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Blogging Benefits that Will Change Your Business Forever

Blogging Benefits that Will Change Your Business Forever

In the early days of the internet, blogging was one of the most popular ways to share information and connect with others. Today, social media has taken over as the primary platform for online communication, and many people have questioned whether blogging is still relevant.

While it is true that social media has eclipsed blogging in terms of popularity, it is still a powerful tool that can help you reach your goals.

If you’re thinking it might be time to start blogging, but you’re not sure if it’s worth the time and effort, then we urge you to keep reading. Here are 6 blogging benefits that will change your business forever.

Boost search engine optimization

SEO is extremely important for any business operating on the web. Every time you write a blog post, more pages from your domain become indexed in search engines. This gives you another opportunity to be found by people.

Search engines don’t want to send users to abandoned websites with outdated content. By regularly publishing contents to your website, you stand a better chance of being found by your target audience.

Drive traffic to your website

Blogging is an inexpensive way to attract more potential customers and drive traffic to your website. Studies suggest that companies who blog get 67% more leads as compared to those who don’t. In order to do that, you first need to know your target audience and create contents that will be of value to them.

Position your brand as an industry leader

Blogging is especially beneficial for small businesses looking to gain credibility. Majority of people go online to because they want information. By providing fresh, valuable information in your blog posts, you can build trust and clout within your industry. Over time, people will come to you for informative, helpful content and will be seen as an industry leader.

Convert traffic into customers

Now that you have captured the attention of your target audience, you want them to keep coming back to your site. To do that, you need to provide them with fresh, interesting and informative content on a regular basis. Once you have built an audience of loyal and trusting readers, it will be a lot easier to sell to them. In fact, studies show that 67% of American buyers have made a purchase based on blog posts.

Building your personal brand

Blogs are a great way to share your thoughts and ideas with the world. You can blog about anything, from your personal life to your professional journey. And unlike social media, blogs allow you to control the narrative. You can decide what information you want to share, and how you want to share it. As a result, blogs can be a powerful tool for building your personal brand. In addition, blogs can help you to connect with like-minded people and create a sense of community.

Differentiate your brand from the competition

Blogs are a powerful tool that can help businesses to differentiate their brands from the competition. This is essential in business; it’s what sets you apart from the competition and drives customers to your door. When used effectively, blogs can provide insights into your company culture, values and vision. They can also be used to share news and announcements, showcase customer testimonials, and promote special offers.

In addition, a blog can help humanize your brand, making it more relatable and approachable. By sharing the story of your brand, you can connect with potential customers on a personal level and build trust. So if you’re looking to differentiate your brand from the competition, consider starting a blog. It could just be the thing that sets you apart and helps you attract more business.

Final thoughts

A blog can be a powerful asset for your business. It can help you drive traffic to your site, position yourself as an industry leader, and convert traffic into customers. If you need help starting a business blog, we’re here to help. We’ll work with you to create content that is relevant to your target audience and helps you achieve your marketing goals. Schedule a free consultation today to get started.

Blogging Benefits that Will Change Your Business Forever

Blogging Benefits that Will Change Your Business ForeverBlogging Benefits that Will Change Your Business Forever

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SEO Mistakes You Need to Stop Making

SEO Mistakes to AvoidSo you have finally decided to incorporate SEO into your online marketing strategy. That’s great! You chose a keyword and started using it into your content. You have uploaded those contents one after the other, and now you’re hoping that your website will land at the very top of Google’s rankings.

If you want to increase your website traffic, it is important to have search engine optimization in mind when creating contents for your website. That plan starts by avoiding the mistakes most website owners make.

In this blog post, we’ll give you a roundup of the most common SEO mistakes people make. Most of these mistakes cause huge, deal-breaking, rank-destroying disasters.

Copying content

Google wants high quality, original content. If you think you can trick Google by stealing some pieces of content from your competitors, think again. Copying content is not only illegal; Google will punish you for it. In fact, it will push your site so far down no one is going to ever read your content.

Writing original, compelling content takes time and effort. But if you want your website to stand the test of time, then you need to work hard for it.

Bad content

Poor content will not only weaken your ranking, it won’t simply make an impact to your readers. For your content to flourish, we advise that you choose topics that are of interest to your target audience. Do your research and write articles that are informative, relevant and unique. Supply your audience with a steady stream of high-quality content and watch as your rankings improve over time.

Not using the right keywords

Some people use generic keywords such as health, weight loss, baking or love. These types of keywords are too broad. While they can help you reach a wide range of audience, chances are it’s the wrong type of traffic.

To improve your chances of landing on the top three spots, consider using more specific keywords. As an added bonus, this will help you attract prospective customers who might be interested in buying your products.

Keyword stuffing

This is a common mistake newcomers often make. While it is important to incorporate the keywords into your content, make sure you don’t overdo it. Otherwise, it’s going to sound spammy. You want the article to sound natural and not forced.

 

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How to Get People to Promote Your Business

How to Get People to Promote Your Brand

Start-ups and small businesses are always looking for ways to get maximum exposure for their business with limited budget. Value is the most important word when allocating budget for your marketing campaign. But what if you could find people who are willing to write about your products and promote them to their friends for free? Yes, it’s possible.

Getting your customers to promote your business will likely spur some level of success. Here are some tips on how to get people to promote your business.

Find loyal customers

Keep an eye out on people with a history of buying from you. Now, you want to find people who are committed to your brand and loyal to you in more ways than one, and make sure you remember their names. These people are more likely to help you spread the word out about your business than those who made a single purchase.

You won’t be able to turn every single customer into an advocate, so you need to find those people who believe in your brand. Not all people endorse products for money. Some people do it because they like the product or they believe in the company.

Offer awesome customer service

If you want to get people talking about your business, then you need to go above and beyond their expectations. Meeting their expectations is good as well, but chances are, they won’t be singing your praises either.

Build a relationship

When it comes to building advocates, you should aim for ongoing engagement. You cannot just push people to do you what you want if they don’t trust you, so focus on the relationship first. Spend more time engaging them. Reach out and always respond to your customers. The closer they feel to you, the happier they’ll be to tell others how amazing your products and services are.

Referral program

Studies show that 83% of customers are willing to refer a product or service to their family and friends, but only 29% actually do. It’s because most businesses do not ask them to.

Referrals are the best form of advertising. In fact, they are incredibly well equipped to market and sell your products and services. All you need to do is ask. Don’t forget to say thank you every time a successful referral is completed.

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4 Ways to Use Twitter for Business and Marketing

4 Ways to Use Twitter for Business and Marketing

Business of all sizes use Twitter for a variety of reasons – provide information, interact with their followers, promote their products and services, generate leads and monitor conversations about their company.

Maintaining an effective Twitter presence can be a powerful part of your marketing strategy. Despite its growing relevance, a lot of small businesses are still not using Twitter to its full potential.

In this blog post, we’ll teach you how to turn 140 characters into online marketing gold. Read on for some useful tips on how to use this popular social media platform for business and marketing.

Engage in two-way conversations

Twitter is a great platform to reach your audience. As a business owner, your goal for using social media is to build a community around your brand and to foster relationships.

Don’t go overboard with promoting your business. If you do so, people will stop following you. Keep an eye out for particular issues you could help with. Join the conversation and feel free to give some tips and advice.

Retweet

The last thing you want is to bombard people with tweets about your business. It is worthwhile to retweet particular tweets from other users that you find particularly useful or interesting. Sometimes, this encourages people to follow you. Plus, retweeting shows your followers that you’re also willing to share tips and advice, and you’re not just about flogging your products and services.

Customer service

80% of customer service interactions take place in social media. In fact, a lot of people post complaints and product queries on Twitter. Twitter is a great tool for customer service because it allows you to resolve issues in real time. Be sure to respond in a polite and professional manner. Don’t forget to thank the customer publicly once the problem is resolved.

Make twitter a daily activity

Social media marketing success does not happen overnight. You need to spend time posting updates, responding to DMs, thanking new followers, following new accounts, liking and re-tweeting other content and responding to other users.

Because twitter moves so quickly, it is not something you can handle whenever you have the time. Daily postings and engagement is important. Otherwise, people will forget about you.

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3 Ways Social Media Can Help Your Business

3 Ways Social Media Can Help Your Business

As a business owner, you have probably considered using social media to help you get the word out about your business. Building a strong social media presence may take a lot of time and hard work, but the pay off can be incredible.

Social media can be extremely beneficial to companies of all sizes. Here’s how social media can help grow your business.

Reach new audience

Sharing content to thousands of people at once is one of the biggest benefits of social media. But instead of trying to reach everyone, you need to find the right people to engage with. Social media provides the perfect opportunity to help you reach your target audience. Plus, it is one of the fastest and least expensive ways to connect with your audience.

Identify who your target audience is, and then determine which social platforms they spend most of their time in. If you share really interesting and engaging content, you are likely to reach thousands and thousands of people in no time.

Create meaningful relationship with your customers

Social media encourages two-way communication. It’s not enough that you share your knowledge or provide some updates about your products, services and upcoming events; you also want to communicate with your fans and followers.

Social media allows you to communicate with your prospective and current customers. Once you have earned their trust and goodwill, they would be much more willing to recommend your products to their family and friends.

Customer service

Providing stellar customer service is likely already a top priority for your business. Since most customers want immediate response, many of them would post their questions or concerns via social media. If they do, it is important that you respond and address the issue in a timely manner.

If you acquire positive feedbacks, ask the customer if you can share it on your page. People will trust and appreciate you when people say good things about your business.

 

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How to Build a Strong Social Media Presence

How to Build a Strong Social Media PresenceSocial media marketing may seem like a fairly simple concept. All you have to do is to create an account on different social platforms and post updates every now and then. But the truth is, there’s a whole lot more that goes into building a social media presence and reaching your audience.

Whether you’re a large corporation seeking new ways to improve your online engagement or a new business trying to decide where to focus your social media efforts, there are a lot of ways to boost your social media presence.

Here are some steps you can take to help get you started.

Identify your audience

There are millions of active users on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media channels. The first thing you need to do is to identify your target audience and determine which sites they use the most. This will help you narrow down your options and know where your focus will be.

Build a targeted community

As an entrepreneur starting or running your own business or a professional trying to build your online brand, you want to have a good social media presence. But in order to do that, you first need to develop a large following. That means followers and fans on Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and other social media accounts.

Engage with everyone

Social media should be less about you and more about your audience. It’s about making connections and having conversations.

Rather than focusing on your promotion, you want to use this opportunity to engage with people. Speak to them. Ask them to take part of the conversation, ask questions and encourage them to submit photos while using your product. People are likely to like, comment and share your content if you have established a relationship with them.

Produce valuable content

There are several types of content you can post on social media. You can post videos, blog posts, client or customer testimonials and others.

Aim for social updates that contain educational content rather than product-focused content. Make sure your Facebook posts, tweets and LinkedIn updates consist of engaging, useful and valuable content.

 

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Tips to Increase Your Email Open Rate

BIMSEmail marketing is considered as an important part of a business’ marketing campaign. It has one of the most effective ways to engage with your prospects and customers. Plus, it provides the highest returns on investments.

Open rates give you an idea as to how your campaign is doing. If the open rate for your email program is better than the average, then good for you. But if your open rates are getting worrisome, you might want to look for ways to improve it.

Here are some easy ways to increase your email open rate.

Create an interesting subject line

Good subject line is the key achieving better open and response rates. Since most people receive several emails in one day, they only need a few seconds to decide whether or not they’re interested to read the email. If your subject line is not interesting enough, people are less likely to read it. Also, make sure that your subject line is short enough that recipients will be able to read it at a glance.

Make it personal

You’ve spent so much time collecting people’s first name and email address, now is the right time to put them to use. Personalization has been proven to drive engagement and convert more leads. It is also a good idea to send your emails from a person or an employee, rather than from the company.

Timing is key

If your campaign has a B2C focus, your audience may have time to check their emails after work or during lunch break. If you are running a B2B campaign, it might be best to send emails early in the morning or in the afternoon. Your goal is to send an email exactly when the recipients are checking their inbox.

Clean up that dusty old email list

Most businesses are so determined to expand their email list that they tend to ignore the open rate. It doesn’t matter if you only have a small mailing list, as long as it is filled with engaged subscribers. It’s a good idea to remove inactive subscribers periodically.

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Dos and Don’ts of Using Hashtags

HashtagYears ago, the pound sign on your phone does not serve any function. Today, however, the pound sign is considered as a vital part of your social media success. In fact, it is considered as such a prominent part of tech culture.

Hashtags help increase the chances of your post being found and track conversations among consumers, and other businesses. When used correctly, hashtags can help you generate more shares and increase awareness of your posts beyond your own follower base. Use them wrong, however, and it will lead you down the path to social media destruction.

Here are some dos and don’ts to consider to help you get on the right track.

Dos

Keep hashtags short

When creating hashtags, be sure to keep them short so they’re easy to type and remember. Long hashtags are difficult to read. Imagine mentally inserting spaces in between all those words. Not fun!

Create your own hashtag

Create a hashtag that is interesting enough that it can help you capture the attention of readers, yet popular enough that it can help you gain followers. Tailoring your hashtags will ensure you reach your ideal audience.

Use them to engage

Hashtags are often used to track what is said about their business and competitors as well. Since social media is about engagement and social interaction, you need to take part of that conversation. Use hashtags to pull users into a conversation with the brand and vice versa.

Don’ts

Overuse them

While there is no doubt that hashtags can increase your visibility, too much of it in a single post will kill your message. Readers tend to avoid posts with too many hashtags. For best results, limit your hashtags to 3 for each post.

Use irrelevant hashtags

Just because the hashtag is trending, it does not necessarily mean you should use it. Never use an unrelated hashtag just to get noticed. There is no bigger social media embarrassment than a wrongly used hashtag.

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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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