Various Ways of Digital Marketing

Online retail is one precious asset; it significantly contributes to the overall business strategy of a company. Working in online marketing for The Genuine Gemstone Company I know a little about being established on TV, our brands GemsTV and Rocks TV are strong in the UK and USA respectively.  Our current fan base, the shopping savvy, fashion conscious society seek online retail as well as TV.

"The company’s No.1 appearance in the Fast Track 100, is testimony to their skill and determination to succeed" – says Sir Richard Branson in The Sunday Times.

Without being connected to our audience through brand websites, social media, emails and other forms of online marketing, we wouldn’t have achieved our sales growth of 245.36% per annum. Being a Sunday Times Fast Track 100 winner is proof that there is success in online retail. Determination and proven ability to deliver sales and grow as a company only underlines expertise in creating a solid and sustainable business model.

Here are some tips in working in online marketing.

Organic SEO

Paying attention to the mark-up information within the development aspect of a digital retail platform enables users to create search engine friendly websites. SEO is going to enable all of the below.

• Enable websites to be crawled and rated as healthy
• Position for credible Author Rank to emerge with the provision of consistent blogging
• Your products to be featured in the Google products shop window
• Google map to be permitted and vindicated, Google real estate like this is an asset
• Permit all white hat organic SEO organic keywords to improve your overall rankings
• Hire a team of in-house specialists or digital marketing agency to build rankings

PPC SEO

PPC is advertising like you never seen it before. Knowing your return of investment or ROI via a Google profile enables quick access to all you need. The definitive are a higher spike of onsite visits. You do not even need a very prolific organic campaign.

• Select keywords to target and bid on the best viable assets
• Investments in singular popular words lead to wins but stakes are high
• Long tail keywords yield less visits but create a list of them

Email Marketing

Capture your customers email and construct a directory. It is that simple, quick to program and if you haven’t already done it, get started and right away!  Easy, and simple, email marketing improves clicks, visits and a structured presence in the customers mind. It puts you into the control of your guests, pointing them into and through the sales funnel every time you email.

• Email seasonal, weekly and for national events to put a spin on your marketing projects
• Create new promotions every week, promote, sell, convert
• Use email software such as Mail Chimp, connected to analytics for all reporting on email
• Develop an email strategy, then refine it week by week, use your results data to good use 

Social Media

Interactions through social media are more effective then you may think.  Creating a fan base on Facebook, Twitter etc. assists in building SEO, whilst the marketing ability is limitless. Used correctly and a full time task for your company, this is a very effective tool for marketing, sales, technical support and customer support.

• Ensure you use a logo as your profile picture, and create a header banner
• Use your brand name as your Facebook username and handle if you are on Twitter
• Use your brand name in your Twitter bio, and add a link to a white paper in your bio
• Create competitions and get fans to post pictures of pets, cars, products etc. for prizes
• Get fans to like your social media profile to improve Google authority
• Promote events, shows, launches for new products and other press releases
• Add your website's URL to your profile
• Use your brand name as your hashtag and include it in all Tweets
• Encourage cross promotion across similar brands from social partnerships

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Video Marketing - The New Opportunities For Your Business

Video marketing is very hard to do, but it can be worth the time, effort and money if you do it right. Video marketing is another medium that you can use to get your marketing message across. It has been used for many years to great success on the TV, and now that Internet connections and bandwidths are good, you are able to host videos on your website with great success. There are even video channels such as YouTube that you can use to disseminate your videos.

Video marketing is very hard to do

This comment should be clarified, as anyone can point a camera at something. It is hard to do if you want any form of success. You need to have very good production values, audio, visuals, acting and scripts in order to create a successful marketing video. Anything less than fantastic will destroy any credibility you may have wished to gain (or sustain).

There are so many marketing videos online that are simply not good enough that people have started to ignore them and avoid them like plague. You should also be aware that your video needs to be very, very engaging, as most marketing videos are never watched through to the end. Your marketing massage needs to be short, concise, to the point and very, very engaging.

Demonstrations of your products

You can create videos that show demonstrations of your products. As you are probably already aware, images are not very good at showing how great your product is. They only show how the product appears to look, and even any action shots look lack luster on images. With a video you can show people exactly what your product does in a way that no other medium will allow you to. People are able to be impressed by what your product does, as oppose to simply how it looks.

Evidence of your marketing claims

Your marketing campaign may claim that your products are the most waterproof, the strongest or the most durable. But, those are just claims unless you can show people that what you are saying is true. You can prove that your product is waterproof with a video of it being dropped into a swimming pool and being used under water. You can show how strong your product is by tying it between two cars and having them pull. You can even show how durable your product is by putting it in a tumble dryer and then showing it working when it comes out.

Tutorials on how to use your products

These are quite popular because they offer the user something, instead of just advertising to them. It is quite common for people to log onto YouTube so that they can find out how a product or service works. People may wish to use your products for a certain task, and you can show them how to do it correctly. Whilst you are doing this, you are also subtly advertising your goods at the same time. You can even start and end the tutorial with a screen showing your current website or business location.

Examples of how your service works

If your website or business sells a service, then you can show that service in action. You can show people how your service works, or you can show people the results of your service. You can show people exactly what your service does so that they know what to expect when they buy from you. If you show people how you do your service and what the service entails, it will help them trust you enough to make the sale.

Show people that you are not a faceless corporation

Many people only ever see your brand or maybe someone in a suit on your website. But, everybody knows that the images they see online are not of real people within the company. With a video, you can show people around your office and introduce them to your staff and what they do. You can show that your company is staffed by real people who are not robotically churning out PR friendly banter. You can show people that any mistakes you make are not because there is a cog loose in your corporate machine, just that your company is run by humans who make mistakes.

It also allows people to see that when your company says that it cares, it is not just some bland corporate slogan. You can show the people behind the slogan and you can show people what your staffs do in order to care for their customers. You can even give subtle hints as to how successful your business is by showing how busy you are, and how your stock levels keep running low faster than you expect. You can even show people in your delivery department working quickly and efficiently in order to cope with the many, many orders that your company is receiving.

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Benefits of Responsive Web Design for Digital Marketing

In web design, we call a website "responsive" if it adapts itself to the viewers’ screen as it changes. The changes can be on a computer or laptop screen, like when you maximize your browser window or when you reduce it to a smaller size to see something else; but it might be more known among portable devices like smartphones and tablets, which are very varied in sizes. Having a website working with a responsive design is very useful for the user experience, and it gives you a few benefits with regard to your visitors.

There are two main benefits in using responsive design in a site.

First benefit: Only one website to maintain

Before responsive design was out, companies used to create two separate versions of their sites. Besides maintaining and updating a desktop version of the site, they had to create a separate mobile-friendly version as well. The use of m. subdomains became as common as the use of scripts to detect where a visitor was coming from to launch correct version. It meant double work, double updates and double bug-fixing too when things went bad.

Responsive design eliminates this need, making one version of the website suitable for one and for all.

Second benefit: Increased perception of quality from visitors

Let's be honest here: if your site is not 100% flawless when people surf it, they will never think there is a problem with their Internet browsers. What they will always think is that you have a bad site. Responsive design lets you manage how a site will look in smartphones, tablets, windowed screens and maximized screens; and it will let you determine how the display will adapt if the visitor intentionally changes anything. This adaptability will always speak well about you, and make people think you have an amazing website. It is a great second reason to use responsive design for your website.

Third benefit: A slight increase in performance

As responsive design can be worked in one single file, you reduce the number of HTTP requests your visitor's browser needs to send to the server. This improves your website's loading time, one of the few factors Google has admitted counts for rankings and SEO.

How to start with responsive design

Starting with responsive design is not very difficult, fortunately. There is only one "technology" to master, and it is the use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Besides this, you need to read a little about a new meta tag, meta viewport, and media queries, which are specific CSS definitions that work differently according to the screen size users have. If you can read enough about this topic, then you may be able to create one 100% responsive CSS file with instructions for everybody, from desktop to smartphones users, and even for those who want to print your articles if you want.

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Businesses should consider responsive web design for better digital marketing

We have become switching consumers and I'm not talking here about our switching behaviour for best deals and costs but about our internet browsing behaviour. Think about your average day and how many times you may switch between the devises you use to browse the net.  In the morning waiting for the train you may browse on your mobile, at work you use a desktop, you get home and you may turn to a tablet. We are constantly switching between the devises we use and it is now more important than ever that websites work seamlessly across all these mediums for optimal user experience.

Mobile sales have already overtaken desktop sales and by 2014 it is predicted that mobile internet usage will quickly overtake desktop internet usage. If your website doesn't look or operate well on a mobile it really is time to review it. If you invest in Digital Marking such as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and PPC, mobile friendly website is essential.

Whether you choose to create individual websites for each devise or to opt for a responsive website has caused considerable industry debate. We are increasingly asked by our customers for advice about their new or existing websites. Should they re-develop the site to be responsive?  Should they keep their existing desktop version and create a new version specifically for mobile?

Making a website work effectively for mobile devises, whilst it might look like a simple job of shrinking everything down to make it smaller is actually not that easy and not quite as straightforward. For a site to be responsive it is about creating a site architecture that delivers a customised user experience across those devises. It involves flexible layouts with elements that adapt to differing sizes and features to fit screens, devises and browsers. For example on a desktop a website may display a large graphic element featuring a companies services, but on a mobile devise this simply would not work so those services may have to be presented differently or utilising a different scroll function.

Last year Google ran a study on smartphone users and the results showed just how important it is to ensure your website is responsive. 

75% of people questioned said they prefer a mobile friendly website 61% said that if they were unable to find what they were looking for would turn to an alternate website and 67% said that they are more likely to buy from a website that works well on a mobile devise.

Delivering a quality and seamless user experience across multiple devises should now be a key consideration for businesses and if just starting to develop a new website of your own this is one of the things that absolutely should be thought about. It's no good just looking at the website on your computer screen using your preferred browser, cross check how the site looks and performs on all devises, screen sizes and browsers. What may work well on a desktop in FireFox may not work on a tablet using Chrome.

There are various advantages for having a responsive website over multiple versions of your site for improved digital marketing results. For SEO one dynamic site is preferred by search engines and is now seen as best practice. Any back links generated to your site will lead to a single recognisable source enhancing your one sites authority, user experience and recognition. Responsive websites mean that navigations, scrolls and flow all work seamlessly whatever devise your customers are using to view your site.  Maintaining one site also eliminates the need to update graphics and content across multiple websites. For example when special offers go live, graphics and prices can be updated once rather than three for four times.

If your digital marketing also focuses on social media develop a responsive website improves your customer engagement and means they are more likely to share your content, improving your social media interactions. When sharing your website link on their various social networks, their own followers can go directly to your website regardless of the device that they are using. This is very important, especially since social networks are often accessed on mobile devices.

For any customers currently in the process of starting a business or about to embark on a website project thinking cross devise and browser efficiency should defiantly be part of your design brief.  Consider carefully where your customers will access your products and services and make sure your site creates a good user experience however they may be viewing.

This article was written by Sarah Stott. Sarah has worked within the domain name and registration industry for the last 5 years and currently works at Siteopia.com.

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How To Optimize For Facebook Graph Search

The newest Facebook tool promises to help users find just about anything on Facebook in a distinctive way. Graph search has the potential of being informative and is valuable to both individual users and businesses. There are ways you can optimize your Facebook page so that other users can discover you or your business more if you choose of course.

1. Include things you would like others to discover in your profile

If you are entrepreneur and would like to be discovered by people of a certain geographical area, make sure to update your profile to read your current hometown and mention that you are an entrepreneur in the work and education section, preferably. The graph search will let users query entrepreneurs in your location to find new people to connect with.

2. Make sure your page is complete and up to date

Users who have complete profiles are more likely to be discovered than those who haven't, according to facebook. Ensure therefore that you fill all the relevant information, keep your profile up to date, and regularly maintained.

3. Share valuable content

Modern search algorithms deliver only fresh and engaging content. To ensure you page is put out there for others to view it, ensure your content will be helpful and up to date. People like viewing content that will help them and that is correct. 

4. It's all about location

Whether your profile is for a business or for individual use, updating your address and location will help users find you if their search is location specific. For a local business, ensuring that you set up the page a local page will help users discover you if they are searching for services in your specific location. In the local page, ensure you add your address, hours of business and phone number to help people find you more easily

5. Increase your fan base

The facebook graph search has a great functionality that helps users find others who share the same interests. As such, it's possible to find places or things that your target fans like. You need fans for your page, and not just any fans, but relevant ones, who are fans within your region and with the same interests. Buying fans is not such a good idea as they will just like your page to get paid and may not be interested in your product.

The best way to get more fans is adding a like box on your page or on your website and encouraging users to like your page. Another alternative would be Facebook advertising, if you have many fans advertise your page on your fans or friends profiles. Create sponsored stories that will make friends of your fans to like your page also. If you don't have a lot of fans yet, use the general advertising option to target users who are demographic and interest specific to discover and view your page.

6. Encourage users to tag and like your photos

Actions on your profile are proof that users really like your brand. The more fans post and share photos using check-in or tag the better. If your business doesn't lend itself to check ins or photos, get creative ways to encourage this. Also, encourage employers to post photos that are relevant and share with others. If users are searching for photos of their friends, they might see a photo of their friend tagged on your page. Users can also filter to search for photos by the pages they like. All of this helps keep your profile busy and if you are a business owner, people are likely to be interested to know what you offer that their friends like. The more interactions there are on your page, the more you will appear on graphic search and reach more users. 

7. Make it easy

Users don't proactively search for brands to like on facebook. Make sure you provide clear visible links to your page on your website, emails, blog, or wherever else you have content. Make sure that users can easily like your page without putting too much effort or time.

Once you have attracted the right users on your page, make sure to keep them engaged and offer up to date and relevant content to keep them interested.

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Five Effective Strategies to Attract More Site Visitors

We put up a website because we want to draw people’s attention to what we have to show the world. Either we want to market and promote a product or a service, or we simply want to raise awareness for a certain cause. Whatever it is, we all desire to have a lot more people visiting our site, being inactive and patiently wait for them to visit our site will not work. We need to have to be active and impose techniques that will drive people to our sites. Here are some effective and ethical strategies you may want to try.

1. Social Media Sharing. This is actually pretty common and self-explanatory. But aside from sharing your own website content to your social media accounts like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and many similar others, it is also wise to install a social media sharing button on your web pages. This way, all your site visitors who likes your content can easily share it to their friends and connections, thus, resulting to more visits from other people. The more social media sharing buttons you install to your website’s content pages, the ways there are to share your content, and the more people will get to see your content.
2. Increased Number of Pillar Contents. Pillar contents are “in-depth, well-written content that will always be of interest to readers.” With these contents, you can rest assured that your site will go viral toward the targeted readers via person-to-person sharing. Coupled with social media sharing, this will surely direct a large number of traffic to your site.
3. Noteworthy Press Releases Distribution. Submitting a press release for a noteworthy accomplishment or event is another good way to direct people to your website since your contact information (which includes your website) is given at the end of the press release. However, remember that you should not abuse this service, otherwise your distributed press releases will turn out to be nothing more than a spam content.
4. Interactive Social Networking. This simply means that give helpful answers to questions you see on online forums or threads. You can visit a lot of site and pages that host these features. After giving your answer, give a link (preferably a shortened one) to the person who asked. The link should either be of your website or any content from your website that gives further explanation to the issue. Doing this will not only give your site good traffic but also credibility and reference to your site and your expertise.
5. Content Sharing. Sharing informative contents about your field and industry or anything related to sites like Scribd and Slideshare will also direct people to your website to check what else you have to offer. This method not only gives you followers, but also increased brand awareness and credibility.

You can never discount the power of your website. So make the most of it! Our tips here have been tested and proven effective not only in spreading your website’s popularity, but also in establishing your business’ online presence and in maximizing your chances of boosting your sales and profit margin.

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How SEO Can Help Your Business Website

In 2013, your company most definitely utilizes the internet to gain exposure and imprint your brand on the public. Most of this visibility starts and finishes with powerhouse search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing. When someone wants a product or needs information, they usually fire up the internet and simply go to one of these search engines. Due to the seeming monopolization of the web by these search engines, business leaders try and mold their online strategy around the algorithms that these engines use to prioritize search results.

Modern business leaders usually understand that search engine optimization (SEO) benefits them, but don’t know specifics. This article is meant to explain the basics of why a business benefits from SEO, and why it matters.

1.   Direct access to consumer.

When someone sits down at their computer and types in a certain search query, their goal is to find a specific piece of information or product. SEO helps the search engines understand what you have to offer so that they can pair what you have with the user’s search. This is a huge reason to make sure your website is advanced SEO-wise. Just as businesses want to lure potential clients and partners to their store front or conference room, you want people to visit your website. SEO helps keep the door wide open so that you have direct access to the consumer.

Basic: You want to welcome the customer that wants to find you. SEO helps clear the water in between you and interested people across the web.

2.   Usability.

Quality SEO makes your website more user-friendly. The design of your website should cater to the search engines while simultaneously providing a unique experience to the end user. When the metadata of your site provides an accurate representation of your surface content, everyone has a better experience. Search engines do not consider images or other graphics when helping decipher a page, and it’s important that your site makes sense on all levels. What you want to rank for needs to be included in your metadata, along with your visible content and links.

If your metadata is all about basketball but you have images and articles about soccer, the process is being compromised and your web presence will be diminished. Quality SEO includes making your website user friendly for both the search engines and the end user on the internet. In the end, these major search engines have the goal of making the internet more user friendly. Your part in the system is making your page an accurate representation of what you offer.

Basic: Your website needs to be user-friendly from both a search engine and user perspective. You want all parties to find your site for the right reasons. That’s the point of SEO. Having content that matches your keywords is a good place to start.

3.   Keyword visibility.

SEO can help your page show up for the search queries you want it to show up for. If you want to have a web presence that helps your business, you need to know exactly what keywords you want to rank for. For instance, a cruise ship company out of Florida might want to rank for “Caribbean cruise” or “cheap Caribbean cruise”. If you were running this website, you would want to have these keywords within your content and also as the anchor text of any backlinks involving your company on the web.

 It’s very difficult to rank high for keywords and it’s nearly impossible to rank for a popular one like “Caribbean cruise” without an understanding of exactly what you want to rank for. Take a look at your product or service, and focus your attention on what you would search for if you were trying to find your own site. Build your SEO strategy around those keywords and you should be rewarded with traffic and business.

Basic: Keywords are directly related to the traffic that visits your website. When people search for terms in your niche, you want to rank for the particular words they type in. Having people search for your targeted keywords, and also ranking for them, can spark a huge flow of traffic to your website and push your business over the edge.

SEO benefits your business by making your webpage more accurate. Search engine rankings are meant to make web navigation more straight forward and simple. SEO is meant to help you, the webmaster, express your products or services more accurately for the benefit of those who are interested.

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SEO Tips for Your Site and What You Can Do about It

A Short Overview on SEO

Search Engine Optimization or SEO as it is widely known is a way to increase the number of visitors to a website by making its rank higher in search results and employing the right keywords on the sites content.

In a general and basic sense, SEO involves:

• Bringing in prospects towards your site

• Leading clients/customers to a detailed or step by step process of completing a transaction i.e. site navigation tools

• Designing websites properly and attractively to entice customers/clients

• Addressing some concerns that could be a contributing factor in customer satisfaction level

Search engine optimization strategies are substantial for websites that target good ranking. Online advertising agencies should have know-how on this to attain efficiency. By having a top ranking site, a company may benefit from the elevated traffic making their sites the top click of customers or clients searching for a service or information.

These are the things you should be asking yourself to guide you in your SEO quest:

• Do you plan on doing your product or service’s advertising/marketing by yourself?

• Do you plan to do it in a conventional or traditional manner? Online/offline? How?

When you have decided to do it online, then:

• Plan. Think about the product/service you want to sell.

• Figure out who needs the product/service

• See what the search engines can recommend you when you search for them

• Make a website. Get a domain and host.

• Don’t forget to build links.

• Consider marketing with banners and ads.

• Make press releases for strategic and authoritative marketing.

• Employ associations and backlinks.

• Participate in forums or blogging.

• Email productions. (No spam as much as possible. So be careful!)

• Test your methods and assess your progress.

• Innovate when possible.

Take note though that good online search engine ranking is not the only objective you should have, increasing traffic and conversions should not be forgotten because they bring in the bread and butter of an online business.

Avoid search engine penalties. Online entrepreneurs realize the significance of getting top internet search engine ratings and thus they usually perform many SEO activities on their own sites. Improper implementation of SEO could possibly get your website penalized by search engines like Google.

To prevent a site from being punished, avoid having hidden texts or hidden links on your webpages, do not use excessive automated queries to search engines, and avoid keyword stuffing.

Use appropriate keywords. Having the correct keywords will permit you to drive specific site visitors to your website. Therefore, this task determines whether your SEO effort can improve your business results or not.

Conclusion:

SEO tactics are ideal in promoting and making your site “popular” in the eyes of search engines and in the eyes of people searching for a particular keyword.

SEO is vital for online marketing and advertising. If the processes are being done correctly, it can help attract many visitors to your site, it can enhance the ranking and furthermore, it can prove to be successful for your business.

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Focus SEO on Conversions Not Keywords or Traffic

It should go without saying that web traffic is good and ranking highly for a coveted keyword is good. That’s like saying it’s smart to use a VPN service when traveling and using public Wi-Fi.

Still, there are other things to keep in mind when performing search engine optimization. For e-commerce sites, it’s good to remember that while traffic is great, conversions are king. Traffic is potential money, while conversions are actual money.

Consider Search Intent

When deciding what keywords to target in your SEO project, it is important to keep in mind the intent of people searching a particular keyword. For example “running shoes,” is a term that could be used by anyone looking up anything about running shoes. However, “buy running shoes,” or “good deals on running shoes,” are likely to be used by people who are ready to make a purchase.

Thus, those keywords should convert into sales at a higher rate. This should be the ultimate goal, and it needs to be discussed before any SEO project begins so that everyone is on the same page.

Far too often, the focus is solely on ranking on the first page or achieving the top ranking spot on Google. When business owners go into projects with these sorts of expectations they are not only hard to live up to for the SEO specialist but also detrimental to the bottom line of the business.

Of course, once the optimal keywords are being targeted, then the goal should be to achieve the highest ranking. However, ranking fifth on a keyword that converts at a higher rate than another keyword a site is in the top slot for could prove more profitable.

Monitor the Results

In order to find out what will be best for the bottom line, results have to be monitored and tracked by keyword. This should enable the SEO team to figure out what keywords are converting, what rate they are converting at and how much a conversion is worth. From here, some simple math will tell everyone which keywords are most profitable.

Overview

One final thought is to remember that SEO is an ongoing process. The conversion rates or value of keywords can change over time, as can the amount of competition. As such, it is important to always keep an eye on these factors and be prepared to make changes in strategy when necessary.

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Enhancing the B2B and Social Media Relationship

The business-to-business (B2B) community and social media have a love/hate relationship. Successful businesses love social media, while struggling businesses hate social media. Why is there a disconnect in 2013? The reasons are clear. Businesses that aren’t benefitting from social media lack the time, expertise and money to invest in a solid social media marketing plan. There are challenges to creating one, but an effective plan benefits your business.

Solving business challenges and opportunities

There are several challenges associated with improving the relationship between social media and B2B. Generating awareness surrounding your campaign and driving traffic back to your business is the first step to improving a lasting relationship. Prior to lead generation, you must attract potential customers/clients. Attracting additional customers/clients at a higher rate involves finding out which social media channels you should focus your attention on. Social media marketing is more than just Facebook and Twitter.

A secondary challenge lies in how your business utilizes social media to target customers. Social media isn't the new kid on the block anymore. Social media is a staple of business. The solution to the challenge falls in the hands of how a company manages lead generation. Recognize the industry influences  follow up with potential leads and channel energy toward your target audience.

Reaching your Target Audience

A target audience is your core customer and potential customer base. Reaching your target audience involves creating a transparent message. A business should discuss the intentions of the company while remaining true to company beliefs. Do not pretend to be something you are not, the social media world will know.

Commitment to social media

Social media relates to keeping the customer engaged while keeping conversations active. The industry is ever evolving, so remain relevant with the times. Commit to social media for the success of your business, not because the reset of the industry partakes in social media. Remaining abreast of the challenges and changes in the industry requires having the right team promote your position in the marketplace.

Experts on Your Side

The DIY philosophy of social media is outdated. Businesses succeed and fail based upon whom they have on their team. There are varying levels of expertise in the industry, including SEO professionals, online marketers and social media experts. You may find that you need one company for all of them, or different companies for each.

Creating an effective social media campaign requires a working knowledge of the landscape, task management and the ability to analyze the competition. A social media expert keeps your business abreast of the daily changes and challenges facing your business as well as the industry.

Getting a Head Start

Getting a head start in the social media games takes planning before jumping head first into a campaign. You need to read industry blogs and follow advice from industry experts. Engage and keep the conversation going on corporate and industry-related blogs. Afterward, focus your attention on your own social media space. 

Social media means more than just posts and tweets. Engaging in social media requires experts with the forethought to transform your strategy into a successful strategy. Convey your message with authority and above all else, capture your audience.

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Social Media VS Link Building. What Is Better?

Social media has the power of offering better SERP without spending money while doing this. However, link building still works and there are many search engine optimization specialists that do all that they can in order to get great links. What should you choose between the two? Is social media better than link building? Let us take a look at both of these in order to understand exactly what works best in your case.

How Does Link Building Work?

Link Building can be defined as building links on the internet and spreading them with the purpose of increasing search engine positioning rankings. Many strategies exist and can help you to succeed. The most used one is to take advantage of sites that are already reputable so that they endorse links and works there. There are some sites that will ask for a payment in order to allow you to host a link but there are also others that will just want the same favor from you in return.

Social Media SEO Role

We can easily notice the fact that social media is personal. It became really powerful with the advancements made in technology and you can use this to your advantage. All that you have to do is use the most popular social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Post your messages and they can spread really fast, reaching thousands of potential customers in just minutes.

The interactivity of social media is the main reason why so many are using it at the moment. Search engines understood that social activity is a good indicator of what people want to find on the internet and are now using shares, likes and even tweets in order to offer better ranking.

Link Building VS Social Media? Tips On Using Them

1. It Is Better To Use Both!

This is the one thing that few people even consider. No matter what you might be tempted to believe, it is always a good thing to use both link building and social media. Link building strategies are pretty much straightforward but when you also take advantage of the power of social media, it is a guarantee that you will get better results. When posting links without taking into account engagement, time is lost and the poor execution consequences are immediately felt.

2. Social Media Gets You In Touch With Customers

Because of the fact that the popularity of social networks is huge, it is easier to reach your customers and use the sites as a door for marketing and SEO ploys. It is completely true that traditional link building works but it is imperative that you also attract a social circle. Think about quality at all times and never just place links!

3. Link Baiting And Influential Social Media

You should research opportunities and always be aware of what is trending. All that is trending can be incorporated in your social media campaigns through videos and photos while informative texts create value and attraction.

Try to create viral content. From that content you can plug in links. It is a guarantee that this will get you far when referring to SERP. Your main goal is to leave an impression. People should see you as important and it is vital that you are remembered. Those that reach maximum exposure end up with links without doing anything by simply using social media properly.

We can easily compare social media with word of mouth marketing since there are so many similarities between the two. People do want to pass on information and will recommend resources to others on social networks. Post quality stands out as the main key to your success. At the same time it is important to avoid negative reputation effects and the link building activities are made a lot easier when just combining both social media and link building.

The bottom line is that you need to think about the people. The major search engines do all that they can so that the results shown are relevant and social media is taken into account. Although you might hear differently, link building and social media basically work hand in hand. The best search engine optimization experts out there include them both in their work done to rank high.

Kate Funk is an expert in online tutoring services. She coaches individuals in SEO and business networking skills.

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