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The Power of Pinterest for Small Businesses

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.

 

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Tips for Writing a Killer Call-to-Action

bimspicIt’s not easy to get people to visit your site. Once you’ve hooked your audience, you want them to stay a little longer in your site and do something. That something could be sharing your content, providing information, downloading something, adding products to their shopping cart or purchase your products. Unfortunately, most people will not know what to do unless you give them clear instructions.

This week, we’ll be sharing with you some tips on how to create a clear and effective call-to-action. Here are a few.

Offer a free trial or download

Sometimes, you may have to sweeten the deal to encourage people to complete a call-to-action. One of the best ways to capture the attention of people is to offer them something of value, and give it to them for free. Offer a free e-book or a free trial. People will thank you for it.

Size matters

Size does play a huge part in getting your call-to-action button noticed. Make sure it’s big enough that online users won’t miss them, but not too big that it looks like a monstrosity. Remember, your call-to-action needs to be sized sensibly. You should also consider the position of your call-to-action on the page.

Be direct

Keep your call-to-action short and simple to ensure that majority of visitors will click-through on the action you ask them to. If you want people to leave their email address, then tell it to them straight. Make sure people will understand it at just a glance. Don’t get all whimsical and critic.

Add a sense of urgency

If you have reduced the price of your products, let visitors know that the offer is only good for a limited time. If they do not purchase within the specified period of time, then it will result in a missed opportunity. Add a sense of urgency and include words such as today, immediately or now.

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Lead Generation Tips and Tricks

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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.

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Secrets to Writing Viral Blog Posts

ViralBlog_3.8

A viral blog post is a type of post that takes off because everyone wants to share and is talking about it. It goes around the internet like a fast-moving fire.

With the explosion of social media, almost everyone is looking for ways to grab the attention of millions and millions of people. Because let’s face it, it feels great to know that a lot of people appreciate what you have created.

In today’s competitive online world, bloggers from all over the world all seem to be asking the same question – What is the secret to writing a viral blog post? While there is no secret formula in creating a viral blog post, there are some things you can do to help you reach that goal. Here are a few.

Create attention-grabbing headline

While quality content is important, you also need to take time in crafting a catchy headline. Remember, this will be the first thing people are going to see so it should be treated with much more consideration. You need to pique the public’s interest or they won’t be interested in reading the article.

Contents that evoke emotions become viral

Readers are drawn to blog posts that make them feel something. Try to capture the emotion of the reader. If it doesn’t excite or thrill you, then it probably won’t excite your readers too.

Useful content gets shared

A lot of people go online to gather information and learn more about a certain topic. If you want your post to go viral, make sure it has tons of useful information. Read a lot, gather lots of resources and know your topic well. Don’t skimp on research.

Make sure it’s visually interesting

There is more to a blog post than just heading and content. If you want to get the numbers rolling, then you need to incorporate photos in your blog post.

Make your blog post visually stunning and beautiful. You might not be able to write the most informative, most interesting blog post, but if you add colourful pictures, you may be able to capture the attention of the crowd.

 

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New Webinar – Social Media Tools to Make Marketing Easier

Social Media Tools Webinar

How much time are you spending on social media each day? Each Week? Each Month?

Once you have all of your social media platforms set up it can be a little overwhelming trying to manage each platform!

Join Amber Irwin, Co-founder of The BIMS Team, in our next webinar on March 29, 2016! In this webinar you will learn about FREE tools that make your social media management a lot easier!

These tools are not only FREE they will also save you a ton of time throughout the week! We will:

  • Dive in and explore your marketing options!
  • Talk about different tools that work for individual social media networks, and
  • Provide a few options to get amazing FREE images!
When:
March 29th, 2016
Where:
Free Webinar – RSVP for Details
Time:
3:30-4:30pm MST

Register Today

Anyone with a computer and internet connection has the ability to manage a social media account. When done right, businesses can see huge boosts in brand recognition and sales. If managed poorly, social media can be the downfall of your business.

The BIMS Team prides itself on keeping on top of the best practices of digital marketing and Amber is excited to empower you to feel confident in your own ability to create relationships with potential customers and to be found online.

 

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Top Reasons Why Your Business Should be on Youtube

BIMSYoutube_2.23Today, Youtube is considered as the second largest search engine in the world. In fact, millions of viewers are turning to Youtube everyday to learn more about products and services, find answers to their questions and find solutions to their problems.

Here are a few reasons why it’s time for your business to start embracing Youtube as part of your marketing strategy.

Build trust

Online video marketing provides businesses an opportunity to build trust. Your videos will demonstrate what you can do and what you know. By uploading videos that feature your expertise in your field, it provides you an opportunity to build authority and recognition.

Online video also allows you to project a better and more personal profile to your clients. This gives customers a sense of intimacy; thus, making it easier to build rapport and trust.

SEO benefits

By utilizing Youtube as part of your marketing strategy, you are also increasing your search engine optimization. Search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing consider video as important as text-only pages. Marketing on Youtube will help your videos appear more frequently in Google’s search results.

Generate sales

Youtube allows customers to see your products in action before buying them. This is particularly beneficial for those who sell online. Reember, nothing will market your product better than an actual video demonstration.

Youtube can help your business attract customers from different parts of the world. The more people watch your videos, the more business you can generate.

More content in less time

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a minute of video is worth millions. Every second of video is equivalent to reading an article with at least 15,000 words.

People love videos because it provides them a lot of information in so little time. Long articles provide a significant amount of information. However, some people are not interested in reading them because it will take a lot of time. Who would want to read a long, boring article, when you can just press the play button and get the same amount of information in a minute or two?

It’s where your customers want to find you

Youtube is the 3rd most viewed website in the world, next to Google and Facebook. In fact, over 3 billion Youtube videos are being watched every single day. Plus, millions of people subscribe to different channels each day. With this statistic, it is safe to say that people wants it. Not delivering on this desire means somebody else will.

 

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Tips to Humanize Your Brand

BimsPeople do business with people they trust. If you let your customers interact with a robot that is programmed to promote your products and offerings, do you think they’ll do business with you? Of course not.

People will only be interested in doing business with you if they know that there is a person behind it that they can trust, relate to and connect with. That said, humanizing your brand is a must.

Here are some tips to make your brand’s voice a little more human.

Avoid corporate speak

Sometimes, business owners think that they sound super smart and important if they use business and industry-specific jargons. We hate to break it to you, but people do not want to hear or read sales talk, corporate jargon or overly fluffed up language. Speak in a language that inspires people to connect to you and your brand.

Use words that your customers understand and ditch the corporate mumbo jumbo speak.

Build bridges

A lot of businesses see their social network followers as nothing more than a new batch of potential customers. While we understand that you’re excited to tell the world about your business venture or new products to be launched, there is no need to talk about the same topic every single time.  You’ll have a hard time connecting with your target audience if you think like a corporate engine.

Put a face on your brand

People may not be interested in doing business with you if you post in anonymity and hide behind a corporate logo. Instead, show customers that there’s a real person working behind that corporate logo.

Be honest

Customers can tell when you’re faking it. Don’t try to make your experiences sound more impressive than they truly are. Don’t say you have experience you don’t have. Don’t fudge the numbers on your publicity packet.

 

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New Webinar – You created your social media account, now what?

Social Media Audit Webinar

Join Caitlin McDonald, Co-founder of The BIMS Team, for a look into the most popular social media networks and how to effectively use them for your business. She’ll give examples of businesses that have successfully figured social media out and provide takeaways that you can immediately implement into your business’ digital marketing strategy.

This presentation will:

  • Review how to perform a Social Media Audit to set your goals and understand how your customers and competitors are utilizing social media
  • Provide a brief overview of Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Instagram, Google+, and YouTube, as well as the most important things you need to know about each network to be successful
  • List tools and tips to make managing your social media easier for a small business or solopreneur, which will be examined in more detail in our March Webinar.

Register Today

Anyone with a computer and internet connection has the ability to manage a social media account. When done right, businesses can see huge boosts in brand recognition and sales. If managed poorly, social media can be the downfall of your business.

The BIMS Team prides itself on keeping on top of the best practices of digital marketing and Caitlin is excited to empower you to feel confident in your own ability to create relationships with potential customers and to be found online.

 

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Tips for Creating an SEO-Friendly Article

BIMS_2.1

One of the best ways to make sure that your blog posts keep getting traffic is to make them search engine friendly. Writing for SEO is no longer as easy as it used to be. Before, people could just throw a bunch of words together, incorporate the keywords into the article and expect an increase in web traffic. It doesn’t matter if the article makes sense or not. But that’s not how it works anymore.

How do you create content that ranks well in search engines? Here are a few tips for writing effective SEO-friendly content.

Write for your audience

Since your goal is to boost traffic, you first have to please your audience. There is no point in writing a keyword-rich article if it doesn’t make sense to your readers. The article should offer value to the readers. Make it interesting for them to want to read the entire article. Remember, you are creating content for people, not the search engine algorithm that finds them.

Use keywords

One of the best ways to improve your ranking is to include popular keywords into your content. You need to use them in the title, first and last sentence, and within the body of the article.

It’s not enough to just use the keywords. It is important that you incorporate them as seamlessly as possible into the article, making sure that the sentences still make sense. Also, be sure not to overuse the keywords. If you do, Google may think that you’re overstuffing, which can result in search engine penalties. On average, the article should have a keyword density of 1-4%.

Optimize your image

People are attracted to visuals. That said, we recommend adding pictures, infographics and slide shows to spice up your content.

A lot of people make the mistake of uploading images with file names such as image01.jpg. You have to remember that Google can’t read images. It is through text that Google recognizes them. To get your page to show up in search images, be sure to name the image properly.

 

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