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5 Ways to Improve Your Twitter Marketing Results

1: Turn a Pinned Tweet Into a Feature Box

The Feature Box is an email form you place at the top of your homepage, which offers your website visitors a freebie in exchange for signing up for your email list.You can add a similar feature to your Twitter profile page by combining two of Twitter’s native features: a lead generation card and a pinned tweet. Simply create a Lead Generation Card that includes an incentive for people to opt in. Offer regular email updates, a special freebie or a subscribers-only discount. Pin the tweet to the top of your Twitter profile and you’re all set.

2: Communicate Less and Tweet More Links

A recent study by Dan Zarrella looked at the “reply rates” of about 130,000 random Twitter users and discovered that highly followed accounts tend to converse less. Keep in mind, the study results don’t suggest that Twitter conversations have a negative effect on your following, just that conversations aren’t what motivate people to follow you on Twitter. According to another study by Dan Zarrella, the way to get more followers is to invest more time tweeting relevant links to your followers, rather than communicating directly with them.

3: Ask Twitter Influencers for Help

According to BuzzSumo who recently studied the share counts of more than 100 million articles, when influencers share your content, the reach increases substantially. If one influencer shares a piece of content, it will get 38.8% more social shares. Three influencers double the social shares and five influencers quadruple them. It’s crucial to network with influencers and develop relationships with them. Then, when you have an important piece of content you’d like to get seen, you can ask the influencers you know to share it.

4: Use Twitter’s Recommend Feature

Recommend is a new feature of Twitter’s tweet button that many people don’t pay attention to. After a visitor tweets an article from your blog, the window recommends they follow you on Twitter, if they don’t follow you already. This is an excellent way to grow your Twitter account, since people who just tweeted your article are likely to want to follow you. Look at the code of your tweet button and make sure the recommend field contains your Twitter username. To double-check you’ve set up the feature correctly, ask a friend to unfollow you on Twitter and then tweet an article from your blog. If the recommend field contains your Twitter username, you’re all set.

5: Repeat Article Tweets

According to a study by Wisemetrics, the second tweet of an article gets as much as 86% of the performance as the first tweet. Clearly the performance will fade with each new tweet, but considering your followers are probably in different time zones, you still need to tweet your most valuable content more than once. Your new followers will appreciate it, since the content will be new for them.

 

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Tips for Finding the Right Social Influencers for Your Brand

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With the powerful combination of social media and word-of-mouth, businesses from all over the world are changing how they market to consumers.

As marketers, our first instinct is to create contents or videos that would allow us engage with our target audience and persuade them to buy our products or avail our services. But today’s buyers are smart and savvy. They start losing interest the moment they realize that you are selling a product. One of the biggest keys to connecting with your target audience is leveraging influencers.

With thousands of bloggers and Youtube stars in your industry to choose from, finding the right influencer to partner with may seem like a daunting task. Find out how to choose the perfect influencers to inspire trust from your customers.

Content

This is the most important characteristic when targeting the right influencer for your brand. Read through the blogger’s posts and determine how aligned their contents are with your brand message.

In order to stay relevant, you need to determine the type of content your audience is interested in. Take a moment to browse through the influencer’s blog posts, infographics or videos. This will give you an idea if the influencer will be a good fit for your brand.

Engagement

Engagement indicates how active an influencer’s social community is. Do they share, respond or comment on his posts?

Just because someone talks about your product, doesn’t mean that you should get in touch with that persons and turn him into an advocate. Your goal is to find someone who talks about your products or services and are earning high levels of engagement.

Reach

Part of what makes a social influencer is the fact that they have a large following.

In order to determine whether or not this influencer will be a good representation for your brand, it would be best to define your target audience and compare them to your potential influencer’s audience. There’s no point in partnering with an influencer with 200,000 followers if their audience doesn’t align with yours.

 

 

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How Can I Market My Business Online?

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As a startup business, it is understandable that you don’t have a wad of cash to market your business. But that does not necessarily mean that you can’t get your brand out there.

The internet is teeming with marketing platforms that would not require you to spend a ridiculous amount of money. If you want to maximize your success, you need to take advantage of the power of the internet and learn how to promote your business online.

This week, we’ll give you some pointers on how to get the word out about your business and start driving sales.

Optimize your company’s website

In the world of constant Googling, search engine optimization cannot be underestimated. The idea here is to write your website’s content in such a way that it would appear in major search engines such as Bing and Google.

Embrace social media

Today, virtually every business, whether big or small, has accounts on different social media platforms.

Without social media, your inbound traffic is limited to people who are familiar with your business. Use social media to create more awareness for your company and to present a more personal side of your business. You can also post updates from time to time to keep your fans posted on your business happenings.

Start a blog

Blogging is a great way to boost your site’s ranking in search engines and drive traffic to your website. This is particularly important if you are running an online business.

For this to be effective, you have to write blog posts frequently and provide your audience with relevant information. As you continue to provide valuable information and solutions to your target market’s problems, you’ll soon become a trusted source of information. Once they see you as an industry expert, they are more likely to buy from you.

When you grow, hire a pro

When you’re starting out, it is natural that you want to oversee every single aspect of your business, including online marketing. But as your business grows, you might want to hire a professional to take over the marketing side of your business. After all, these people have the skills, knowledge and experience to help you reach and connect with your target audience and generate new leads.

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Tips For Your Mobile-Marketing Strategy

Did you know that half of all internet searches now take place on mobile devices? This calls for businesses to take action when it comes to updating their mobile strategy. The past two years have taken more of a simple approach to the design of mobile devices, but that is all changing in 2015. For businesses, having a site that renders across a wide variety of mobile devices is critical for doing business. untitled

Understanding your audience’s mobile habits is one of the most crucial steps in creating your own mobile strategy. Are they using tablets or smartphones? What activities are they doing on your site? What content are they accessing? Studying how your audience uses their mobile devices is the first step to bettering your mobile strategy. This will help you make content that is specifically focused on what your audience is looking for which will make them coming back to your site. Putting yourself in the shoes of your consumer will also help you to create headlines that will grasp their attention. When it comes to writing a headline for your mobile users, ask yourself whether it is highly relevant to your audience, whether it has a powerful hook, and whether it evokes an image or an emotional response to whoever is reading it.

After you’ve sparked your audience’s attention with the headline, now it’s time to lure them in with a good “lead-in”. The lead-in is what occurs in the first paragraph and is what keeps your reader eager to read on. This is your first paragraph and the most crucial. There is nothing wrong with delivering the most value early on because this is what will keep readers engaged. The readers with a screen that’s too small to read 2000 words on still get the value of a positive brand contact and are likely to come back for more.

Introducing video and visual content is another aspect of mobile strategy that is on the rise. Now is the time to make sure your mobile site has videos, infographics, images, and other visual content that reaches out to your audience. Video marketing is a great strategy when it comes to growing your business, and now with micro-video services like Vine, it is easy to compile your message in to 6 seconds. This may seem like a short amount of time to get your message across, but this can actually be more efficient for your users’ time.

In the past couple of years, we have seen tremendous growth for mobile devices. Our smart phones are becoming smarter than we have ever imagined. As the use of the internet on mobile devices continues to grow, this is giving businesses more opportunities in internet marketing. it is important to think more about our presence on mobile devices and developing a strategy that will help us become more efficient mobile marketers.

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4 Ways to Use Facebook Groups for Your Business

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Since business owners have discovered that they could make fans through their Facebook page and market through a broader group of consumers, many of them have slowly abandoned the Facebook groups and focused their time on managing their page.

With so many changes taking place on the said platform, business owners have assumed that groups are no longer effective. But as soon as they abandoned the groups, they seem to forget about the “social” in social media. They focused on paid advertisement, limiting the interaction between the company and it audience.

So how do you use Facebook groups for your business? Here are 4 ways.

Exchange ideas with group members

When thinking of creating a group, one of the main reasons should be to keep in touch with your audience.

While a business page allows a company to broadcast new products, services or content, Facebook groups is a good place to ask questions or start a conversation with actual customers without posting a sales pitch.

Gather people of like interest

We do like to converse with people with the same interest as ours, right?

Through Facebook groups, you can gather people of like interest together. Here, you can ask questions, tell stories and offer advice to others. As the conversation evolves and as you start building a relationship with the group members, they might consider inviting some of their friends to the group.

Provide customer support

For small businesses that are still not capable of hiring people and offer customer support round-the-clock, having an active Facebook group is advantageous as it gives customers a place to share, collaborate and connect with others. Here, people can offer support and advice to fellow customers, even if you’re not online.

Create a secret group

A secret group provides you the chance to interact with your loyal customers. Here, you can give them exclusive updates to your newest products or services. Plus, it gives an incentive to customers who have supported your company through the years.

 

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4 Ways to Increase Traffic to Your Website

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Most business owners dream of driving relevant traffic to their site. Unfortunately, dreaming about it won’t get your there. You need hard work, consistent effort and high quality content to give yourself a boost.

Let’s take a look at some effective ways for generating high quality, organic search traffic to your website.

Content is king

Search engines are rewarding businesses that are generating high-quality consistent content.

To make your content appealing to different kinds of readers, it would help to vary the format and length of your articles. List blog posts also get more traffic than any other kind of post.

Write articles frequently

The longer you are in business and producing quality content online, the more likely are you to succeed. This will also increase your chances of showing up in search results.

Be sure to post articles on a regular basis so your readers know when to expect new content. Also, add fresh content a few times a week to keep your readers coming back for more.

Work on your headlines

Headlines are the most important parts of your content. When your blog posts are shared via social media, they are typically the first thing readers see. That said, it is important to create a headline that would pique the interest of your target audience. An effective headline would get you more views and shares than usual and will definitely drive traffic to your website.

Be social

It’s not enough to share your content across different social channels; you also need to participate actively in the community. Mind you, social media is actually intended to interact with your followers. So be sure to engage with your readers and respond to their questions and comments. Nothing turns people off faster than using social media merely as an advertising channel.

 

 

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4 Ways to Grow Your Email Marketing List

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While email marketing is an old, unsexy technology, the savviest of entrepreneurs have no intention of giving it up anytime soon. This is because email marketing provides a direct line of communication and has a tendency to turn leads into sales.

Contacts are the lifeblood of any email marketing campaign. That said, growing your mailing list should be a priority.

In this article, we’ll walk you through what you need to do to build a quality email list. Read on and start building a list of people who will want to hear from you.

Make your sign-up forms easy to find

You can use your website to generate more contacts by adding a subscription form where your visitors can sign up. Be sure to place the form at the top of the page to make it easier for people sign up. Survey revealed that sites that place sign up boxes as part of their top banner perform better as compared to those located at the footer area.

Social network

Another way to build your list is by using social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Due to the viral nature of Facebook, it pays to add a subscription form on your page. Be sure to include a sign up link to your email list on the “About” section of your page. For an added boost, you can also add it on your personal account and tell your family and friends about it.

Word of mouth

The best marketers for your products or services are the people who are already using them. For subscribers who have been on your list for a very long time, a discount or a small incentive would get them talking. Encourage them to share your list with their family and friends.

Tell subscribers what they’ll get

As a marketer, you need to answer the question most people ask: Why would I subscribe to your email list if I can just follow you on Facebook?

To urge people to subscribe to your newsletters, let them know that you offer subscriber-only content. Also, don’t forget to mention how often they’ll be receiving emails. Setting expectations upfront helps reduce unsubscribe rates.

 

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Things You Shouldn’t Be Doing on Your Company’s Social Media Accounts

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Social media marketing is essential for small businesses, but is considered as a double-edged sword. Use it the right way and you can attract potential clients and grow your business. Use it the wrong way, and it will definitely hurt your business and could easily wind up alienating much of your audience.

If you are running an active campaign for your company on social media, make sure you never do these things.

Yelping back at customers

Every single feedback given by your customers can be of value to your company’s growth and development. If a customer gave you a negative review, you need to deal with it in a professional manner and learn from it.

Of course, it is natural that you want to defend yourself, but make sure to do it calmly. Also, say sorry and admit that you have done something wrong. There has to be some reason why the complaint was made in the first place. Yelping back at customers is definitely a no-no.

Sharing political views

What you share on social media is a reflection of who you are and your business. So, you have to be very careful what you share.

While a bit of controversy may be beneficial for your business, sharing your political views on your company’s profile is a recipe for disaster. Politics tend to stir up controversy rather than discussion.

Borrowing other people’s content

Blogging is a great way to drive traffic to your site, but writing your own content may take time. So you have decided to copy and paste articles from another site.

Search engines know that you have copied someone else’s content, and this can get you in trouble.

Angry statuses or comments

It is never a good idea to write an angry comment or status about someone else. As much as you think that you are entitled to say whatever you want on your own page, remember that people are watching what you write on social media. This can spark a backlash that will surely melt your reputation to a sticky puddle.

 

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Visual Content in Social Media

In today’s technological world, visual marketing is becoming a very popular trend. Marketers have begun to use visual marketing to their advantage through social media. Strengthen your business by catching the eye of your consumer with visual content. Below are a list of the most popular social media platforms for visual marketing and how to use it effectively:

Twitter:

What many people don’t know is that Twitter is not limited to 140 characteristics to get a message across. In fact, you can add up to four images in just one tweet, making Twitter a great platform for using visual content. This is a great way to showcase an event or tell a story that would be difficult to do with only one picture. Using an inforgraphic is also a great way to add visuals to the message you’re trying to get across through twitter. Some tools to create infographics are Visualize, Easel.ly, and Piktochart. Videos are also a great way to catch the attention of your consumer. Time-lapse videos in particular are a great way to tell a story or show a product in just a short amount of time. The Hyperlapse app allows you to create time-lapse videos in a simple manner. Once you’re done with your video, you can upload it to Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.images

 

Instagram:

With Instagram, it’s more about the quality of your photos than how many you’re posting. With each Instagram, it is crucial to make sure they are capturing your consumers’ eye in a creative way that will make them want to learn more about your business. The 2014 Social Media Marketing Industry Report by the Social Media Examiner found that over time, marketers with more experience prefer Instagram when it comes to visual content marketing. Using hashtags can have a huge impact on your growth. But, knowing the right words to hashtag is crucial in making sure you’re reaching your target market. There are many tools that help you find the perfect hashtags to use. Webstagram helps you find find the most popular hashtags and with the search feature you can find more relevant hashtags to your post. Also, using Populagram can help you find the popular hashtags, filters and people which you can follow to stay on top of Instagram community.

 

Facebook:

Facebook can be used for visual marketing in a variety of ways. What makes Facebook so great is that you aren’t as limited when posting content as you would be on other social media platforms. A great feature of Facebook is that you can upload video directly to your posts. Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income recently did an experiment comparing views and engagement of natively embedded Facebook video versus embedded YouTube video and he found that Facebook performs better overall. Facebook is also a powerful tool for graphics. You can create a graphic and then upload it to Facebook including the post URL in your caption, or you can share a link directly to Facebook. No matter which way you choose to use it, Facebook is a MUST for businesses who are trying to reach their consumers through visual marketing.

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