Archive for the ‘ Social Media ’ Category

How to use LinkedIn Strategies to Promote Your Business

Sunday, October 9th, 2016

Last June, Microsoft announced that it was buying out LinkedIn for $26.2 billion. Since then Microsoft acquired immediate access to some 433 million members. It became known that Microsoft was not the only company that was interested in buying LinkedIn. As a professional social network with millions of users even Facebook and Google were interested in LinkedIn and its potential.

Why is LinkedIn so popular?

There is no denying that LinkedIn is like a hub for businesses and professionals from various fields to connect together, while sharing their skills, experiences, expertise and capabilities. It is a good place for one to market a brand or a profession, while enabling businesses to grow and professionals to show what they are capable of in their respective fields. Thus, LinkedIn is the platform to go to in order to make connections with people working in the same field or industry, or similar areas. Members can benefit by connecting with other members, teaming up, and also look for ways to enhance their business. LinkedIn is ideal for any kind of business, but particularly for those organizations that help others in their respective business. This is because through LinkedIn it is easy to generate a great deal of targeted traffic.

How to get started on LinkedIn?

First of all you need to sign up and set up a profile. Your profile and the way you present yourself are of utmost importance if you want to get noticed and get traffic. So make sure that you create a professional looking profile, and luckily this is easily done on LinkedIn. There is a step-by-step process that will walk you through the process of creating a good and effective profile. You will also be given tips on how you could improve it too. On your LinkedIn profile you will need to include your work history, along with your current job. You will also list your various skills while describing yourself, your profession and what you are capable of. To make your profile look complete and professional it is important to add a profile picture. Last but not least you can link your LinkedIn profile to your site as well as to any other social media accounts that you have. Make sure you provide complete and truthful information, and to consider whether it is appealing to people in your niche, which is ultimately one of the main reasons why you set up your profile in the first place.

How to make connections on LinkedIn?

Unlike other social media platforms, it is easier to make connections and to get traffic on LinkedIn. First off you can connect with people whom you know already as soon as you set up your LinkedIn profile. Then, you can move on to make new connections and network with others in your line of business or profession. You can connect with people who went to your school or who have worked with you in the past. And then, as you go along you will be able to connect even with your connections’ connections. This is ultimately what networking is all about. As time goes by your connections will continue to build up, and most probably you will also start to receive a good number of connection requests too. As people see who you are connected with, and check out your profile, they will be inclined to connect with you.

The importance of being interactive on LinkedIn

You can make the best use of a social media platform the more active you are. Being interactive is easy on LinkedIn thanks to various great features for improved interactivity. For instance, you can vote on a number of skills which you feel represent the skills of your connections. Then they can also vote on skills that they feel represent you accurately. When this happens those skills will show up on the profile as endorsements, and there is no denying that this can look very impressive indeed, especially as people visit your profile to learn more about you.

Another great feature is the possibility of leaving reviews for others on their profiles, and they can do the same on your profile. This is another way to market yourself through what others have to say about you or your business. Naturally this helps to improve your image as well as increasing others’ confidence in you, your business, and what you have to offer.

You can also update your status. When you make an update you are also interacting and showing that you are active, and this has its advantages. You may also comment on the updates that other members post.

As a general rule of thumb, the more active and interactive you try to be on LinkedIn, the more connections you will be able to make, and in turn this will help you to gain social proof and credibility. LinkedIn can thus be described as a great platform to gain leads, as well as a fantastic possibility to promote yourself or your business.

How to interact in LinkedIn Groups

Look up groups that you can join on LinkedIn. There are going to be several groups that are related to your business or profession. Joining such groups and being active on them has various advantages. You can ask questions and reply to queries and comments. Groups are a very effective way to get yourself out there, and to gain more credibility. You may also create your own group. This is a very good way to show that you can be a leader in that particular area, while helping you to be more visible.

How to grow traffic with LinkedIn

The more active you are, and the more connections you make, the better you will do on LinkedIn. You can link to your website to get traffic. You can showcase your skills, qualifications, and experiences. All in all you can make yourself stand out, while encouraging people to look at what you are offering, and at what you are capable of.

Conclusion

LinkedIn is relatively easy to use, however you need to devote time to it, and make sure to be as active as possible. Join groups, post updates, interact with others, and maintain a professional presence. By doing so you can benefit in so many ways!

Why is Google + Important For Your Business?

Friday, May 30th, 2014

Posted in Social Media |

Few brands are as familiar to us as Google. It is now one of the most recognized brand names in the world next to Coca Cola, Microsoft and Apple. The very word Google has even entered into our everyday vocabulary. You never hear anybody say ‘I yahooed’ something or I ‘binged’ something. It is testament to Google’s overall popularity, the fact that ‘to Google’ is a commonly accepted verb.

According to stats, about two-thirds of the world’s internet population uses the Google search engine as opposed to other search engines.

Despite heavy advertising and a huge advertising budget, Bing has struggled to even make a dent in the search universe and Yahoo, once king of the Internet search, is fading away.

None of this has come around by accident. Google has made the science and art of search into a technology that continues to innovate and is managing to remain relevant despite the rise in popularity as social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.

Why Google+

Google’s creators are constantly looking to increase its core product of search revenues of over $30 billion a year. For that kind of revenue to continue it needs to constantly improve its product and services with features and functions that are relevant for mobile and social.

One way that it is doing that is with Google+, the search giants answer to Facebook. This is a new face of social media and Google is relying on Google+ very much. It is the key and core to Google’s web strategy and business. When it was announced almost everyone said “not another social network“. They thought that Google was mad for taking on a beast like Facebook. However, just over a year since its launch in June 2011, it has rapidly increased in popularity and has now passed 250 million registered users.

Benefits of Google+

When you join Google+, you have the power to choose targets for your information through groups and circles. For circles, you put people in different categories like family and acquaintances so that only they can see the information shared.

Groups are full of people with similar interests and your customers can fall in various groups so that you can structure the intended message accordingly. Google+ (G+) is also one of the best marketing platforms because the more people view your content, the higher your site is ranked in search engine optimization. This helps to direct more traffic to your site.

Why Should You Use Google+ as a Social Network?

Rather than ignore or dismiss Google+ as a passing fad or as a poor rival to Facebook it is very important as a business that you add it as part of your arsenal of Internet marketing tools.

Google+ is actually a good platform for business people and the average user alike. The majority of businesses and marketers online have included the Google+ one button above their content to become a part of this vast social network.

Features of Google+

The ‘Plus one’ button is the Google+ equivalent of a Facebook ‘Like’. It makes it very easy for your viewers to share your content on the Google plus network if they like it.

Another key feature of Google plus is that you can follow people and their content in a single group or different groups. This could include family or friends or you could also create a group of people sharing the same interest on a particular topic.

The major advantage of using Google plus is that if your content is shared on Google plus then it gives a solid positive signal to the Google search engine that your content is quality content. This is great for your business and helps you in getting a good ranking, resulting in more traffic and potential customers.

In our next poster, we will talk about three powerful reasons why adding Google Plus account is important to your business.

The Benefits of Using Visual Content

Tuesday, May 20th, 2014

Posted in Marketing websites, Social Media, Web Site Design |

The old adage “A picture is worth a thousand words” is extremely true, especially when it comes to visual content. So whether it’s a blog post, marketing campaign or social media posting, visual elements can go a long way toward conveying a particular idea or concept, while also creating memorability.

Visual Content Captures Your Attention

When you land on a webpage, flip to an advertisement in a magazine, or watch a television commercial, what’s the first thing you notice? It’s probably not the text or the sounds. It’s usually the images, graphics, typography elements and other visuals. That’s because humans are innately visual creatures. In fact, vision is the human’s single most powerful sense, so it makes sense that these visual elements that resonate with us on a more primal level.

The Power of Infographics in Branding and Conveying Info

Infographics are a great example of a visual element that serves to convey information and ideas in a visual manner. An infographic blends graphics, images and typography to create a visual that has a much greater impact and more meaning than an ordinary paragraph of text. An infographic is just one example of a powerful form of visual content, ideal for a range of different applications, including marketing and advertising, blogging and conveying information, brand development, social media and beyond. In addition to infographics, other forms of visual content include:

illustrations and graphics
videos and animations
presentations

Visual Content for Branding and Marketing

Visual content also serves to enhance brand recognition because it gives the audience something to remember. For instance, a page of text doesn’t provide any real memorable visual content. Quite simply, there’s nothing to remember from a visual perspective. But if you add an image, graphic or other visual content, then you’re giving the viewer’s memory something to sink its teeth onto, so to speak.

The Role of Visual Content

Visual elements can play several different roles. They can:

Capture the viewer’s attention;
Provide the viewer with something memorable;
Convey an idea or message;
Tell a story;
Create a mood or elicit an emotion; and
Provide an at-a-glance overview of an article or other information.

Visual Content in the Social Media World

Visual content marketing is especially prominent in the world of social media, where space and time is at a premium, thereby making the concise, clear and powerful nature of visual content extremely effective. Plus, social media marketing is all about capturing the audience members’ attention and nothing is more effective at this than visual content! So next time your crafting a blog post, webpage, presentation, advertisement or social media post, remember the power of visual content. And keep that old saying in mind: a picture really is worth a thousand words!

How to Use Vine For Your Business and Make Your Brand Go Viral

Tuesday, January 21st, 2014

Posted in Social Media |

Nowadays, it seems that everywhere you turn, another social media site is popping up! First, there was Facebook. Soon after that came Twitter, then Instagram, and other sites. And now, there’s another site taking the social media world by storm! Maybe you’ve heard of Vine, or maybe you haven’t. It is steadily gaining popularity, and sure to be the next big thing in social media.

But, what is Vine exactly? Vine is actually owned by Twitter, and was launched in 2013. Differing from YouTube or other video sites, it lets users record 6- second video clips, and the clips play continuously on a loop. Six seconds may not seem like a lot, but it’s actually thought to be roughly equivalent to Twitter’s 140-character limit. Once you create Vines, you can quickly and easily share them with your followers on Twitter and friends on Facebook.

In the six months after its launch, Vine has already drawn in well over 13 million users. In addition to being entertaining, Vine is also a strategic way to promote your business!

Share Your Testimonials

If you have regular, happy customers, you can use Vine to show other potential clients how much your product or service is appreciated. Rather than asking your favorite customer to create a long, awkward YouTube video, simply request that they help you out by creating a short, 6 second Vine. Maybe they can hold up cue cards with short slogans, or even describe your business in a few short words for you!

Showcase Work Samples

Clients easily get bored looking through pages and page of websites, looking at different work samples and trying to choose the best one. Don’t just have a boring portfolio of your work, like everyone else has. You want to stand out! Vine can help you do this. Create an animated work sample on Vine as a quick and efficient fix to advertising to a large audience.

Grab Your Customer’s Attention

Vine’s short videos can allow you to give your followers and current customers a sneak peek at what’s to come. It’s a great way to reward your current customers, as well as drawing in new ones. Making short Vine videos can also create suspense, so your followers will want to keep checking back in to see what’s new.

Interact with Your Customers

Vine is a fun and interactive way to engage with your customers and potential customers. It’s an easy and quick way to talk to them, and quickly answer any questions they might have, in a fun way.

Show Them Around

Vine is an innovative way to show your customers fun facts and behind-the-scenes peeks into your business’ inner operations. Unlike a long YouTube video, which might pressure you into having to give long explanations and drawn our tours, tour Vines can give you a quick way to show off key, interesting parts of your business. Maybe showcase a cool new product that you’ve been working on, or let your customers quickly meet some of your staff members.

Show Potential Results

Businesses such as construction companies, hairdressers, and designers might want to showcase their results of satisfied customers, to attract new customers. Using Vine will allow you to show potential customers before and after pictures of past projects, therefore letting them know that they’ll see good results.

Plan Events and Send Invitations

Short, suspense-building Vines can help you get the word out about any upcoming events you might be planning or hosting. It will help grab people’s interest, making your event more popular. You also might want to send out cute invitations by posting personalized Vines, or advertise the event’s promotions.

PR and Networking

Vine is an easy way to network with your community and your clients. By posting behind-the-scenes video, you are making your business more personable. By posting videos of your current products, you are showing your clients that you are keeping up with modern technology to showcase your products in the best light.

Reach Out and Bring Followers to Events

You can post Vines to easily attract people to your trade shows and conferences. Utilizing Vine’s hashtags to promote your conference or other event might also help spread the word.

Draw in Customers

Vine is perfect for marketing to a local audience, and drawing customers that live close by, to check out your store, restaurant, or other business. Short tours, special promotions, and other videos will attract local customers, and draw in more business overall.

Vine can be an amazing business tool, but there are a few things to keep in mind before you start using it!

It’s a One-Shot Deal

Once you hit “Record,” you won’t be able to edit the video, so make sure that you think about what you want to post before you post it. Additionally, make sure that you know that you have to record with Vine—you can’t just upload a video that you already made. So make sure that you have a plan before you start!

Factor in Other Details

To have the best outcome with advertising your business through Vine, you’ll want to have a high-quality and clear video. So, make sure that you have the right lighting, and are holding your phone or webcam steadily. You can easily do this by planning out your location beforehand, and maybe placing your phone down on a steady surface to keep it from wobbling.

Decide About Sound

If you want a more professional video, you might decide that you don’t want any sound in the background. However, even if you don’t want sound, when you record a Vine there will be sound in the background. So, make sure that you find a very quiet location, and check for background noise before you begin filming! Conversely, if you do want sound in your video, to make it more high quality you might want to buy a specific microphone for your phone.

Using Vine on a Global Scale

Vine will help your business reach a global audience, and reach a wider variety of people. Vine is an innovative way to engage and interact with your audience. Vine’s short videos are fun and quick to watch, which draws and keeps customers’ attention.

Businesses are getting great results by using Vine, and their products and services are being promoted to large audiences. Vine is a free way to get your business out there, and draw in more clients.

Vine may seem intimidating if you’re not very familiar with social media. Here is a quick 5 step guide to using Vine:

1. Download the Vine app on your smart phone or tablet.

2. Sign up for Vine—it’s a quick process and you can create an account with either Twitter or your email. You can also connect your account to Facebook.

3. Look at the top right corner of the screen, and click the “People” icon to find other people to follow on Vine. (You can also do this by clicking the “Find People’ option under the “Friends” menu in your settings).

4. Click the camera icon to start recording your vines. Tapping your finger on the screen will start recording, and releasing it will stop recording.

5. When you’re done recording, click “Continue” to share your video on Vine and other social media sites like Twitter and Facebook!

You can promote your business by creating fun videos and messages for your clients. This will help you to engage with your followers and they are bound to reward you with positive comments and spread the word about your video making sure it gets lots of exposure.

How to Get Traffic with YouTube

Sunday, May 5th, 2013

Tags: YouTube
Posted in Social Media |

Did you know there’s a website that gets over 1 billion visits a month? Talk about traffic!

That website is YouTube. Think of YouTube as your secret marketing weapon. Most businesses don’t know how to use it. Sure, they may put up videos, but how many views do those videos get? So, while YouTube may not be a secret, how to use YouTube for your business, generally is.

Sure, there are many companies that use YouTube to drive traffic to their sites, but these companies are spread across every niche imaginable, which means that there won’t be that much competition in any one niche.

Here are some tips on how to use YouTube to drive traffic?

1. Get set up on YouTube

You’ll need a Google account if you don’t already have one. It can be a Gmail account, a Google Adwords account, a Google+ account, or a Google Adsense account.

2. Check out the competition

Type in keywords relating to your product or service and see what videos come up on the right hand side. Check these videos out. You don’t have to watch every one, just check the number of views and how long it’s been since they were posted.

You can be pretty sure that those videos that have a large number of views and were posted less than two years ago are about subjects that people in your niche are interested in. Now you’ve got possible subjects and titles for your own videos.

3. It’s brainstorming time

Now it’s time to think up some new ways to approach the subjects that you got in step two. You might need to surf some blogs or social media sites to find out what elements of those subjects are getting the most attention at the present time.

4. Make your video

Target the subject that’s getting the most attention first and add videos later that address other niche subjects that are of interest later. You should always try to create videos that solve some problem that people in your niche have and always invite them to visit your site for further information.

5. Optimize your description with keywords

This is something that most people don’t do and will put way ahead of the competition. YouTube has a keyword suggestion tool that’s very helpful. Remember that search patterns are different on YouTube. It’s not like an ordinary search engine. So, use the suggestion tool and don’t just use the same keywords that you are using on your site.

That’s basically it. Providing that you video looks reasonably professional, and does solve a problem, you will attract views.

Video is rapidly becoming the dominant media on the Internet. Video Marketing will continue to grow and video is great because you can directly appeal to the emotions of potential customers in ways that the written word never can. With a little luck and some hard work, your video will go viral and then you’ve really got it made.

Make the Most of Facebook’s EdgeRank

Wednesday, October 10th, 2012

Tags: Edgerank
Posted in Facebook, Social Media |

Facebook’s ranking system has enormous implications for the benefits social media can bring for your businesses. What exactly is behind all the excitement? An impressive little newsfeed algorithm known as EdgeRank.

What is EdgeRank?

EdgeRank is the system Facebook uses to determine what stories are most relevant and to whom, ensuring your updates get posted only to those pages and people who will really be interested. An ‘Edge’ is any interaction that happens on Facebook like comments, status updates, likes and shares.

EdgeRank is based on a pretty complex algorithm, but it’s premise is very straightforward: the more popular your post, the greater the number of interactions your fans have with it, and how recent your post is are the primary factors EdgeRank looks at when deciding how to rank your story.

EdgeRank’s Ranking is broken up into 3 segments:

Affinity

“Affinity” is just EdgeRank’s fancy way of saying “how connected you are to a page or person.” If you interact with one of your friends more often than others, your posts will show up on that friend’s page. If I post on your page from time to time, it’s likely your story will show up on my page as well. The more you interact with someone, the more likely it is that your posts will show up on their feeds.

Weight

Certain things you do on Facebook have a specific gravity. Or “relative weight,” to be more technical. To put it plainly, if you post something it has weight, if your friends or fans comment on it, it has more weight. There are other variables that affect an action’s weight, including how many Likes or comments it gets. Comments will generally lead to a higher weight than Likes alone will.

Time Decay

Time Decay simply refers to how new the item is. The newer the update, the better. If you recently posted something on Facebook, it’s more likely to show up on your friends’ feed…so timing is very important.

How EdgeRank Can Help You

From the above, we can see that Popularity times Relevance times Newness = How many fans will see your post.

Quite simply, EdgeRank ensures that you maintain a strong social connection with those pages and people who are more likely to be interested in what you or your business are doing. To take advantage of EdgeRank, you must remember that interaction is a key to success. Interact often with those pages and people you want to associate with. Promote interaction not just by posting offers, but by giving friends and fans reasons to interact with you through Likes, comments, and shares by giving them smart, well-written, and persuasive calls to action.

5 Ways Pinterest Can Help Your Business

Saturday, May 19th, 2012

Tags: pinterest for business
Posted in Social Media |

Social Media Marketing has become an essential part in business advertising. Some social networks are more effective than others, with the latest craze being Pinterest. If you haven’t thought of using it to market your business, then it’s time you should, and here’s why:

1. Pinterest is addictive

Part of the allure of social media sites is the fun, games and apps that keep people coming back for more. Pinterest has that addictive quality that members can’t seem to get enough of, and that usually means that the site will continue to grow. Women in the 18-40 range seem especially addicted, but now it seems that everyone is getting in on the action, meaning Pinterest is here to stay.

2. It’s a traffic giant.

Most websites take some time to build up a decent following, but Pinterest has grown at a rate that no-one would ever have imagined at the start. Ten million users have signed up since the two years it has been online.

3. Easy integration to your website

Pinterest allows you to add your Pinterest provides a ‘Pin It’ button that will allow users, or pinners as they are sometimes referred as, to pin items on your site to their Pinterest boards.

4. The perfect spot for product placement.

Pinterest is a great way to get your product in front of other pinners in a matter of moments. As your followers pin a product they like, it will start to get pinned over and over again, even by people who may never have heard of you before.

5. Using Pinterest is incredibly easy.

If you are not yet convinced that your business needs Pinterest as part of its marketing strategy, then think again. It’s an incredibly effective marketing tool and is one that is amazingly easy to use. The amount of exposure that your business can gain is vast, and you won’t have to commit a ton of time to it. The truth is that your customers may well end up doing the lion’s share of the marketing for you, but with your own Pinterest account, you can choose exactly which products get displayed, and when. As far as social media marketing goes, Pinterest is hard to beat.

Check out my Pinterest boards at http://pinterest.com/ninamenezes.

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