Pinterest

Savvy small business owners have long discovered the benefits of social media. In the hopes of maintaining an online presence, they have created an account in virtually every social platform there is. Now, the thought of using yet another social network seems time consuming and daunting. But if you want to make your company’s presence felt, then you need to stay up-to-date on the world of social media.

There are a number of reasons why small business owners should be interested in Pinterest. Here are some of them.

A whole new audience

Today, there are only 500,000 business accounts on Pinterest as compared to 25 million business pages in Facebook. If you already have a Facebook page and you want to extend your reach to a whole new audience, Pinterest can help you with that.

Since users only see posts that are focused on the categories that they’re interested in, there’s a good chance that your audience in Pinterest aren’t the same people who are following you on Facebook or Twitter.

Drive traffic to your website

Recent study shows that Pinterest is more effective in driving website traffic as compared to Google +, Youtube and Twitter combined. It is a great tool for increasing links back to your site. If you rely on your website to fuel sales and marketing, then you should include Pinterest in your marketing plan.

It’s a great spot to advertise

Businesses from all over the world are using Pinterest to market their products and services. Since Pinterest is such a viral, sharing community, this is also a great place to promote special deals and discounts. The key is to create a visually appealing image. Pin a colourful and chic-looking coupon, and include details on the caption. The more captivating your pin is, the more likely will it appeal to your audience.

It is growing

Pinterest is becoming more and more popular. In fact, the photo and video sharing site has more than 25 million members and gets 2.5 billion page views every month. It wouldn’t hurt to jump on the bandwagon.

 

leadtrickstips

Every marketer’s goal is to generate new leads that will eventually turn into paying customers. Unfortunately, a huge percentage of marketers admit that their lead generation efforts are ineffective. In fact, studies suggest that about 80% of visitors who add items to their cart do not buy, and 70% of them will never return.

These lead generation tips will help improve your marketing campaign and hopefully attract more people to your business.

Keep building relationships

The best way to keep your sales pipeline well stocked is to keep building relationships with potential leads. Send them a link to a news article about an industry trend, share some helpful tips or offer some business intelligence.  These may seem like small things, but these little things may help keep you at the top of your prospect’s mind.

Blog consistently

You probably know that blogging is effective for generating leads? So how come it took you an entire month to write a new blog? If you are serious about increasing your web traffic, then try to write blogs as often as you can.

Persistence is key

A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that people will visit their website with a just a few clicks of a button. Unfortunately, that’s not how it works.

Block out an hour or two of your day and dedicate this time for lead generation activities only. That means no checking of emails, texting or playing games. Pick up the phone and talk to your prospects. It doesn’t matter if they have turned you down before, just keep trying. Remember, persistence is what sets successful marketers apart from the unsuccessful ones.

Call-to-action

Visitors need clear instructions on what to do when they arrive on your website. Do you want a subscription to your channel or page? Their contact information? A site visit? Then let them know. Sometimes, all you need to do is ask.

BIMSDo you struggle with getting results from your online marketing campaign? Do you often wonder why some marketers make it big while others continually fall short?

In this blog post, we’ve listed down 4 habits of highly successful marketers. If you take action and execute these habits, you are more likely to succeed.

Continuous learning

Being a successful internet marketer is not just about using the latest tools or following the right systems for generating traffic. Rather, it’s about continuously improving your skills.

Successful internet marketers keep on reading new articles about social media, search engine optimization etc. What worked today may not work next month. That said, you need to stay up-to-date. Otherwise, you’ll be wasting your time, effort and money and still fail to achieve your desired results.

Establish goals and milestones

It is important to define your goals before you start working. This way, you have a clear vision of what you want to achieve and take the necessary steps to reach that goal.

Delegate and collaborate

When you first started your business, you probably filled many different roles – marketer, salesperson, storekeeper, accountant, founder etc. But as your business grows, you can no longer do all these tasks on your own.

Time is of the essence. If you want to get things done, you need to learn to delegate tasks. Surround yourself with highly capable people and get them to do what needs to be done on your behalf.

Never quit

Some of the world’s most successful people have failed at first. Things may not work out fine during your first few attempts. Your posts will not go viral. No one is going to be interested in your first video or blog post. Your first website is going to look ugly. That’s fine.

No one is expecting you to have a perfect website or a viral post. Go ahead, share what you have now and try to improve it along the way.

 

BIMS_1.5As 2015 draws to a close, many of you are probably preparing for the biggest party of the year. Whether it’s a family event, work party or a purely social gathering, there’s a social media embarrassment waiting to happen.

A careless Facebook post or tweet can alienate your loved ones and damage your social and professional image. Start the year right by paying close attention to your social media profiles and activities.

Take a good look at these tips for proper social media etiquette.

Take your complaint offline

We understand that you’re frustrated about a company’s customer service or the long lines, but you don’t have to post it on social media for everyone else to see. Rather than slamming them on Facebook or Twitter, it is better to contact them privately and settle the issue offline.

Avoid over-sharing

It’s okay to share how awesome your dinner was or what your cat is up to occasionally, but sharing every single bit of activity you did all day is the fastest way to lose your friends and followers. You are free to share a few times a day, but be sure to space your posts.

Use caution in posting and tagging photos

You may look good on a particular picture, but if a friend’s hair looks like a rooster and your sister’s skirt is twisted, then you shouldn’t post it. No matter how good looking you are at that picture; please think about the others before posting and tagging them. You probably don’t like it when someone tags you in candid or unflattering photos, so why would you do that to them? If you really want to post the picture, then crop it. Your friends will thank you for it.

Be respectful

Avoid engaging in aggressive debates online and sending out potentially offensive tweets. Remember, there’s another person on the receiving end. If you wouldn’t speak to the person that way face to face, then you shouldn’t do it online.

 

BIMS_12.8Instagram is an amazing photo-sharing network and it is gaining popularity day by day. When used correctly, you can use it to promote your brand and business as well.

According to studies, getting more likes on social media makes you happier. Since we want you, our dear readers, to be happy, we thought of sharing with you some tips on how to build a massive following on Instagram. Read on and can create a stronger presence on this social channel.

Get in touch with other users

If you want your images to get more comments and likes, you need to get in touch with other users. Responding to comments and questions is also essential to maintaining your follower base. There’s no point in building a following if you won’t even talk to them. If you stay active, you’ll see a steady stream of new followers.

Use the right hashtags

While posting engaging and interesting photos on Instagram is a must, using the right hashtags also has its advantages.

Hashtags are pretty much a staple of social media. Just like twitter, Instagram users use hashtags on their photos. With the right hashtags, you are more likely to reach your target audience. Plus, users who are searching for specific keywords will find it easier to find your photos.

Timing is everything

It is important to stick to a schedule so that your followers will know when to expect your posts. If you started posting every day, then stick to it.

It is also important to post them at the right time if you want to reach a larger audience. Morning and after work are usually the best time to post photos. People are usually online during this time.

Quality vs. Quantity

No one would be interested to follow someone with non-sense or random posts. If you’re running a restaurant and wanted to get people to actually eat in your restaurant, it’s a good idea to provide people a photo of mouth-watering dishes you offer. Make sure there are no irrelevant or low quality photos in your feed. Edit your account and leave only the best photos.

fcebook ads

Increasing Facebook likes can be a tricky process. With the algorithm changes, Facebook page engagement decreased over time; thus, making it difficult for business owners and marketers to reach their fans.

Since Facebook is one of the biggest and most popular social networks, you should be looking for ways to increase the number of people who like your page. Advertising using Facebook ads is one of them.

Facebook ads are the easiest and most effective ways to increase your likes. If you don’t already have some good Facebook ads strategies, you better get started.

Ability to reach smartphone users

Facebook has about 1.20 billion active mobile users as of December 2014. That’s a lot of people, and the number of users is increasing over time. Because of that, mobile should be your priority. By advertising on Facebook, you’ll be able to reach your audience right at the palm of their hands.

Enhanced audience targeting

There are billions of people on Facebook. That said, you need to make sure that you use at least the most basic of targeting when you set up any ad on Facebook. Otherwise, you’ll end up advertising to the wrong people and waste money in the end.

Facebook advertising allows you to target a specific group of people based on their age, gender, geographical location, interests and more. This gives you the chance to be more precise in your audience targeting. Think about your ideal customer and what they’re interested in. Decide who you want to reach before creating an ad.

Heightened audience engagement

Before, you only needed to come up with great content and wait until you get all the likes you deserve, but all that has changed over the years. Now, you have to promote your content to ensure that your existing and potential customers see it in their newsfeeds.

Your primary goal is to capture the attention of your target audience and get them to engage with your posts. In addition to ads, you need to make sure that your content are interesting because users only see posts from pages they engage with. Build trust with your followers and get them to share, like or comment on your posts.

 

BIMS_11.10We all know what ROI stands for. Unfortunately, not everyone understands its meaning and importance.

If your company is spending money on social media marketing, you want to measure your ROI. This is important so you have an idea what exactly it is you’re getting out of the time, effort and resources you commit to your campaign. It helps you measure the efficiency of your social media marketing efforts.

To show you how you can track your social media ROI, here are the steps you should take to help you gauge the effectiveness of your social media marketing campaign.

Identify your goal

Different organizations will have different goals. Before you can track and measure your ROI, you first need to identify your goals. Is it to generate more product trials, get signups for your newsletter or increase traffic to your site?

Track your goal

Each of your goals can be measured using specific metrics such as traffic, engagement, reach, lead generation etc. It all depends on your goal.

There are certain tools that can be used to measure the effectiveness of your actions. You can track follows, likes and share in Buffer. Website actions such as signups, downloads and sales can be tracked in Google Analytics.

Quantify social media return

Add up all the expenses, including the cost of boosting a Facebook post, running a promoted ad and everything that go into generating content and maintaining social media presence.

Determining how much you have spent will help you determine whether you’re getting a positive or negative return on your social media marketing efforts. Now, calculate your ROI using this formula: (Earnings – Costs) x 100 / Costs

Adjust tactics

Monitor the impact of your social media efforts using the formula given above and then adjust your tactics as needed to improve your social media ROI.

social-media-toolsSocial media is a necessary part of marketing these days. Having a strong brand presence on social media is of great importance.

As a business owner or a marketer, you probably have a lot of on your plate and maintaining a constant social media presence can be difficult.  To make the process easier, the best thing you can do is to use a social media scheduling service. Even if you’re stuck in a meeting, you can still keep your status updates and tweets flowing.

Here are 4 tools for auto-scheduling your social media posts.

Sprout social

Price: $59 per month

Sprout Social is an engagement and management tool for social media.  It gives you a clear overview of response rates and follower demographics.

You can also use this tool to schedule and post updates to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+. Sprout Social provides a 30-day free trial. But if you wish to continue using it, you’ll have to pay a whopping $59 a month.

Hootsuite

Price: Free; Pro version – $8.99 a month

Hootsuite is a big player in social media management. It schedules your posts based on your previous social history so you’ll reach the largest number of followers. You can also edit the times and days before they go live.

Hootsuite lets you to schedule posts for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare and Google +. However, free users are only allowed to add up to 3 social networks. The Pro version, which starts at $8.99 a month, allows users to schedule up to 350 updates at once and add up to 100 social accounts.

Buffer

Price: Individual account – free; Business plan – $50 per month

Buffer lets you schedule 10 social updates all at once. This tool will spread your content throughout the day or week, making sure you have a solid social media presence even if you don’t spend much time in front of the computer.

As a bonus, Buffer also provides analytics from your social media posts. It works with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Timely

Price: Free

Timely allows you to choose the number of posts you’d like to auto schedule per day. Add to that, it also reviews responses from your previous tweets to determine your most optimal posting times. Timely only posts to Facebook or Twitter.

bims_10.20If you’ve been maintaining a blog on your website, you have probably built up a pretty hefty archive of old blog posts. Even with the abundance of blog posts, studies reveal that fresh contents outrank older contents, both in terms of clicks and search engines.

Does it mean that you have to create more blog content? Not necessarily. You can reuse, repurpose and reinvent your blog posts. Here’s how to breathe new life into an older blog post.

Create a killer headline

Creating a title is easy, but if you really want to capture the attention of your target audience, then you need to make it compelling.

Take a look at the title of your most popular posts. Do you think it is good enough to compel people to read the rest of the article? Is there any way you can make it more appealing or relevant to the article? Now, go and create an attention-grabbing title.

Keep the content updated

The world is constantly changing. Some of the information you have offered in 2012 are now irrelevant or outdated.

Revisit old posts and delete any parts that are no longer relevant. Also, you might want to incorporate new information and brush up on what has changed in the industry. This is especially beneficial if you’ve seen continuous interest in a certain post.

Look for the evergreen content

If a certain blog post has garnered the attention of the public, then it’s definitely worth coming back to for a spruce up.

Marketers focus on creating evergreen content because it still has an appeal even after months or years after it was created. Consider modifying the original article instead of publishing a new article with the same content. Duplicate content on your website is a bad idea. Once you’ve made some adjustments, publish it as new.

Repurpose into a new format

There’s no reason to waste the time you spent creating those blog posts. You can repurpose the content and turn it into a slide presentation, ebook, podcast, infographic or a short video. Remember, not everyone chooses to consume information the same way.

 

 

 

BIMS_10.13.15Editing your blog posts is probably one of the best advice that could be given to you, but very few of you will actually do it.

This week, we’ll give you a few reasons why you should edit old blog posts on your blog. Let’s go through them.

Ranking

Just like a news article that’s posted on a local news website, blog posts have dates on them. They become old news and fall from top results after a period of time. If you are looking to improve traffic to your site, this reason alone justifies your editing.

Polish writing

Bloggers don’t have the luxury of an editor to go over our writing, so we try to proof-read an article before publishing it. But as we try to revisit our old posts, we find that they are full of silly mistakes.

Typos are a big turn-off to anyone reading your article, but it’s hard to notice the typos and errors when you write a blog post yourself. Try to read your old posts with fresh eyes to make sure that it’s error-free.

Update content

Blog posts that are a year old or more may contain outdated information. It is important to keep all posts up-to-date and relevant. Otherwise, visitors may hit the close button and move on to other websites.

Updating old posts will not only turn a visitor into a subscriber, it also helps improve your site’s ranking. Be sure to update your content to match the latest facts and figures.

Add images

It is important to include images in your blog posts as it makes the post more attractive to most people. But sometimes, it is difficult to find the right image that aligns with the topic. You can change those images later on in case you find something more relevant.

More images are stored in your database as your blog gets older. This may slow down your site. We suggest that you resize the image to reduce the overall size of the post.