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Marketing

Social Media Hashtags: What Are They And How To Use Them?

Thomas Fox is president of Tech Experts, southeast Michigan’s leading small business computer support company.

As we delve into our social media networks, like Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr, it seems that hashtags – or little words and phrases preceded by the # symbol – are permeating everything in our feeds.

This cryptic little symbol can actually make it easy to categorize posts and search for similar content, but more and more people seem to be using it outside of that purpose, which creates confusion about this practice as a whole.

Unlike many internet crazes, the emergence of the hashtag can actually be traced to its very first Tweet.

Back in August 2007, Chris Messena, a former Google employee, wrote on Twitter: “how do you feel about using # (pound) for groups. As in #barcamp [msg]?” Granted, this single tweet didn’t revolutionize how we navigate social media all at once, but it eventually did catch on.

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Making Content Marketing Work For Your Business

Thomas Fox is president of Tech Experts, southeast Michigan’s leading small business computer support company.

Content marketing, in the form of blogs, videos, infographics, and white papers or e-books, is and will continue to be a permanent feature in the online world. The use of such tools is continually expanding as marketers find new ways to offer content to target audience.

In order to attract more people to buy your products, you must also provide useful information that will drive them to your site and build the trust needed to move them through the sales funnel.

Take advantage of social media
Act to reach as many potential customers as possible. Social media helps to boost the visibility of videos, blog posts or infographics that you create.

This can be done by scheduling updates across all social networking channels to encourage your followers to view the content you created and to share them with their own followers.

However, be aware that you are walking a fine line; multiple daily updates may alienate your audience.

Post to bookmarking sites
People trust sites that post content that has been vetted by people who share their interests.

Content which receives the most votes quickly becomes popular, so in most cases, readers will skim through the top links for the best content.

??????As a small business owner, social bookmarking sites offer a great opportunity to connect with readers you might otherwise never interact with, increasing your chances of bringing in more customers.

Updates
Visitors to your blog should be able to get quick and simple updates each time you post something new. RSS feeds are efficient in ensuring this process.

Every visitor that signs up for updates from your blog can either read them through an RSS feed or get them via email. This eliminates the problem of visitors needing to check on your blog for new content.

Measure results
There’s really no tangible way of knowing whether or not your content-marketing efforts are productive except to measure your results.

Look at your analytics to see how many visitors you are bringing to your site to see if you are taking the right steps in marketing and sharing your content.

Find out which topics people are reading the most to help you generate ideas for future content.

Google Analytics is a free tool you can use to collect data on your content marketing efforts.

You will be able to review traffic to your site over time and make sure it is steadily rising as intended.

It’s no longer enough to simply have a blog, even an active one. It is critical to develop a comprehensive plan of action that will ensure the right people are drawn to your content and ultimately turned into loyal customers.

(Image Source: iCLIPART)

Blog Your Way To Success

Blogging is nothing new these days, but it’s still a powerful tool for promoting yourself, your ideas, and your personal brand.

Blogs are easy to set up, but good blogs can be challenging to maintain.

Keep these tips in mind to create a blog that will make a mark on the Internet:

Stick to a clear theme
Select a broad topic to concentrate on. If your blog seems too scattered, people won’t feel any compelling reason to read it regularly.

Know your audience
Think about who you’re trying to attract. What are they interested in? What are their problems? What do they need?

Address these questions and you’ll be able to create content that appeals to the readers you want.

Write powerful headlines
The first thing your readers will see when they visit your blog is the headline of your latest story. Give it some excitement and emphasis with action verbs and colorful language so they know what your item is about, and want to read it right away.

Engage with your readers
Don’t let comments sit there. Respond with a thank-you, more information, or to correct misinformation.

Avoid fights, but make your points clearly and respectfully so your audience knows you’re paying attention.

Keep at it
Many blogs start strong but then languish because their founders lose interest.

Remember that this is a long-term effort. If you’re not getting the response you want, try tweaking your blog, but don’t give up too soon.

Enhance Your B2B Digital Strategy

The word digital is still a bit of a taboo in the B2B world with most companies still having not fully integrated digital strategies into their marketing efforts.

Many B2B executives remain unconvinced that digital marketing will really assist them to take their company to new levels. They believe their services or products are too niche to work on social media, yet this notion fails to hold water when the efforts of similar entities are taken into account.

One good tip for B2B companies that have yet or are just starting to enter the digital age is to embrace inbound marketing.

Search engines are used by around 93% of all B2B buyers when they start the process of purchasing. This makes search engine advertising a potentially huge tool, allowing the customer to discover the company on their own without the need for cold calling, direct mail or TV and radio ads.

Showing that you are a trusted advisor is the key to making this technique work. Once the prospect contacts you, it is crucial to talk to a client in the manner of a normal conversation rather than a hard sell.

Time Spent Blogging Will Boost Your Online Profile

Thomas Fox is president of Tech Experts, southeast Michigan’s leading small business computer support company.

You‘ve no doubt noticed the thousands of blogs online from big businesses, mom-and-pop stores, consultants, and individuals.

Some of the information is interesting, some of it is boring, and a lot of it is just an outlet for folks to vent.

However, if you are not blogging, you may be missing out.

Why blog?
If you are a business owner or manager, blogging has many benefits:

It boosts online awareness about your company. By including search engine optimization (SEO) keywords in your blog titles, links and copy throughout your blog postings, you’ll significantly increase your search rankings and boost online awareness about your company, services and products.

These keywords are simply the words or phrases potential customers are using to search for your products and services online.

By including SEO keywords in your entries and writing weekly blogs that are 300 words or more, you will see a difference in website traffic.

Blogging builds customer relationships. Blogs also offer a way for you to share information, interact and build customer relationships.

If people can comment on your posts and like what you have to say, they will share the information with others and build word-of-mouth for your business.

But how do you discover what is valuable to your customers?

Check your Google Analytics. The key is knowing what pages your site visitors are looking at most and what keywords they are currently using to find your website.

This information will give you clues about what your clients want and help you create great blog entries.

If you’re still not sure, you can always post a quick, online survey and ask your customers what they want to see.

A blog lets you beat the competition by providing unique content. Blogs can help you stand out from the competition by providing valuable information that your customers cannot find anywhere else. And how do you do that?

In your blogs, share your personal insights pertinent to your expertise, background, likes/dislikes, hobbies, etc. Your blog should be as unique as you are.

Blog for business growth!
If you haven’t looked at blogging as part of your marketing strategy, it’s time to review it again.

Blogs provide a great way to boost your rankings on the search engines and build client relationships with unique and valuable information.

However, blogs need to be written with the appropriate SEO content and posted on a regular schedule – there’s nothing worse than a stale site.

If you don’t have the time or writing skills for this, hire a content strategist who does. It will be well worth it when you see your site visitors and sales increase!

Advertising Via Social Media Sites

For all the hype that surrounds the use of social media when it comes to small businesses, many owners have learned the hard way that a Facebook or Twitter account alone is not going to drive up sales.

Successful social media campaigns need forethought, planning and skill and using a few tips can assist you to give more traction to your social media campaigns.

Advertisers often see Facebook as the social media site of choice but other social networks might actually be more effective for your particular brand.

LinkedIn for instance offers a wide array of users from the world of business while B2B clients might find Slideshare the ideal vehicle.

Advertising a niche product in a magazine aimed at the mass market is an obvious ‘no-no’ and the same applies to social networks.

Profile pages offer an amazing amount of data about users and this can be used very effectively to target the audience that best fits the demographic that you are targeting with your product or services.

Make use of video marketing
Seventy two percent of business executives watch videos that are related to business on business websites a minimum of once a week, according to Forbes. This means that you are seriously missing out on what may be one of the greatest lead generation techniques ever devised.

The bottom line is that creating an informative and compelling video is an excellent method of attracting attention from other businesses and indeed today video marketing is almost essential as a lead generation technique.

The main thing when it comes to using video marketing is to have a plan.

Think about the audience that you are attempting to reach with this video, as there are likely to be different approaches and language used when trying to reach executives as opposed to average people.

You also need to think about the benefits that targeted viewers can glean from the video as without benefits there will be not much in the way of follow-up!

Keep things short, make sure the sound quality is good and include the logo of your company at both the start and end of the video.

Content publishing tips
Having a good hold on content generates a lot of opportunities before you have even started promoting your business due to the fact that you can create and edit and then even publish that content by yourself.

When you have become efficient enough to be able to cope with B2B content you will then be able to help the online reputation of your business grow. Publishing content leads to increased exposure over the internet and results in more and more potential clients paying a visit to your website, so making sure that there is a good representation of that business is obviously going to help you generate and keep a good reputation.

The website’s content should be free from errors and feature appropriate and accurate material. The accomplishment of the website, and by extension your business, is dependent on the content being of the absolute highest quality possible, which means there should be no comprises made of any kind.

There are a number of different techniques, both classic and decidedly offbeat, that can be used to help turn customers into subscribers and even passionate advocates for your business and brand.

One tried and trusted method is to give special treatment to your subscribers. This can take the form of office perks, offering services to subscribers (plus their networks) or one-day specials on products via your social media channels, providing online recognition by asking your followers to post their own stories about your services and products.

Writing Compelling Online And Offline Marketing Content

Working in the world of B2B communications there are a lot of rules and regulations to follow, and it is often all very serious indeed, but that doesn’t mean that all your communications have to be boring.

There are a few guidelines to remember that can give potential customers important information without putting them to sleep in the process.

The first tip is to keep the message as brief as possible and just get to the point. A short, powerful idea that has been cleverly packaged will always be better than an inordinate amount of waffle.

The more efficient you can make the message, the more likely it is to be read and to have the effect you want it to have. It is also important to make your content valuable and one of a kind.

While your topic of choice may have already been the subject of countless articles, you need to provide a different angle that will make yours stand out from the crowd and draw in consumers.

Avoid Four-Letter Words
There are some four-letter words that have no place when it comes to the world of B2B – and we’re not talking about profanity.

These are simple everyday words that the really clever stopped making use of a long time ago. Some of the most offensive?

The likes of “can’t” and “busy” as used in sentences such as “We can’t do that” or “I’ll call you back when I’m not as busy.”
Customers come to your business because they believe that you will be able to give them what they are asking for.

Even if you genuinely cannot give them that, you should always try to send them to someone who can, as they will remember your helpful behavior.

Likewise, under no circumstances should you tell a customer you’re too busy to deal with them.

No client wants to feel that they are unimportant and unappreciated, and if you do that, chances are your client will find someone else who won’t make them feel that way.

How Much Content Is Enough?
One question faced by many B2B companies is when they have created enough content to be able to answer all the questions that a prospect might conceivably have at each and every stage of the buying cycle.

The question therefore is, how can a company go about determining that? It begins with understanding who their ideal buyers really are and the kinds of concerns and issues they will have.

Creating buyer personas can actually assist with this, as they are used quite commonly in order to create an ideal customer archetype based upon what you already know in regard to your current prospects and customer base.

You need to be able to get inside your buyers’ heads and have a solid understanding of what it is that makes them tick. To do this, talk to your customers and to the personnel at your company who regularly engage with them. It will be a lot easier to craft your message.

Social Media Management: Think Local

Marketers seem to be hearing three words a lot more these days: “social,” “local” and “mobile.”

With more and more users relying on cell phones and tablets and the geo-location technology that accompanies them, more and more businesses are realizing they need to think locally.

One good way to use social media to appeal to a local audience is to develop a blog. Blog posts are excellent places to write about things specific to your local area – events, people, places and restaurants, for example.

When writing blog posts, make sure you optimize the post by using tags that demonstrate the local nature of your business so you will benefit from your local search strategy and will be indexed in the correct manner by search engines.

Another way to better optimize your social search is to submit your profile data to local directories such as Yellow Pages and SuperPages.

Social Media Strategies Are Different For Every Business

Thomas Fox is president of Tech Experts, southeast Michigan’s leading small business computer support company.

“One size fits all” doesn’t work as a strategy for managing your company’s social media presence.

Social media – the big three, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn – has become an increasingly more complex space the last few years.

Constant change
There’s a lot of activity and change across all three sites. Keeping up with the changes in policies and process, while at the same time updating your site and status, can be overwhelming.

The right way to use social media for your business depends on a number of variables, including the size of your company, the type of business you’re in, your target audience, and whether you’re a B2B (business to business) or B2C (business to consumer) company.

Many business owners don’t understand this. They think that you need to use every possible social media tactic and tool that’s available, but usually that leads to confusion and distraction with little measureable result.

Choose carefully
Not every social media promotion method works for every company.

Some businesses are successful using social media to hold contests and encourage check-ins by fans and followers.

It’s a great way to raise awareness and engage prospects and clients for a local B2C business, but probably doesn’t make sense for a B2B professional services firm.

Just because other businesses are doing it and finding success, it doesn’t mean that the tactic will work for your company.

Have a plan
Many business owners make the mistake of jumping into social media without a solid strategy, figuring it out as they go.

Just as you need a business plan, you also need a social media plan. Failure to strategize leads to poor decisions, wasted time, and confused clients and prospects.

The plan doesn’t need to be complex – one page that outlines your goals and the steps you need to take to get there will work. Once your plan is outlined, it’s time to execute!

Who’s responsible
The most important decision you’ll make when it comes to your company’s social media strategy is who will be responsible for managing it.

For smaller companies, this usually will be the owner. But for even the smallest business, a well thought out plan can be delegated to a staff member. Make sure you hold them accountable, and that you measure your results.

Not just for sales
Strategic posts on your company’s social media sites can help with customer service and public relations, too. Don’t narrow your social media focus just to sales and marketing.

Your end goal with social media should be to get clients and prospects to take an action: Visit your website or blog, ask for more information, or promote your company and brand to their friends and followers. Tracking the results of your social media strategy is the only way you’ll know what’s working, and what needs changed.

Taking Your Business Online Can Increase Profits

by Jeremy Miller, Technician
Most if not all businesses can benefit from having an online-presence. Going on-line for a business can be a low-cost marketing solution.

Your online presence can help give customer’s quick access to information about you and your business, all the way to having automated inventory alerts that let clients know about new products and stock levels.

When getting started online, you’ll want to get a domain that represents your business. You’ll want to pick something that’s easy to remember, and easy to spell and type.

You don’t want a domain name that you have to spell out for clients – that makes it very hard to use in advertising.

There are many domain registrars to choose from, including Tech Experts.

After you have your domain name, you’ll need website hosting services. Most web hosts, including Tech Experts, include company email with the service.

Most hosting plans are very affordable. Our basic hosting plan starts at $9.99 per month.

If you want to take it a step further, you can set up an online store. There are a lot of options, depending on how involved you want the store to be.

Accepting credit cards online can be a hassle, especially with the new security and compliance regulations. If you expect to do a large volume of business in your store, it makes sense to set up a secure site and contract for the credit card processing services.

For smaller web stores, PayPal offers a checkout service that is fully PCI DSS compliant. Their basic service is free (less the processing costs).

Setting up a website is not enough to make your business drastically improve. You have to find a way to get customers to your website.

There are many ways to do this. An inexpensive and effective way to get your website noticed is to start a blog.

Blogs will show a human side to the business and search engines crawl blogs easily. Easy places to do this are popular websites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Plus.

This helps improve your ranking in a search on search engines. There are other ways to improve your ranking as well. In fact there is a periodic table guide to Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

By looking at the periodic table, you can see exactly on a point scale what increases and decreases your SEO ranking.

There are companies that specialize in SEO Optimization. The fees range from very reasonable to exorbitant. SEO is as much black art as science, and it pays to have professional help.

There are tools that track how users are using your website. Google Analytics tracks how much time is spent on your website, and where visitors are going.

This can be useful for you to optimize your site for ease-of-use. You want to make it easy for your users to find what they are looking for and browse easily as well.

Another tool that can be useful is Google AdSense, which places targeted ads on your site – and everytime someone clicks on ad, Google will pay you a small amount.

The last thing to think about is the mobile version of your site. More users browse the Internet than ever before with their smart phones and tablets, so you’ll want to have a mobile site for these visitors.

This can be a little more tedious due to the fact that this technology is still emerging.

A lot of web sites require a mouse for them to function; an example of this would be a site with a menu bar at the top with a “mouse over” function to see the drop-down menu.

So having a site that detects the type of device and browser that the user is using and directs them to the correct site is important.