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Tips for Long-Term SEO Success

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The world of SEO is constantly changing. SEO experts around the world are watching the search engines like a cast of preying hawks, taking note of what Google is going to do next. That being said, the tricks you are using today may not have the same impact a year from now.

What do you need to do in order to make sure that you are focusing on long-term optimization and results?

In an attempt to help entrepreneurs and marketers succeed, we have put together some tips that would guarantee long term SEO success. Here are some of them.

Create and manage a blog

Even if you think that your business is not the most appropriate platform for blogging, it is imperative that you create and manage one. This is because your blog will act as your command and control center.

Think of categories and topics that are related to your business and start writing. The best articles are the ones that answer your audience’s questions such as how-to guides, top 10 list, industry news, company updates etc.

A high quality blog is more likely to bring more leads and attract your target audience. Plus, it gives Google more contexts to index.

Create a social strategy

Search and social used to be 2 entirely different things. Now, having a strong social media presence plays an important role in high search engine rankings.

Don’t rely on just one social media platform. In order to expand your SEO reach and build network connections, it is important to use various social media platforms. As long as you stay active, you can reap the SEO benefits.

Encourage good reviews

Positive reviews are great strategy for any business. This is especially true if your business relies on local customers.

The more positive reviews you have, the more traffic you’ll get. Plus, you’ll have more authority in Google’s local ranking algorithm. The most effective way to get good reviews is by giving your customers a great experience.

 

 

 

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Tips to Maximize Your Youtube Marketing Results

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YouTube might try to wow you with the latest statistics by revealing that 48 hours worth of video are being uploaded every minute. By the time you finish reading this article, we’re guessing 3 days’ worth of videos have been uploaded on the site.

With the competition getting tougher, you’re probably thinking if someone would be interested enough to watch your videos. If you are doing this to capture the attention of your target audience, you have to make sure that your videos standout from the rest and focus on conversion.

Here are a few tips to help you get the most from your Youtube marketing campaign.

Keep it short

Whether it’s in TV or the Internet, no one is interested to watch ads anymore.

Most Youtube ads allow users to skip the ad after 5 seconds. Majority of the users would take advantage of this option and click on the “skip ad” button immediately and proceed to watch the video they came to Youtube for.     That being said, you only have 5 seconds to capture the attention of your target audience and get your message across. Otherwise, it’ll be out of the picture. Make sure to keep your ads short and watchable. Don’t go beyond the 60-second mark.

Selecting the right keywords

Youtube is the 2nd largest search engine in the world. And the fact that Google owns Youtube cannot be overlooked.

Videos appear on search engines. To make your video more findable, you have to make sure that it lands on top of the search results page. To do that, you need to select the right keywords and use them in the first few words of your title, description and tags.

Create compelling videos

When individuals are searching online, they are looking for quick information. That said, each one of your videos should be relevant, valuable and educational to your prospective and current clients. Create content that addresses your audience’s needs.

 

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Pinterest for Your Business

Did you know that there are over 70 million Pinterest users worldwide? After Facebook and Twitter, Pinterest is the 3rd most popular social networking site. The question is, what makes Pinterest stand out among the rest? How can it be beneficial to your business? If you don’t already know the ins-and-outs of using Pinterest for your business, now is a good time to get on board!

What makes Pinterest so special is that it is so new(only 4 years old!), easy to use, and generates more traffic than most other social media sites. Along with that, there is an endless amount of opportunities and marketing strategies available through Pinterest. Here are some tips on how to get started with strengthening your businesses through Pinterest!

  1. Create A Strong Business Profile: Taking time to set up your account properly is the first step to success. By accessing business.pinterest.com, you can find all the resources you need including Pin it buttons for your website, follow buttons, tools, and a Pinterest for Business Guide. It is important to be aware of what’s happening in order to establish an active profile. Keep track of who is searching your brand name, product names, and who is pinning your pins. Actively commenting on pins where you brand is mentioned is also extremely beneficial to creating a strong and active presence to your audience. It isn’t the amount of content you have that strengthens your profile, but more the quality of attention you pay to the consumer you are reaching out to.
  2. Create Boards to Represent Your Business:  Once you’ve set everything up, it’s time to create your Pinterest boards! Promote your products and services in fun, intriguing ways that makes it easy for the audience to grasp. You can do this by posting interesting facts about your business, photos relevant to your industry, and showcase your previous work to give your audience an overview of your business. Become a go-to source for information by providing infographics, training videos, tutorials, and tips from your own business as well as others. Creating boards with an ideal client in mind with easily accessible information is a crucial step to using Pinterest to help your business thrive.
  3. Use Various Tools Offered: There is a wide range of tools to use for Pinterest that can be found at the Goodies Page including Canva, PicMonkey, and Pixir(to name a few). Canva is a Graphic Design Tool that simplifies the image creating process. Canva has a variety of templates that are made specifically for Pinterest, and overall helps strengthen the images you promote through your business. PicMonkey is a photo-editor that is fun and easy for every to use. Pictures make up most of what Pinterest is, so it is important to make sure your images catch the eye of the consumer. Pixir is another extremely useful tool available for Pinterest. It is a photo editor, a screen grabber browser extension, and a photo sharing service. Taking advantage of the variety of tools available for Pinterest is a key step in strengthening your business.

 

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How to Reach Your Target Audience Online

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In the competitive world of online marketing, it takes more than a persuasive copy and a beautiful website to truly connect with your target audience. Your brand’s competitive advantage relies on your ability to stand out from the crowd and develop a genuine relationship with your prospects and current customers.

But before this, your first have to determine where these people spend majority of their time online and make sure that your brand has a presence in those channels. Read on for tips on how you can reach your target audience and grow your business in the digital world.

Speak with your audience

Thanks to social media, communication is now two-way and asymmetrical. Join group discussions on Facebook, LinkedIn and other sites where people are conversing about a topic related to your business. Participate in these discussions and feel free to provide answers to certain questions or share your opinion.

Start local

To get your message out to potential clients, begin with the idea of narrowing down your audience. This is especially beneficial for starting businesses that don’t have enough advertising budget.

Limit yourself geographically. Choose a specific section of the city and focus your efforts there. As your business grows, expand your selected zone.

Blog about your customer’s interest

Blogging is one of the best ways of connecting with your target audience and driving them to your site. If you want to attract visitors, you need to create blog posts that are in complete alignment with their areas of interest. Pay attention to the comments section of your blog. If anyone throws a question, you can use this as an inspiration for your next blog post. Fill your blog with informative and relevant topics and position your company as a though leader and expert in your industry.

 

 

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Tips to Boost Your Email Marketing Efforts

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With the internet spreading its wings all over the world, most business owners and marketers are choosing to switch from the physical aspect of business promotion to email marketing.

Email gives you a direct line of communication with your customers. However, in today’s world of cut-throat business competition, people are being bombarded with emails; thus, making it increasingly difficult for marketing messages to get through. Remember, your marketing efforts won’t do you any good, unless your emails are read.

Listed below are some of the most powerful email marketing tips. Give some of these tips a try and enjoy more productive campaigns.

Develop and maintain the email list

It is important to develop and maintain well-searched email list in order for your marketing campaign to be successful.

Email list is not a one-time thing. You have to remove people who do not respond to your emails or does not seem interested, at least every 3 months.

Longer lists should also be broken down into smaller segments – the openers, the new subscribers, the responders and the deadbeats. From here, you can plan your next move and get the desired results.

Creating the message

Most people skim past the vast majority of messages on their mobile devices. So you have to make sure that your subject line stands out.

Once an email is opened, you only have a couple of seconds to grab their attention. So keep the message short, to-the point and easily readable. Also, don’t forget to add a signature at the bottom of the email.

Build a relationship

When scanning your inbox, the first thing you usually see is the sender’s name. If the recipient does not recognize who the email is from, there’s a great chance that your message won’t get opened.

If that happens, then the rest of these tips won’t even matter. So, try to build a relationship with your subscribers and carefully earn their trust.

Personalize

Your subscribers will appreciate your messages more if they are personalized. You can use data analytics to generate emails and provide personalized recommendations based on the subscriber’s purchase history.

 

 

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Tips for Planning Your Social Media Holiday Campaign

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The holidays are just around the corner. With the Halloween rapidly approaching and Thanksgiving just a few weeks away, this means marketers are solidifying their holiday campaign for the most wonderful time of the year.

The holidays are the busiest time of the year. And you might find it difficult to stand out in the marketing frenzy if you don’t plan ahead. Since most people start shopping for Christmas presents after Halloween, it would be a good idea to start hanging the social media ornaments as early as now.

Incorporate these tips into your social media campaigns and make sure that your holiday campaign gets noticed.

Strategize early

The holiday season is slowly creeping up on us and will be there sooner than you think. The key is to plan ahead and get creative. Use social media to create a buzz around your brand leading up to the festive season.

Stand out from the competition

With the holiday season comes a horde of advertisers desperately vying for your attention. Think outside of the box. Remember, majority of marketers are planning to use some sort of promotional offers to capture the attention of their target market. Differentiate yourself from the competition and think of something that would get the public interested and excited to engage with your brand.

Offer coupons

Studies suggest that consumer spending increase by 11% during the holidays. Since it’s the most wonderful time of the year, give your customers a reason to shop by offering discounts or coupons.

Share holiday tips and tricks

Increase your social media engagement by throwing a bunch of informative and interesting content into your social marketing mix. With so many brands flooding the market with discounts and deals, sharing information about DIY home decorating projects or winter recipes for baking desserts will help you get noticed.

You can also ask questions to get people talking about their activities during the holiday, purchases and traditions.

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Social Media Tips for Bloggers

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While a lot of people believe that blogging is just about creating unique and interesting content, the truth of the matter is that you need to promote your content in order to ensure that each blog post reach its widest possible audience.

When it comes to driving traffic and building an audience, bloggers are turning to social media with record results. To get more clicks and promote their brands, successful bloggers know that need to develop a following on key social networks. It is ideal for accomplishing this goal since social media feeds on a never-ending stream of content.

Follow these tips and your blog will blossom in this new era.

Be on social media

You have done almost everything, yet you’re still not driving traffic. This can be quite frustrating, but you also have to consider all the links you have seen, but didn’t click on.

Spend some time on social media platforms. This way, you can find inspiration for that next blog post, keep up on industry news and build relationship with your followers and fellow bloggers.

Add social media sharing buttons on your blog

Make it as simple as possible for your readers to share your content by adding social media sharing buttons at the top and bottom of your blog. Reduce reader’s hurdles. If they have to hunt around just to share your content, then you’re hurting your content’s sharability.

Join blogger groups on Facebook

Participate on social media beyond sharing your own content. Join some active blogger groups on Facebook and become part of the community. Help others by answering their questions or sharing a link to a relevant blog post.

Once people get to know you, they are more likely to share your content.

Share other blogger’s content

Feel free to check out what other bloggers are posting and give them a repin, share or tweet whenever you can.

Be generous to your fellow bloggers by sharing their content. Hopefully, they’ll return the favor and share your content, too.

 

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Content Marketing: Tips for Generating Fresh and Relevant Content

BIMS blogYou only have a few seconds to capture the attention of your target audience. Think about the books you’ve began and the articles you’ve read in the past. Through the first few sentences, people will decide whether they want to spend more time to read your content. With so much articles posted on the web, you can’t expect people to invest so much of their time trying to overcome a tepid introduction.

Despite the intense competition, some people were able to generate thousands of laser-targeted visitors to their sites. If you’ve ever wondered how they did that, then you’re in for a real treat.

Here are some tips to help you generate fresh content and increase the popularity of your site.

Find other blogs to read

Set aside 10 minutes of your time browsing through other blogs in the same niche. This will help ensure that you have fresh content ideas when you’re ready to sit down and create new contents for your site. Take what you find and make it even better.

Don’t be afraid to dedicate more time everyday to read other’s blog posts. Mind you, the best writers spend majority of their time reading and learning how to inject different voices into their work.

Pinterest

If you’ll be hanging out on the same platforms as your competitors, there’s a good chance that you’ll be writing the same old stuff.

Pinterest actually drives more traffic as compared to Youtube, LinkedIn and Google+. So, focus there and use it for content mining.

Pinterest pins are ranked according to likes, comments and repins. So, keep an eye out for topics with the most number of repins.

Check the comments section

If you have an active community on your blog, then make it a point to read the comments.

Your site should focus on your visitor’s interest and address the question of what’s in it for them. By listening to what others have to say, you’ll be able to pick up some ideas to write for your next blog post.

However, if no one is commenting on your posts, we suggest reading the comments on other blogs within the industry.

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Tips to Improve Your Search Engine Ranking

Search Engine Optimization - Magnifying GlassWhen it comes to achieving online marketing success, getting found is probably one of the biggest determining factors. Unless your site shows up on Google and other popular search engines, you’ll definitely have a hard time improving your web traffic, getting your content out and reaching out to people who might be interested in the products and services you offer.

In this article, we’ll give you some tips on how to improve your search engine ranking. Read on and get your website well ranked in search engines.

Tweak your title tags

Your title tags are a supremely important way of providing search engines with relevant information about your website’s purpose and content. So don’t make the mistake of leaving the default “Home Page” title in the title tags. Otherwise, your site will only show up in search results when someone keys in the word “Home Page”.

Have high quality content

The best way to encourage people to visit your site is by consistently providing them with unique interesting and relevant contents.

Write articles about your industry, products or services and current market information that will be of interest to your target audience. Also, make sure that your texts are original. Or else, you might get punished for stealing others contents.

Optimize the right keywords

Find the most relevant and widely used keywords that relate to your business and incorporate them into your texts. Make sure to insert these keywords as seamlessly as possible.

Before deciding on a set of keywords, it would be a good idea to use Google Adwords to check how competitive your keywords are. Using broader keywords is also a good option.

Get help

If you’re managing a big site, we suggest hiring someone who really knows what they’re doing. A little knowledge may be helpful, but you may end up getting your site penalized or banned from search engines. Leave your site’s ranking in the hands of the experts.

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4 Ways to Enhance Customer Relationship with Social Media

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Your prospective and current customers are already online, and most of them are spending a few hours a day on social media. If your business is not active on social media, now is the right time to build a solid online presence.

Social media enables you to engage with your customer as never before. So, instead of relying solely on phone communication or email, consider reaching out to your target audience and existing customers through social media.

Here are a few tips on how to use social media to enhance client relationships, put smiles on customer’s faces and lead your business to growth.

Connect with your customers

If you are looking to build a social media presence, it is important to connect with your customers and make sure that you are having a two-way conversation with them.

Run polls. Ask questions. Turn your social media from a one-way channel into a two-way channel.

Encourage participation

Instead of supplying the information all the time, it would be a good idea to encourage your customers to share their photos and stories. As a way of saying thank you, take the time to come up with genuine individualized responses. This way, your customers will fee that you are truly interested in their experiences and are appreciative of their contributions.

Own your mistakes

Even big corporations are not immune to mistakes. So, when an unhappy customer tweets about a late order, take their complaints seriously, acknowledge the mistake and work on solving the problem fast.

Sincerity and humility goes a long way in social media in showing your customers that you respect and value them. While it is acceptable to make mistakes, owning up to your mistakes and saying “we’re sorry” is the best way to handle complaints.

Reward loyal customers

Highlight customers who take the time to consistently engage with your brand. Give them free merchandize or say thank you with simple personalized responses. By doing so, you can show them how much you appreciate and value their support. Mind you, that emotional component could turn a customer into a promoter.

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