts will facilitate videoconferencing when business people cannot reach a central location for a meeting due to budget constraints, schedules or flight delays.…

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What Is Zurker And Do You Need To Know About It?

Not one to miss out on an opportunity to stay in the loop with all things social media, I have decided to keep a very close eye on new social networking site Zurker. Since the name first started circulating around in February, there has been much speculation and interest in the new start-up and it has only continued to grow.

Zurker

The name Zurker will frequently come up in conversation or I’ll stumble across another article on my internet travels.   I can safely say that I am both curious and fascinated in Zurker. Here’s why:

Zurker is owned by their members

The first thing that comes to mind is some sort of secret members society.…

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Local Business – Only 1.3% of Fans Actively Engage on Facebook

Only 1.3% of Local Business Fans Actively Engage on Facebook You read that title right. Of the millions and millions of users on Facebook, a new study by the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute found that almost 99% of Facebook fans do not engage with the brands they follow.

The study recently published by AdAge selected the top 200 Facebook brands to track over the course of six weeks and studied how many likes, shares, comments, tags and posts occurred for each. The result was that only 1.3% of fans actively engage. That number drops even further to only .45% when you remove the new “˜likes’ from fans.

At first glance, this number might catch you a bit off guard; but is this really that much of a surprise?…

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Five Questions To Answer Before Marketing Your Business

5 questions to answer before marketing your businessAre you clueless when it comes to marketing? Lost in the sea of click-through rates, impressions, search engine bid/ask arbitrage, social media, QR codes and more? You’re not alone.

Here are a few concrete ways to develop – and evaluate – effective online marketing campaigns that can jumpstart small company business revenue without breaking the bank.

CEOs are busy, so I recommend using a checklist to focus your effort, and ensure repeatability. At a minimum, you should be able to answer the following questions before embarking on any marketing campaign:

1. What do I want this campaign to accomplish? This is the most fundamental of all questions.…

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5 Things You Didn’t Know Your Small Business Needs

5 things you didn't know your business needed

You feel good about the business you’ve built. You’ve got the funding; you’ve got the business plan. You’ve got everything you need to run a successful company”¦or do you?   We’ve compiled a list of the top five things you didn’t know your company needed to help make sure you do.

A website

You would think in 2011 this would be common knowledge but 46 percent of small businesses don’t have a website, according to Entrprenuer.com, so it needs to be mentioned.   So, what are they waiting for? If you want to be successful, you need to be online.

An online presence

What good is your website if no one knows where it is?…

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Is Your Social Media Campaign Falling on Deaf Ears?

As with any campaign your business runs, how it is received by customers goes a long way in determining whether or not it will be successful.

In the event you’ve orchestrated a social media campaign and it has fallen on deaf ears for the most part, there is a reason to focus in on as to why that’s the case.

is your social media efforts falling on deaf ears

Presumably, your company’s reasoning for using social media in the first place is more than likely at fault. Before you dump the social media campaign, ask yourself:

  • What was our goal with social media in the first place?
  • Did we put 100 percent behind the plan or was it a half-hearted effort?
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How To Effectively Manage Your Brand In The Digital Age

manage your brand onlineWhat can one comment on Twitter do to your brand? Surprisingly, a great deal. Social media plays a vital role in how people perceive your goods or services.

Depending on how well connected your brand is, a positive comment from someone with a strong online presence can instantly catapult your sales figures, while a negative comment can diminish your reputation.

A great way of monitoring this is to use a free app such as Tweetscan which allows you to type in search terms relating to your brand. It then produces a list of all the comments on Twitter that use that term, and updates the list every minute or so.…

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Four Tips For Small Businesses Using Facebook As Their Main Website

small businesses using Facebook as main websiteMore and more small businesses are setting up their Web headquarters on Facebook instead of a traditional website. This has several benefits over a typical small business website. For one, a Facebook page is free. It also provides an instant connection to potential customers in a way that standard websites don’t. You don’t need to hire a professional to design a Facebook page, and you don’t need to pay someone to optimize it for search engines.

However, if you are planning to make a Facebook page the center of your business’s online strategy, there are a few tips you need to consider.…

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Embrace Bad Customer Reviews For Marketing Success

bad customer reviewsWhile the dawn of the internet has brought us e-commerce and a brand new channel to market, it has also empowered the consumer in an unprecedented way. Websites like Trip Advisor and Review Centre have given unhappy customers a very public platform on which to vent their spleen about any perceived injustice and this can have business owners running for cover.

All of this can be quite scary for business owners who can start living in fear of the dreaded online bad review. Unlike any other form of review, this is as public as it gets, and often they can appear on the first page of the search results pages when somebody Googles your business name.…

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