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Choosing the Right Social Media Platform for Your Business

BIMS_12.29Over the years, I have seen a lot of business owners who have accounts on almost every social networking site. While there’s no harm in maintaining a number of social media accounts, you may notice that you’re not getting the results you want either.

Because it takes time to do social right, it may be best not to be on certain social networks. How do you decide which platforms are best for your needs? Here are some important criteria to consider that will help you determine which channel is right for your business.

Your target audience

Social media activity varies by age, geographic location, profession and more. Once you have identified your target audience, the next step is to determine where they spend most of their time online. What’s the point of maintaining an Instagram or Pinterest account if your target audience are not there? That would be a waste of time and resources.

Your goal

People who have clear, measurable goals are 50% more likely to achieve their desired results as compared to those people without goals. Without a clear idea of what you want to achieve, your program may not reach its full potential.

Attract new customers, increase engagement with current customers, drive website traffic and increased conversions are just some of the possible goals for your social media program.

Your budget

Budget is a major concern for small to medium-sized businesses. That said, you need to be very careful where you spend your marketing budget. For starters, a $100 budget could cover social media scheduling, advertising, graphics or photos, sharing buttons and analytics.

Metrics

In order to determine if you are achieving your goals, you need to follow up on your social media efforts. Constantly analyze your metrics to help you identify which social channel gives you favorable results.

 

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How to Get More Followers on Instagram

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.

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Dos and Don’ts of Using Social Media for Business

socialMediafroBusinessBy now, you already know the importance of leveraging social media to grow your business. However, it can be a waste of time and money if you don’t know what you’re doing. Instead of connecting with your target audience, your existing clients may be having second thoughts and potential prospects may get turned off.

These dos and don’ts will help you in building your social media community and start seeing results.

DOS

Be active

Active social media profiles can help build your brand. You can’t expect results if your page is inactive. Create great content that your audience will want to share. Post different things. Share tips on how to use your products, industry news and fun stuff. Make sure majority of your posts are non-promotional in nature.

Define your target audience

It is important to know you’re targeting audience if you want to maximize your sales. Learn as much as you can about your target audience.

Your customers are concerned about what you can do for them. Make sure your contents are tailored to your customer’s need.

Interact with your audience

Communicate with your target audience on a regular basis. Social media is about relationships so try to converse with your audience as much as you can. Don’t talk too much about your brand. Stop and listen to what people have to say. It should be a 2-way conversation, not a one-sided dialogue.

DON’TS

Share too much

Don’t overwhelm your feeds with too much advertisements or promotions. This can cause your followers to stop following your posts. People don’t want to be bombarded with advertisements and promotions.

Forget your spelling and grammar

What you put out there becomes a representation of who you are. Consumers value proper grammar and spelling. Grammar mistakes could hurt your brand’s reputation and turn off potential customers.

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Easy Ways to Expand Your Facebook Reach

BIMSFor many businesses, generating lead is one of the biggest advantages of creating and maintaining social presence. You create content that would pique the interest of your target audience and hope that it goes out to as many people as possible. Unfortunately, the days of posting and reaching all of your fans are gone.

The last year has brought many changes to social media. We’ve heard complaints from several businesses about the drop in organic reach for Facebook pages.

Using the right tactics will give you better results. Follow these tips to ensure that your posts can reach the audience you define.

Create awesome content

Like Google, Facebook puts a lot of emphasis on content quality and relevance. Being one of the biggest social network platforms, there’s a lot of competition out there. If you want to capture the attention of your target audience, then you need to provide them with killer content.

Higher engagement can increase your reach. The more people engage with your page, the more likely are they to see your posts. But if your content is not that interesting, you suffer the consequences of losing organic visibility.

Ask questions

One of the best ways to engage your followers is by asking them a question. Your goal is to start a conversation so be sure to start with an interesting question. Now that you got people to air their opinions, it is important to keep the conversation rolling.

Asking questions does not only help increase reach, it also provides answers to questions that may be crucial for your business’ marketing and sales.

Add call-to-action

Call-to-actions are a great way to get people to engage with your posts. Believe it or not, your audience tends to respond better when they are told what to do. However, most marketers and business owners fail to include a call-to action with their status updates.

Use better visuals

We’ve all heard the saying, “a picture is worth a thousand words”. But it’s actually worth more than that in social media.

Videos and images often get more likes, shares and comments as compared to text-based status updates. ForCall  a more powerful post, consider placing your message along with the photo.

 

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Characteristics of a Great Content

office-594132_640There is a surplus of information on the internet today. In fact, about 2 million blog posts are published every day. Along with that, 70,000 hours of Youtube videos are uploaded and about 290 billion emails are sent on a daily basis. The problem is that most of these contents result in a waste of time, energy and resources.

How do you go about creating content that stands out and captures the attention of your target audience?

While there is no specific way in creating great content, there are a few characteristics that most successful content shares. Keep these things in mind when creating contents for your prospects and clients.

Relevant

When starting out with content marketing, most companies create contents that are centered on their products and services. While there is nothing wrong in wanting to showcase your products and services, you first have to focus on content that your customers care about.

Your content has to resonate with your prospects and existing clients. Otherwise, those contents will just get lost among all other noise.

Provides value

Writing great content is a choice. You can produce high quality content or you can take the easy path and produce junk.

People are searching for information that will educate them, inform them and he6lp them solve a problem. If your content is entertaining, informative and interesting enough, people will be happy to share your content. Add to that, it will get the attention of industry stakeholders and position your company as an educator or expert.

Original

Creating original content will get you great results. Google rewards sites with original, high quality content. On the other hand, it penalizes sites with duplicate content. Original content will help your site get more exposure and improve your site’s ranking.

Easily consumed            

When people use a search engine, they’re not just looking for answers – they want fast answers. In fact, one study revealed that 79% of web users scan contents rather than read them in detail.

Make your posts easier to read by keeping each paragraph short, preferably 3-4 sentences each. Bulleted lists are also very helpful. They are easily scannable and make it easier for users to find the information they need.

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4 Things We All Need to Stop Doing on Social Media

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The growth of social media continues to expand. Facebook has over 1 billion users; while Twitter and Instagram has over 280 million and 200 million active users respectively.

Many of us flock to these popular social media sites to give and receive the latest scoop on pretty much everything. We all love to post different events in our lives to let everyone know what is going on, but some people gets overboard when it comes to using social media.

Whether you’re using social media for professional or personal use, here are 4 things you should stop doing.

Oversharing

You probably have a friend who updates their status every 15 minutes or so. It can get irritating sometimes, especially since your news feeds is full of their postings. We hate to break it to you, but no one wants to be that clued in about your life.

Using more hashtags than words

Hashtags are great for giving your campaigns their own special theme, finding and jumping into conversations and categorizing your posts, but piling on the hashtags just looks desperate. Please keep your hashtag usage in check.

Automated messages

It may seem like a good idea to send a thank you message to users who follow you, but I’m willing to bet that some people consider it as spam.

While there are some people who say that sending automated messages has helped grow their follower count, it may come off as detached, lazy and out of touch for some. Remember, genuineness wins when it comes to earning the trust of your target audience.

Adding people to groups without their permission

Groups are a great place to talk to people with the same interests as yours. Just because you created a group for golfers, doesn’t give you the right to add your golfer friends to the group without their permission. If you think some of your friends would be interested to be a part of the group, consider sending them a message and tell them what it’s all about.

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Strategies to Keep Your Business One Step Ahead of the Competition

bims_8.10Every business owner wants his business to stay ahead of the competition. But if you want to remain successful, a lot of things should be done and most of them are not particularly easy.

Here are some strategies that you can use to keep your business one step ahead of the competition.

Know your competitors

Entrepreneurs can enjoy great benefits by keeping track of their competitors. While we urge you to spy on your competitors, we discourage you from duplicating their ideas. Your goal is to see what they are offering and what their unique selling point is. Figure out a way to make it work for your business and use this knowledge to your advantage. If you want to stay ahead of the competition, you need to do it better than they did.

Build a relationship with your customers

You and your competitors will be competing for the same customers. Whoever wins will receive a bigger segment of the market.

It is easier to keep a customer than it is to acquire a new one. All it takes is a better offer from a competitor or a single negative experience. Show your customers how much you value them by interacting with them through social media and improving customer service.

Never stop innovating

In order to succeed in today’s quickly developing world, you need to change more often and sooner than you think. What might be working for you today might not be effective in the future.

Innovation is the key to sustaining your company. If you want to satisfy your target audience then you need to give them what they want. But most of the time, their wants and needs change. You need to be able to keep up with the demands of the people. Follow consumer trends and try to keep up with the developments in your sector.

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How to Motivate Customers to Buy Your Product

BIMS_8.4.15If you have social media buttons on your product page, we’re guessing that you added them because you wanted people to share your products through different social channels. After all, more shares mean more publicity, and more publicity can lead to more sales. But you also have to understand that people don’t just buy things they see online. They need a reason to visit your store or website and buy your products.

Here are 3 simple ways to motivate customers to want to purchase from you rather than your competitor.

Understand your customers

To increase sales, you have to understand the psychology behind how people make their buying decision. It would be extremely difficult for you to motivate them to buy if you don’t know their wants and needs.

Identify your target market and conduct a survey to help you find out the types of products they’re interested in or if your current products meet their expectations and some products suggestions that they would like to see in you sell in the future.

Feel good products

During the times of economic stress, the sales of non-essential items decrease significantly except for one: lipstick.

While people are looking for ways to put food on the table, lipstick sales were still skyrocketing. Why? For women, these tubes of colored wax are more than just cosmetics. When they’re feeling blue, lipstick provides confidence and represents happiness, hope and opportunity. If you think of it that way, then $8 is just a small price to pay as compared to the benefits they can get out of it.

Sell the benefits

You have probably heard of this a dozen of times before. When creating a product, be sure that it solves a problem. Most customers buy a product to solve a specific problem.

After a long day at work, this man found out that his dog chewed off his favorite pair of shoes. Now, he’s looking to buy a new pair of shoes. Now that you have a potential customer, the best thing you can do is to promote the benefits of your product. Don’t just stop at describing the product; provide them with additional information such as the price, features, awards etc.

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How to Create a Great First Impression Online

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Most of you know that first impressions are a big deal. You only get one chance to make a good impression so you have to make it right.

Living in the digital world, our first encounters with other people are often via social media, blog posts or email. And once you capture the attention of the public, the first thing they’re going to do is to run a Google search on you. The pressure is on. So where do you start?

Here are 4 simple ways to make a good first impression online.

Know your audience

Successful brands start out by getting to know their audience before they try to appeal to them. Consider the interest and needs of your target audience. Focus on people who are most likely to buy your products instead of appealing to the masses. This will yield better results and end up saving a lot of money in the process.

Be informational rather than promotional

A lot of business owner think that they need to do something flashy just to capture the attention of their target audience. But in order to stand out, you need to provide them with quality content, content that will appeal to your target audience. Let’s take Wikipedia as an example. Wikipedia is one of the least flashy sites on the Web, but it is also one of the most trusted. So, if you really want to stand out, provide people with informative and quality content rather than just showcasing your products on a regular basis.

Get your personal life out of the public eye

We often use social media channels to communicate with our family and friends. But now that you’re running a business, be sure to use a separate account when talking to potential clients and customers. Remember, people will be watching you. So you might as well get your personal life out of the public eye.

Don’t forget to clean up your social media profile once in a while. While it’s normal to have fun sometimes, you don’t want people to have a negative perception of you.

Your website

Apparently, you only have 3 seconds to grab a visitor’s attention. If you want them to stay, you need to take into account the design and usability of your website. Mind you, people are going to close the window or start looking at other sites if they don’t like what they see or don’t know what to do. Make sure that your content is easy to access and your site is easy to navigate.

 

 

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