Small Business Traffic Secrets

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Small Business Traffic Secrets Get more business through online lead generation & strategic networking

A simple guide to making the most of your online marketing efforts

by Shameer Shah

in partnership with

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TABLE OF CONTENTS GETTING STARTED 3 Get Started With Online Marketing The Quick And Easy Way Set A Budget For Your Marketing Staying Focused On Your Target Market Know Your Customers Well

YOUR COMPANY WEBSITE 10 Make Your Website Shine

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION (SEO) 13 Glossary For SEO Terms Creative Ways To Build An SEO List

SOCIAL MEDIA 17 The Social Media - Profile Page Great Tips To Get You Started On Twitter The Art Of Producing Amazing Twitter Posts Best Practices For The Facebook Timeline Great Apps For Running Successful Facebook Contents Ways To Make Your Linkedin Profile A Social Media Powerhouse Ways To Use Linkedin Productively Guide To Using Pinterest For Your Business

BLOGGING 34 How To Write Creative Headlines That Work Attracting A Huge Readership To Your Blog Timing Is Everything - How To Get Your Next Blog Post Out On Time

EMAIL MARKETING 44 How To Build & Execute An Effective Email Campaign How To Get Your Email Marketing Wrong Persuasive Email Subject Lines That Won’t Be Ignored Tips For Achieving Better Results With Mobile Email Marketing

VIDEO MARKETING 54 Why Internet Video Advertising Is More Powerful Than TV Does Your Business Need A Video?

Top Video Creation Tips To Remember Video Blogging Explained

PLAN OF ACTION 62 Summary of how to implement and put into motion your marketing 2

usinessbanter

Getting Started

Budget • Target Market • Customers

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GET STARTED WITH ONLINE MARKETING THE QUICK AND EASY WAY Getting started with online marketing can be somewhat of a challenging endeavour for many businesses. If you’re a small business, it’s difficult enough running your own business on a daily basis let alone keeping on top of sales, time management, accounts, customers and marketing. A good start would be to simplify your marketing efforts by completely understanding your products and services, and having 100% confidence in your business. Now this, most of you would agree is a given. However, the importance of this really comes into play when marketing your business online.

So here is how you can get started with online marketing the quick and easy way: 1.Your website should be the main hub of your online activity and be relevant to everything you do in your business. Think about what sort of a website you have set up and is it focused on the user. Is the website friendly, engaging and does it enhance the user experience. Does the user, your potential customer, come away with enough vital knowledge to refer you onto others looking for similar services? Is the sales funnel of your website optimised enough to encourage the customer to make contact?

2. How well you understand your business will reflect in how committed you are in finding the best keywords that describe your business. Not only will you use these keywords to optimise your website, but any small search engine optimisation (SEO) you carry out will help your website’s ranking for those specific keywords. Do your research by comparing what your competitors are using and how well they rank on the search engines for those keywords. SEO is a very specialised area of online marketing which SEO Marketing Companies can help you with, but that doesn’t mean leave all the research to them. Remember, you know your business and you know what your customers are searching for.

3. Start using Social Media Marketing. It’s not difficult, it’s only time consuming! Open a Twitter account, start following people, make connections and begin engaging. How about Facebook.... create a Facebook page, style it to your liking, invite people to join and begin engaging. Simple right? It’s all well and good creating a profile and connecting with people, but it’s what you do after that impacts your reputation hence your business. Share information about your industry, business and your expert knowledge in an unobtrusive way. Keep your profiles active and interactive without being too forceful, and your reputation will flourish. When others share and comment on your posts be sure to reply and strike up conversations.Yes, it can be time consuming, but social media used correctly can be very rewarding.

4. Blogging has become more and more popular. Expand your expert knowledge by writing about your personal experience, business experience, niche topics, valuable insight into an industry, howto’s and much more in order to help others and to position yourself as a leader in the field. With so

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much relevant content on the internet you are in good competition! So, don’t write for the sake of writing... write to boost your reputation by providing the best and most unique content.Yes, you may find similar topics floating about on the internet, but that doesn’t mean you can’t expand on those topics and include your learned experience. Blogging should be a core lifeline of your business.

5. How well are you using the emails that have been provided to you by people who have subscribed to receiving details of your services and products? Treat these opt-in emails as ‘gold dust’. People who have parted with their email addresses have done so in order to receive benefit in return. Use the email marketing wisely and part with information and offers that are beneficial to the recipients.

Use it to spam your recipients and be prepared to receive lots of unsubscribes. This doesn’t mean you send an email marketing campaign once in six months, quite the contrary. Organise your campaigns and broadcast on a regular basis (without spamming) to inform your recipients and be open to any engagement that may follow after. The email MUST hold some value in the form of research, niche offerings, updates and most importantly, call to actions in the right places in order to encourage engagement. Deliver well designed, classy emails which drive traffic back to your website.

Don’t forget to monitor your email campaigns as an unmonitored online marketing campaign is a worthless effort.

Get started with Online Marketing the quick and easy way using the 5 pointers above will set you on the right path.View more tips in each pointer to dig deeper and learn more. Remember, it’s not difficult, it just takes time and lots of fine tuning.

SET A BUDGET FOR YOUR MARKETING How do you set a budget for your marketing? Setting a budget for your marketing is through the combined analysis of how much you can afford to spend by what you would like to gain. There are two consequential questions you need to answer to direct your incentives; how much is each new customer you gain worth to you? And do you see your marketing spend as an expense or an investment? The answers you provide will determine your willingness to spend and that spend, will ultimately influence your gains.

For those businesses who believe marketing to be an extension of their daily business are the ones who are more likely to continue investing when times are difficult. It’s quite understandable, but it’s no wonder they are always on top. People see how much their existing clients are worth, how significant a new customer is and the overall virtue of marketing to drive more business traffic.

I think the normal understanding is that businesses should invest between 1 to 10 percent of total sales, but there is no hard and fast rule and how much you invest is really down to the gains you anticipate. Adding to the 2 questions above, there are a few other questions businesses need to research and agree upon before outlining a budget;

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1. How long has the business been trading? How established is the business?

2. What sort of competition are you facing? What approximate market share does your competition occupy?

3. What can you afford to spend? Have you researched economical online marketing methods?

Whether a new or established business, the questions above operate as an indicator for working out a marketing spend. If you are a new company, the first few years of businesses are crucial and you should give marketing the best chance by investing a large proportion of your capital.

Once you have researched and established some answers, next would be to identify your audience and niche market and how you would like to communicate to them. I have noticed that most companies I speak to start their marketing campaigns by thinking about what product or service they can sell. Great, but is that what’s really important? Shouldn’t you be locating your audience and pinpointing your market? After all, the audience is going to be the one purchasing your product. It’s a given that your product has to be fantastic in order to sell.

I understand, to businesses ROI means Return On Investment, but I try to encourage an alternative view and meaning to ROI - Return On Influence. To know your audience and your niche markets really well, allows businesses to create the moments of truth through influence. Through online influence. And this, will create a longer lasting impression, a stronger bond with your customers and more influence with your audience. Following that, your return on investment will come.

This is why the internet is the first choice for marketing for 99% of businesses I consult. It operates as a playground for low-cost, powerful marketing methods which can be sustained as your business sees fit. So, how do you set a budget for your marketing? Well to start with, it’s the combined analysis of how much you can afford to spend by what you would like to gain. Think carefully as this will determine the rest of your answers and marketing!

STAYING FOCUSED ON YOUR TARGET MARKET Have you heard of the phrase ‘Jack of all trades and master of none’? That phrase was quite accurately derived from businesses that try and cater for a wide variety of services but prove to be masterful at none. Which proposes the fact that business is probably not doing too well as there is no focus on the service, nor is there any focus on your target market.

If you look back at some of the larger companies who established themselves by providing a single product or service, you will see how they applied themselves over time and grew a fantastic customer base before branching out. For example, Apple, who firstly established themselves in the

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personal computer manufacturing and only following the success of the Apple Macintosh did they branch out into other digital devices and services. Another example is Amazon, who started with books followed by offering music, health and beauty, clothes and the list goes on. One thing most successful companies have in common is their determination. Their determination to pay careful attention to their core services which ultimately helped them stay focused on their target market.

So, here are some powerful tips to assist you to focus on your target market.

Be exceptional and an asset - Focus on your business and become exceptional at whatever you do. If you have a clear vision of your business, you will naturally be defining a target market that your vision will encompass and so, increasing your chances of success and growth. By positioning your business as an expert and an authority in your field, not only are you raising your credibility, but are offering an accomplished resource and an asset within the particular field of work.You may want to concentrate and apply your marketing efforts to a geographical area or a specific demographic in order to research your target market further. This is definitely a worthwhile exercise as you will be able to learn at an early stage, and make changes as the results are made available. Which brings me onto the next tip.

Test and review your research - Do your research and find who you think your target market is. It may not be completely evident at first, but as you begin to test the research and review results there will be stand out reasons why you should be pursuing one particular path more than another. It may be a combination of promising prospects and a definite industry where you will find the most potential, but only research and testing will tell. For example, you may know your product suits small businesses, but only through research and testing do you begin to realise that the product is attracting Estate Agents, Letting Agents and Property Developers. By doing this research, your intention is not to block out the customers who don’t fit the profile, you’re defining where the best product/market fit exists.

Marketing for your target market - Now that you have focused on a target market, it’s time to redefine your marketing. How will you inform the audience of who you are? What exactly you do? How you can help them with your service? Are you a credible supplier? Are you ready to engage with your target market?

Once you have defined your target market the above questions are important and related to how you apply yourself. Fine tune your advertising and marketing to now accommodate the new target audience with intention to establish your mission and your expertise. Initiate your business to be more credible, have vast knowledge of your audience and absolutely make evident that you are the most reliable business to provide the service or product. Use social media to engage with your potential customers and existing clients. Have them know you are contactable through many channels and that your customer service is second to none. By identifying your market, you will actually be fine tuning your brand, interactive strategy and all marketing efforts.You have created a clear vision of your mission and this should in turn clarify your marketing to make it more focused on your target market.

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KNOW YOUR CUSTOMERS WELL Have you ever thought about how well you know your customers? Or do you feel it’s not necessary to know your customers just as long as they are happy and buying from you? Getting to know your customers is critical to providing the best service in the quickest way possible. There is no excuse. Put in some effort and get to know them. To deliver the finest service you must know your customers may it be collectively or individually.

It is in your best interest to provide a good service for not only will the customers give you repeat business, but they will share their experience online and by word-of-mouth. Both are very powerful as this good experience would act as testimonials for your business. By knowing your customers, you can also provide an excellent service in the quickest way possible allowing you to move onto the next customer even faster. Spending too much time on resolving customer issues is largely down to not knowing your customers and hence, not having problem solving solutions at hand. This will ultimately reflect in the growth pattern of your business.

To start with, here are some questions that you should first answer: Where are your customers coming from?

What types of customers do you have?

What kind of products and services are they currently buying?

Are they a long term customer?

How often do they purchase from you?

Once the above questions have been answered and analysed fully, you will be able to draw some critical information that will encourage a better customer relationship, initiate bespoke solutions, and as you grow this business relationship, increase the level of sales. What impression do your customers have of your business? It’s great they have a good impression, but even greater if they have a lasting impression of your business. Put yourself in their position and have a look at your business. What do you see?

Customers should have a comfortable and confident feeling about your business. Think about when they walk into your premises. . . is the premises clean, are they made welcome, is the receptionist receptive to the customer... all this matters. How does the customer feel when they call your business? Are they just another number or acknowledged as a customer you know well? Knowing your customers, will breakdown and ease telephone conversations allowing a more free flowing chat which will guarantee a much better business relationship. This is especially true with small and medium size businesses. With larger businesses, the same rules apply in larger proportions and more technological investment with larger customer databases.

As a small business, understanding your customers and their priorities can vastly assist in delivering and exceeding their expectations. This will make the whole process effortless the next time they deal with you.

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If you hold information about your customers, new and old, have a look at their profile in more detail. Larger businesses will undoubtedly employ Customer Relationship Management software or CRM software which helps them track the activities on any customer in more detail. However, you don’t have to be a big business to have your own system of recording your customers behaviour.

Why not use Microsoft Excel or Apple Numbers to create your own database? Whatever system you have in place for tracking your customers, use it well and really get to know them well. There holds the key to how you can focus your marketing, establish problem solving initiatives, target new products to specific customers and of course up-selling through offering better deals. It is extremely wise to establish a good knowledge of your customers’ behaviour if not for anything, but for simply dealing with each customer, expertly.

Another great way to find out more about your customers is using surveys and asking them to comment directly. Surveys are an amazing way of getting feedback in areas of business that are under-performing, less appealing, services of good value and areas requiring some improvement. It helps you to focus on areas that could greatly impact the sales behaviour of your customers, and by that I mean, testing and improving to a higher standard in order to increase the level of sales. There is no better way of finding out more about the impact of your business than from the people using you on a regular basis.

Remember, a happy customer always has a good story to tell. So, ask your customers what they think of the service you provide? What do they think of your business in general? A testimonial can work wonders in getting to know your customers better. At the same time, you will reveal many untold truths which will telltales of your business, good and bad. Let’s hope the ‘bad’ can be converted to ‘good’ through improvement, and the ‘good’, shared through to other potential customers.

So, I ask again, how well do you know your customers? Get to know them well as you will find out much more about your own business then you ever knew. Most importantly, you will get to know your customers through what they are saying, behavioural patterns, monitoring their engagement with your business and how they share their experiences.

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usinessbanter

Your Company Website

The website is your main hub and the top level lead generator

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MAKE YOUR WEBSITE SHINE Do you think you have a great website? Think again. How many conversions whether business or leads have you had in the last month from your website?

There lies a telltale sign of how good your website is performing.

Your website is the most fundamental tool in a marketing strategy. It is a window to your business on the internet and should be treated as a very important tool to both new customers and existing clients. As it is instrumental to your business, there are some essentials that all websites should embody in order to reach out, inform and satisfy, and finally, prove to be actionable.

Some elements are more important than others, but by having a clear idea of your business intent and what you’re trying to achieve, the list can be adjusted accordingly.

Elements of a top website:

Excellent Visual Design - A good visual design has to be at the top of every website developing list. It takes a customer no more than 4 seconds to determine whether to close down the window or carry on browsing based on the design as that is the first thing people see. Keeping the design clean and simple will always be more pleasing on the eye and makes it effortless to digest the information. Excellent visual design is crucial.

Attentive User Interface (UI) - Step into a customer’s shoes and follow them around your site. Is it simple to navigate? The user interface goes hand-in-hand with the visual design. So, when planning your website take into account the step by step flow of the site and the user interface. Is it intuitive? Is the navigation consistent on all the pages? Can they easily spot the links? Does it have all the required information on the site before planning to purchase? Are all the actionable triggers easily found such as ‘buy now’, ‘more info’ & ‘subscribe to blog’?

Imagery and Graphics - Images and graphics add a sparkle to every site. Photographs are not a must, but rarely will you see a website without graphical content. It helps to reflect the product, describe the service, liven up the page and in many cases lure in the prospect to looking for more content. If you are going to use images and graphics on your site, see to it that you use the most supreme quality images with descriptive content and graphics produced to an equally high standard.

Navigation - As previously mentioned in the user interface, navigation buttons need to be consistent on every page. The navigation area necessitates being identifiable at a quick glance and therefore, should appear in the same spot on all pages. There is nothing worse than having navigation

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buttons moving around the various pages. One key point is to ensure that the navigation is visible above the fold. Placing the navigation in the top 500 pixels of your site should suffice.

Powerful Content - Remember content is king.You may have the best designed and most elaborately styled site, but without quality content the site has failed.You are writing the content to ideally explain about the business, services and products, and anything else that would be helpful to the customers. Use a blog to further enhance your expertise with content that reaches out to your audience. Keep your content unique and minimise grammatical errors as this may come useful for SEO purposes.

Sign Up facility - Whether a sign up facility for your blog or a pre-product launch invite, this is a fantastic way to keep in constant contact with your clients and potential customers. It’s a process of delivering information directly to their inbox.You can also establish an RSS Subscribe facility which will allow people to add your RSS feed to various internet outlets such as their Twitter feed, Facebook posts or even their own blogs. Sign up and subscribe facilities are amazingly powerful for content distribution and marketing purposes.

W3C Standards and Platform Compatibility - Your site must be compliant to all the internet standards. Designing your site, styling for continuity, accurate coding and creating content is one thing, but connecting it all up to produce a website that is compliant to all the web standards within the W3C validation services and cross platform compatibility is immensely important and fundamental to every good website. Ask your web development team about this when commissioning a new site and what measures they take.

Contactable - Are you contactable? Can people find your contact page which ideally should be a click away? It would be a complete let down if customers had to scramble around your site looking for a way to get in touch so that they can place an order or make an appointment. Is contact available via email and/ or telephone? Preferably, you should allow for both options. What about a postal address? This helps to legitimise a business and proclaim location if required.

It’s scary to see how many businesses offer only email as a method of contact!

This is by no means a complete list. In fact, in some cases the elements above can be broken down into further sub-elements. As your website gets more elaborate and requires the need for further development, new elements will undoubtedly arise such as ‘search’, ‘e-commerce’, ‘content download’ and so on.

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usinessbanter

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Search engine visibility & high search engine ranking is absolutely necessary for every website.

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GLOSSARY FOR SEO TERMS This is a glossary for anyone who wants to know more about SEO. As a marketing company or a Search Engine Optimisation consultant you probably live, breathe and eat SEO. That also means you probably speak SEO like an expert, quite literally.

However, try talking to your clients about SEO. It would probably go something like this... “I advice you not to stuff your keywords for it may be seen as spam by the crawlers and as a result giving you a low PR which negatively reflects on the SERPs.” Sure, you understand what I’m saying?

Probably not.

So I’ve put together a basic glossary which will keep you up to speed with the SEO lingo.

You don’t have to use it, but it would be helpful if you knew what it meant should it get mentioned.

Glossary for SEO: SEO: Search Engine Optimisation Keywords: Words or a short phrase used to search for something particular Keyword stuffing: A way of over populating a web page with keywords in order to trick the search engine into believing the relevance of the page.

Long tailed keywords: Keywords that have 3 or more words to form a phrase in order to drive targeted traffic for better customer conversions.

Crawler: Sometimes known as a ‘spider’. Search engines use crawlers, as the word suggests, to crawl around web pages to read and digest the content.

Alt tags: These are descriptions given to images and graphic files on a web page.

Black hat: A technique used to intentionally deceive search engines for short term benefit.

White hat: A clean technique, a good SEO approach. Search engines like white hat.

On Page optimisation: A required step in the SEO process whereby a web page is optimised to make it relevant to specific keywords.

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Keyword rich: A web page that has a well balanced and neutrally distributed keywords for good optimisation.

Keyword analysis: A process of analysing keywords in order to receive targeted traffic through optimum search volume versus competition.

SERPS: Search Engine Results Pages Inbound links: These are links on other web pages and when clicked are directed to your website.

One-way links: Links that are only incoming. Meaning inbound only.

Reciprocal links: These are links that are exchanged by agreement.Your link is placed on another website if you agree to place their link on your website.

H1 tags: These are titles or header tags on a web page which include your keyword or phrase.

Google dance: It’s when Google is rebuilding its rankings, and results fluctuate widely for a few days.

Links farms: Populated link based websites that promise to give you high page ranking. Don’t do it.

Page rank: This is an indication gauge created by Google which determines how important and valid they think your page is. A scale of 1 - 10 where 10 is a heavenly page.

Again, this is by no means a complete SEO glossary. This glossary for SEO terms should give you a valuable insight into the world of SEO. No more techie talk and geeky jargon, read it one more time and you’ll soon be speaking the lingo.

CREATIVE WAYS TO BUILD AN SEO LIST How important is it to have the correct keywords for your business? Extremely important. Online marketers know how important it is to build an accurate keyword list for search engine optimisation (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM) and pay per click (PPC). I’m not going to start explaining why one should be used over the other and what the differences are, but guide you through the best methods for collating these keywords.

Analyse and brainstorm is the first step. Take a good look at your business, what is it about, what industry benefits from your business, is it a B2B or B2C business model and most importantly,

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step into the shoes of your customer and visualise what keywords they would use when searching for you? Whilst brainstorming, build a list using broad terms including locality, niche services, adjectives of your product or service in order to create seed terms that you can bind together.

Data collection and gathering keywords from competitors sites and search engines, whether in direct competition or not, is another way of sourcing relevant keywords to build your list. When doing this exercise it is important to note how these sites are ranked by search in Google, Bing and other search engines. Google’s Keyword Tool provides vital information on how those keywords are performing and this can help you towards building a relevant and strong keyword list.

Keep an eye on the search volume versus the competitiveness as this will determine your chosen keywords.

Collate list by downloading the selected keyword terms from Google’s Keyword Tool and/or build the list within excel. In excel, you can categorise the words according to the competitiveness, discarding the low search volume words and putting the best and most relevant ones right at the top.You can also use this method to creatively categorise the optimum keywords for the various pages of your website or multiple business sites.

Decision time and selecting your keywords has been made slightly painless by collating the list in excel for easy viewing. The research you have gathered from all the brainstorming sessions and list building, will finally, come to fruition when you have chosen the most relevant and search related keywords targeting each of your site’s pages. It’s not an easy job, but done correctly can bear great rewards.

Execution is the final step towards completing your creative search efforts. As the keywords are relevant to each particular page on your website, you must ensure the keyword terms have been used to optimise a variety of areas in order to allow for the SEO elements to take their course. By this I mean, optimise you titles, keywords, meta-descriptions, alt-tags, H1’s and most importantly, don’t forget to update the content of the pages to incorporate the related keywords and phrases.

Now that you have been made aware of a way of building a strong keyword list for SEO, I hope your site every success. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us or simply comment below.

Optimisation can be a daunting task!

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usinessbanter

Social Media Social Networking

Developing a great message & then reaching out to people, while giving them incentive to ‘pass it on’.

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THE SOCIAL MEDIA - PROFILE PAGE A profile page on your business or social network is a vital element of how people perceive you and your account. What does your profile look like? If I were to visit your profile would I happily come away with knowing that I have connected to a valuable source and more importantly, would I want to show others that I’m connected to you? My advice would be to complete your profile the best you can via establishing yourself as an expert in your trade, and only then, embark on connecting with others as they will surely visit your profile before confirming the connection.

Top tips for creating a fantastic profile page: - Have you done your research? Attracting the right people is key to making your social marketing work for you. Research your competitors and see how they have built their profile. Also, look at your target audience and see who they’ve connected with.

- What’s your profile picture like? It is highly recommended to display a good quality photograph of yourself. A picture will establish the profile and allow a user a face-to-face introduction and thus, hold more credibility.

- Is your biography incisive? Writing a bio is all about shedding the best light of you whatever platform you’re on. Depending on the platform, you can adjust the bio accordingly, but it is best to keep your online profile as professional as possible.

- What does your brand design look like? Many online networks have the capability to brand a page to suit your image. Make use of this properly. Make your branding attractive and absorbing by adding background design, text colour, images and graphics that ideally communicates your brand.

- Are you personable and unique? Being professional is one thing, but letting your personality and uniqueness shine through can help you connect with people who share similar sentiments. A sensible balance of character shows your human side. So feel free to add your hobbies, favourite music etc.

- Is your profile exciting enough? There’s nothing worse than a boring profile trying to convince people of how great a company or you are. That boringness reflects on your character and earns you a not very exciting reputation. Would I want to connect with you? I don’t think so!

- Got any accreditations or professional awards? Accreditations and professional awards only add to your credibility. If you have any achievements, by all means add them to your profile and raise your credibility.

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- Are you updating your profile often? It is a good idea to frequently update your profile to keep it current. Not only does this tell another user that you have recently visited your profile, but you’re more likely to engage and interact, and so, making you a worthy connection.

- Does your profile make you contactable? The most important trigger on your profile is probably a web address to your business website, blog, product or such. Once your audience has connected and reflected upon your expertise, they might want more information or have a need to contact you.

- Are you really engaging or selling? The point to social media is to interact, engage, build a reputation and become influential. Never go in with the intention to sell. People like compelling farmers not hunters!

These are a few powerful points that will help you craft your profile in a more dynamic way. The points are not really in order of priority, but a simple guide to help you stand out from the crowd.

GREAT TIPS TO GET YOU STARTED ON TWITTER Are you new to Twitter? Or maybe you signed up on Twitter many months ago but just haven’t got around to using it because you don’t fully understand the concept? Don’t worry, there are many people who are in the same boat.

This is not a complete Twitter marketing list, but an essential guide to help you understand and progress through to becoming a good participant on Twitter.

Let’s begin with these 5 essential tips to start you off on Twitter Your Profile What does your profile look like? If I were to visit your Twitter profile would I come away with knowing who you are, what you do and most importantly, would I want to connect with you? If you are new to Twitter, my advice would be to complete your profile the best you can, and only then, embark on searching for people you would like to connect with and follow.

Have you got a Profile Picture? Nobody wants to follow generic Twitter icons or any icon remotely related to your business. To be perfectly honest, not many want to follow a company logo unless it is a globally recognised brand. Twitter is about conversation and engagement which normally means people want to talk to other people preferably with a profile picture to relate.

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Is your Biography incisive? Writing a bio doesn’t get any more difficult. If you can perfect this, you are already on your way to composing great tweets. Make your bio captivating and powerful as possible within the 160 characters you are allowed to describe yourself. That’s right 160 characters is all you get!

What does your Background Design look like? Make this part of the canvas attractive and gripping by adding a background design that ideally communicates your brand. A well branded profile provides a good platform to begin your Twitter journey.

Do your most recent Tweets speak volumes? In other words, you are as good as your last set of tweets. People who follow others build their assumptions about your engagement based on the most recent tweets that you have made. Make them compelling by sharing amazing content and responding when required. This shows that you’re interesting but most of all, an active participant.

Finding your Followers Your profile set up was in preparation to finding targeted followers. That means people who are interested in your industry or associated to the industry in some form or another. The question is who are they, where do you source them and how do you get them to follow you?

1. Search for followers using keywords. Start following interesting people (people who have an almost equal follow to following ratio will potentially follow back).

2. Search for followers using Twitter lists (these are lists compiled by others within the industry). Start following people who are part of this list. They are there for a reason.

3. Browse categories to find followers. Start following suggestions put forward

by Twitter.

Numbers aren’t everything, but the more equal follower/following ratio a person has the more likely they will reciprocate by following back. There are other ways of finding and following users, but as a new user, I suggest the above mentioned approach to begin with.

Amazing tweets Remember Twitter is all about communication. Briefly, your tweet should be concise, informative, valuable and human. The keyword being ‘human’ and so, don’t be afraid to be yourself and share some humour as this only strengthens your qualities and lets people know they are engaging with a ‘real’ person and not a bot.

The more valuable and concise your tweets, the more receptive to engagement with your audience.

The more receptive to your audience, the better the communication pathway you are creating. This is all well and good, but it must return to the fact that you are providing concise, informative and

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valuable content for people to engage upon.

Lastly, don’t forget to be self-engaging. Be proactive in making conversation with others and start building a relationship. Get to know your followers and understand what they are about.“Use your experience and industry knowledge to inform others and not to pitch to them.”

Amazing conversations You might feel I’m repeating myself, but that just emphasises how important it actually is. Be proactive in making conversation with others and start building a relationship. Get to know your followers and understand what they are about. Use your experience and industry knowledge to inform others and not to pitch to them.

Since Twitter is a communication tool, the platform provides 2 key methods of doing this. Tweets and Direct Messages. Direct messaging is a way of going beyond a tweeting relationship with any particular person. So, being mutual followers is special in itself, and therefore, bear that in mind when you’re sending a direct message. If you have never sent a direct message previously then treat the first as an introduction or a handshake.

The beauty of a direct message is that you can personalise each one.You might want to thank a follower, share some valuable information to just a few or convey a simple survey to your most engaging followers and that’s when the direct message becomes a key player in your Twitter mix.

However, send your direct messages with care knowing you’re not spamming or pushing a product, but instead using it as a constructive tool for building your online reputation.

Monitor your business Monitor, monitor, monitor. After all, you’re on Twitter for a reason. Whatever the reason, you need to monitor your account by listening and consuming what’s going on via Twitter.You should monitor mentions about your twitter username, website, business, products, services and blog to observe who is talking about you and your business brand. Monitoring encourages keeping your profile in check and allowing for a quick response to comments whereby creating further engagement. At the same time, gives you the opportunity to attend to negative feedback should there happen to be any.

There are software options on the market such as Hootsuite and Tweetdeck which can help you track and monitor your business and related keywords. Another great benefit of monitoring your business on Twitter is that it admits you to validate your Twitter content, approach and reputation by the engagement and responses triggered from your community as a whole.

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THE ART OF PRODUCING AMAZING TWITTER POSTS Twitter is one of the most popular and fastest growing micro-blogging sites where sharing of information has created a new method of broadcasting.

Twitter enables you to send timely, punchy messages to others within your network to inform and educate. As a social media tool, businesses have adopted Twitter as a way of broadcasting interesting messages that can notify their network about their products and services.

The approach for businesses and individuals alike, is to educate their network with ‘catchy’ posts over and over. Relevance is everything, so produce posts that matter. Once you have articulated and methodically understood how best to work your posts in order to gather attention, the related results and significant traffic you build up will gradually begin to unfold. Remember. . . it’s about quality not quantity.

I have recently produced a blog post about how to write creative headlines that work which goes into detail about the various types of headlines that create impact with the audience. The fact that only 20 percent of people will actually read content after seeing the headline is evident to how much importance should be given to a headline, post introduction or a Twitter post. The competition on the internet is fierce and getting noticed is not easy.

Think of it this way, how influential are you in the real world?. . . . comparatively, you are probably much less influential on Twitter and the internet.

The main strength of your Twitter posts relies on the specific method you use to introduce the post and elaborate on the content. The post should be compelling and magnetise the reader via the thought of what you are saying is very unique and the reader would receive benefit by urgently reading the content on offer.You have to make your post as useful as possible as this is what the reader is counting on.

Notice how the tabloids and magazines pack their short headlines with a punch? Quick knowledge combined with what’s on offer is the best way to expose your content on Twitter too.

Remember, Twitter is already encouraging a shorter headline allowing only 140 characters at any one time. However, this doesn’t mean you exhaust every character space when creating the headline.

Keep your headline short, direct and simple... it’s what you say that should sell the benefit.

As your network starts to grow and the engagement level is raised, it is fine to use the full character limit on replies and interactions. However, for the most part of your Twitter broadcasting the short headline style of conveying a message will carry more influence within your circle as well as those dropping by to view your Twitter stream. The short headline approach will maintain visibility as it is direct and simple to contextually digest. In other words, as your network audience grows, your posts will not get lost in your Twitter stream but instead stand out from the crowd.

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The main reason for using Twitter is the opportunity it offers in broadcasting messages to the masses. More importantly, it gives you the opportunity to share your messages to people who in turn may retweet the message onto others.You want to give people a reason to retweet.

You want to expose them to content that makes them want to share with others. In order for this to work in an effective manner, make your tweets compelling and unique. Use the short headline approach with strong keywords that matter and content that is beneficial to the reader, and thereafter, you will observe the success.

The benefit of retweets not only shares your post across other networks, but also, shares the Twitter handle (@ShameerDShah) of the person who posted the tweet first. Twitters’ thoughtfulness in creating this feature has helped in building audiences around networks and enabled keen followers to keep an eye on your next post. All this in aid of crediting the broadcaster, you.Your message travels through retweets and your Twitter handle also gets exposure and hence, building up your followers.

If you regularly write a blog, you will find your headline composition is not so different to the way your Twitter post is composed. In fact, if I tweet one of my own blog posts, rarely do I edit the Twitter post. My tweet is normally identical to the blog post headline which I know works well. This open method of communication simplifies things for both the reader and yourself because there is less time being wasted on composing another Twitter post and instead, focus has shifted on to your next valuable message.

It is without a doubt that your loyal followers will race to read your Twitter post as soon as your @ handle or avatar appears on their Twitter stream. It is also without a doubt that most of them follow you because your content will benefit them greatly in one way or another. Knowing this, you must deliver on what you promise by continuing to give them headlines to share and unique content to indulge, whose overall value will equate to a fantastic social relationship.

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BEST PRACTICES FOR THE FACEBOOK TIMELINE If you have a company page or a brand page on Facebook, you will have noticed the migration to the new Facebook Timeline.

This is the new development rolled out by Facebook to level out a more strategic form of social engagement. The Timeline helps your business page evolve to better reflect your communication with people.

Here are some good tips and best practices for the Facebook Timeline: Ability to post historical information The milestone is a fantastic feature added to Facebook company pages. It allows the administrator to update details about a company or brand whereby unfolding events that took place when the company may have been founded, and the various milestones and achievements along the way to present day.

The milestone feature allows you to enter the name of the event, the location where the event took place, year of the event along with a story to summarise about this milestone. It also provides the ability to attach photographs to the event. This is an amazing feature for companies with lots of history as well as ones who would like to highlight their greatest achievements as part of their social awareness.

Pin a post to the top This is a brilliant new feature which does exactly what it says on the tin – Pin to Top. If you have an important message or a time sensitive event then you might want to pin the post to the top so that your audience will see it straight away. It doesn’t get pushed down along the timeline for a set period of 7 days or alternatively, you can unpin it before the 7 days.

So what can this feature be used for? Product launches, upcoming events, special deals, weekly offers and much more. Just be imaginative and use it wisely. Remember not everything is worth pinning!

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Highlight a post to make prominent If you need to highlight a post and make it standout, you can simply click the star button after publishing your post. This will immediately create prominence by expanding onto both columns and occupying more space in the timeline. By clicking the star button again, you can undo the highlight feature.

Similar to pinning a post, highlighting a post has multiple uses such as announcing a new product or service, bringing a product feature to light, an ongoing special offer reminder and a lot more. Once again, use cautiously as not everything needs to be highlighted.

Cover image and profile photo The Timeline now allows you to have two top loading images that can be occupied for brand recognition.You should use the profile photo area to accommodate a company logo, product logo or group branding in order to be instantly recognisable.

The larger backdrop style banner image or what Facebook calls ‘Cover Image’ is sized at 851 x 351 pixels and should be showcased with a powerful image or graphic depicting the essence and value of the company, product or brand.

Be cautious though, you are not permitted to include sales information, special offers, promotional references, Facebook references or any other call to action on the cover image.

Your applications layout With Timeline, the apps layout has also changed from its prior set up. Facebook has limited the number of apps it shows under the cover image and in order to browse through the rest, you have to click the drop down arrow which also tells you the number of apps available.

You may rearrange the position of the apps to suit your needs. Simply expand the drop down menu, hover over the relevant app and click on the pencil edit tool. If you are designing and

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building any apps, you will be happy to know there is a new wider format of 810 pixels max. which can be of great benefit to businesses who want to take advantage of this space and feature.

Administration just got a lot easier Before the Timeline, we had to navigate away from the page in order to get to the administration page where managing the various elements was still quite complicated. However, within the development of the Timeline, a new Admin Panel has also been developed and visible from within the company page.

Simply, click on the Admin Panel button at the top right and off you go.View and manage all your notifications, likes, messages and also the insights which provides a quick analytical summary in a graphical diagram.You can also administer your page from the drop down menus at the top.

Now go ahead and configure your business page. Make it attractive, interactive and engaging, but remember . . . rules do apply.You might want to browse the Facebook blog for further details should you require any.

GREAT APPS FOR RUNNING SUCCESSFUL FACEBOOK CONTENTS Has anyone heard of a Facebook Contest? Well, it is what it says - a contest.

Not a contest in running or sprinting as such but more of a similar sport for your business. Every business looks at how to market their products and services to their target audience cost efficiently.

With Facebook being a social media network initially, it has also been a driving force for small to large businesses to get their voice out there.

One thing that they have come up with is called a Facebook Contest which cannot be administered straight onto your profile Wall but through an application which you administer separately through a tab on your page. In order to do this, there are obviously some rules and regulations to abide to so that you don’t get banned from using it altogether.

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Some of the applications available are: Wildfire - Quite a simple set up and engages audiences across various social platforms.

Strutta - Good for creative clients who want to engage the community and gather insights.

Votigo - User-friendly platform that lets you manage social media from a single dashboard.

ShortStack - Ability to easily create Facebook Apps and Contests.

Fanappz - Accelerate your marketing with deeper insight into your fan base.

Offerpop - Run viral promotions on Facebook and Twitter within a few minutes.

North Social - Easy to use and create custom Facebook pages.

Woobox - Promotion Apps to woo your fans.

EasyPromos - Easypromos is easy to use and does not require any programming knowledge.

There are plenty more Apps out there which can be just as effective, but the platforms above have been tested by us. There is a Promotions Guidelines section on Facebook that gives you information on the various applications out there so that you can get started.

Just like any other marketing tool, you need to be able to use it to your business’ success and like with anything else you need to put down some ground work and goal setting in order to make it work for your business. Remember, also to give something back to your audience to get them interested and involved.

All the best and enjoy contesting!!

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WAYS TO MAKE YOUR LINKEDIN PROFILE A SOCIAL MEDIA POWERHOUSE Linkedin is probably one of the most powerful business networking social media sites with plenty of features to start you off networking the right way. There are many ways to make your Linkedin profile a social media powerhouse, but as you can imagine, it’s more about your profile than anything else. If you plan on setting up a Linkedin profile simply to have fun and share content about nonbusiness matters, then you have come to the wrong place to do so.

This is a business network, a social media channel where you can showcase your business experience and attract like-minded people to do business with you. Build genuine business relationships by connecting with people, join groups and interact with others via comments and discussions, start up a company page and display your products or services in the best light possible and above all, act like an expert, talk like an expert and deliver like an expert.

Things to avoid on Linkedin • It’s not a place to upload photos of your daily life • Only add videos that are relevant to your business or for the purpose of education & information • Avoid releasing your political and religious opinions • Avoid using negative language • Don’t connect with anyone and everyone for the sake of building your connections • Refrain from harassing other users and connections • Don’t ignore your status updates and profile • Never use a false name • Spelling errors Remember, Linkedin is about business and says everything about who you are professionally and what you represent. So, when actively participating on this site, position yourself as a professional person in whatever industry you work in.

Ways to make your Linkedin profile a social media powerhouse Curate your header with an impressive headline Take this as an introduction to who you are. This is quite meaningful to online and offline networking and compels the viewers to continue reading or move on. Firstly, use the headline to explain who you are followed by who you would like to help, and finally, what it is you do that can help them.

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Be open and allow transparency Use your profile to create the best possible impact on your viewers. The truth is, it may be business, but a little personal overview about yourself and your journey is never a bad thing. Use the ‘Summary’ section of your profile to add some great substance about you by adding identity and character to your business life.You may also add a short description about your business including goals and any great achievements.

Add your contact details You have put the time and effort into crafting the best possible Linkedin profile for a reason. So, make it easy for your viewers to contact you.Yes, they can contact you via Linkedin’s inmail or scroll to the bottom of your profile for your contact details, but there’s nothing more powerful than an immediate call to action within the summary section. Why not add your telephone number and other means of getting in touch with you.

Profile completeness At the end of the day, you want to be able to convince your viewers that you’re the best qualified candidate for the job or business partner, right? Therefore, complete your profile by filling in all the relevant sections such as education and recommendations which in effect will radiate a successful profile and one that will help in promoting your business talent. Recommendations are influential and help display a dynamic authority. In other words, it helps to influence others by the sheer number of recommendations you have got.

Engage your viewers The more engaging your profile, the longer prospective clients and viewers will stay on the page in order to take in what you have on offer.

Liven up your profile by adding Linkedin applications such as events calendars, Slideshare presentations, Behance‘s portfolio display and the ever important, WordPress blog application to draw in the feed from your blog. In essence, you are building a resilient profile page which will keep any potential customer or business partner looking for more information stay longer on your profile.

Prepare to get found Remember, similar to a search engine like Google, Linkedin uses keywords to search for profiles and to serve them up when a search is performed. Do not spam your profile with all kinds of noneffective keywords as this will be damaging to your personality and your brand. Start with the header and create a well thought out headline that best represents your business. In the same way, build your summary and specialities to include some of your most important keywords as this will also be included when searches are performed.

If you have been applying the steps above to your Linkedin profile whilst reading this post, then undoubtedly, you have already begun to build a social media powerhouse through your Linkedin profile. Continue to maintain and adding your best assets to the profile as I’m sure over time this will inevitably progress.

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WAYS TO USE LINKEDIN PRODUCTIVELY For those of you who have signed up on Linkedin but hardly use it, here is a brief glimpse into the workings of LinkedIn and how it can help to grow your business network.

What is LinkedIn? LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional business network. Here are a few striking facts about LinkedIn which are worth mentioning: • Started out in the living room of co-founder Reid Hoffman in 2002.

• As of 3rd November, 2011, LinkedIn has more than 135 million members in over 200 countries and territories.

• 31m+ members in Europe as of 21st November, 2011.

• 8m+ members in the UK as of 6th December, 2011.

• Members are sharing insights in more than 1 million LinkedIn Groups.

• As of 30th September, 2011, hundreds of thousands of job applications have been submitted using Apply With LinkedIn. I guess you can see what I’m getting at and how powerful this online professional business network can be especially, alongside Business Network International (BNI) the number 1 face-to-face referral marketing organisation. To take advantage of LinkedIn and its potential, professionals need to effectively leverage to increase their prospects. If you have joined the network to chat about your personal plans for the coming Saturday then it’s probably not the right place to be networking.

However, if planning an event that takes place on Saturday which requires professional services then LinkedIn is certainly the place where you will find potential candidates.

Here are 10 ways to use LinkedIn productively: Create a Profile - Once you sign up to LinkedIn, you have to create a profile and complete it in the best way possible. Other members of LinkedIn view profile pages in order to gauge whether, at first glance, you are a worthwhile person to network with. So in order to increase your business on LinkedIn, you must have an incredible profile and you must be an active participant on the platform.

Self Branding - This is very much related to your goals and mind set. It doesn’t matter what your end goals in business are, whether you’re networking to find a job, creating freelance opportunities or networking to escalate your business, your self branding needs to fortify who you are and what you represent. Think about it for a minute. What do people think of when your name is mentioned?

Reinforce your self brand so that it strengthens your presence on LinkedIn and your network chapter.

Increase your business - You’re in business for a reason, am I right? To provide problem solving solutions for customers and to make money solving them. Networking is a key part of any

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business if you want to expand your business. LinkedIn lets you network with members globally, build relationships, improve your online visibility and through this, spread the word and grow your business.

Crank up your Credibility - It helps to be credible in any network. The only way you will gain good exposure and a continuous flow of referrals is by building a credible presence online which in turn will increase your visibility. No matter what industry or field of work, your credibility will take you a long way on LinkedIn and offline network groups.

Research on LinkedIn - Did you know another place to raise questions and undertake research is LinkedIn? If you feel, you are not getting the answers elsewhere then why not present the question to your connections? There might be an expert in your connections who might deal with exactly what you’re asking. The point is you’re getting trusted feedback along with a possible solution. And what if the answer came from a person who you haven’t spoken to in a long time, wouldn’t this make it the perfect opportunity to tie-in the business relation?

Assist Others - Assisting others is the single most important element of networking. Does ‘Givers Gain’ ring a bell? At least for experienced networkers and BNI members it will definitely sound aloud! Help them by answering their questions, recommending them, introducing them and why not promote them.

Give Recommendations - Recommend people and businesses who you have previously hired.

By recommending people on LinkedIn you are verifying their ability and extending their credibility.

The recipients of the recommendations will have the utmost respect for you and one day, may even recommend you to their sphere of contacts.

Get Connected - The point of all business networks, offline or online, is to introduce yourself to others, make connections and gradually build relationships. So once you have created your amazing profile, get connected. If you want to be connected with someone you don’t know but would like to know then ask one of your contacts to introduce you. They will be more then happy to do so and the introduction will be better received this way.

Join Groups - According to LinkedIn there are more than a million groups on their network. No matter what industry you represent, there will be an authorised group that you can join. And when I say join, I actually mean participate. There’s no logic in joining a group, in some cases being approved by the administrator, and then not participating. Get involved and show your expertise, it’s part of your branding.

Gain Publicity - There is no harm is publicising your product, service or talent via the LinkedIn network from time to time. Just as long as you’re not spamming the members. Have you ever wanted publicity for your business in a popular industry specific blog, but didn’t know who to contact?

Try searching LinkedIn, the editor might be a connection away! Publicity is part of your LinkedIn marketing mix which you should use wisely.

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GUIDE TO USING PINTEREST FOR YOUR BUSINESS Pinterest is one of the newer social media platforms which has taken people and businesses by storm.

Initially, you had to be invited by someone to be able to join Pinterest, but for the last few months they have opened their sign up process to everyone. This has encouraged not only niche businesses, but a wide variety of businesses to sign up and start using Pinterest to promote themselves and take their social media strategy a little further.

Due to the very nature of Pinterest and the way it showcases its feed, it seems somewhat unnatural for a business with more conventional values, products or services to use this as a social engagement site. It’s only when you look closer and seriously start interacting on the site do you begin to observe various ways that can benefit your business.Yes, it’s still a strange social hangout, but with lots of play, understanding and some creativity you can utilise Pinterest to drive customers to where you want them and build quality relationships as you would with other social media sites.

As you may be aware, Pinterest’s demographics show that over 85% of the users are women and are actively searching to unveil new things, get free visual ideas through content and to be influenced and stimulated by the everyday things they come across on the site. So, if you were planning to join the site and start populating your profile and pins (a Pinterest term which means pinning some content on a board for all to see) with bog standard content of your company, you will not get the views nor the repins (a way of sharing content) which is ideally what you want.

On launch, Pinterest attracted a lot of people and businesses involved in fashion, retail, niche blogs, jewellery and the like, but as mentioned earlier, any business could use this social site with a bit of creativity and clever thinking. So, how to use Pinterest for your business? Say you owned a cleaning company for domestic and commercial clients... why not take a few great pictures of you or your staff cleaning the premises in a ‘spiderman’ or ‘superwoman’ outfit! Use your phone’s camera, edit the photo in PhotoToaster and pin it to one of your boards on Pinterest.

Now that will get some views and probably some repins onto others boards. Why? It’s creatively quirky, humorous and makes for an exciting image. Now compare that to a photo of someone in their company uniform hoovering a carpet.

One of Pinterest’s rules of etiquette is expressing who you are by being authentic.You can’t be any more authentic than by adding great content with a creative slant in order to deliver the best possible experience for the viewers and your business. Above all, deliver content that is informative, relevant and instructional as this will provide the best benefits for your followers and other users.

For example, if you run an architectural company with projects in the pipeline then why not show ‘before’ pictures and some fantastic ‘after’ pictures to clearly showcase your skill and expertise.You

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can go one step further by documenting the entire scene for the full duration of the project and compile as individual pins, or create a collage and pin it as a single series picture document. Don’t forget to use the description boxes where you can write about the project, tips you may want to share or include links to other projects or back to your website. Descriptive text can also be entered when you repin giving you a lot more potential for referral traffic.

Remember, people and businesses who provide valuable content on a consistent basis with a creative slant will likely get the highest number of repin’s which in turn will receive more views and thus increasing the amount of referral traffic. As you pin an image to Pinterest, there is a link back to the website that was originally used to pin this content, and so, every time the image is clicked it directs the viewers to where the original content may be. Now this is how you really start to increase the level of traffic to your website. On your company website, create a page which creatively displays all the images you pin with any text or captions so that the viewer can relate to the visuals when they land on the page. That doesn’t mean you stop sharing content from other websites, continue to do so with a balanced mix of your products and services. It’s about the users, and the users love receiving and sharing good quality free content!

Sharing of good quality content is an important form of engagement and by doing so, you will drive users to your profile who might want to reciprocate or simply want to take a look at who you are and the kind of content you are pinning. If you are a photographer and come across a beautiful image that you really like then go ahead and repin it to your board. If you’re an estate agent and happened to see a property with superb interior design qualities... pin it to your board. By creating fascinating boards with content repinned from others will naturally compel people to visit your boards and so, increasing traffic and encouraging sharing of your content. Pinterest thrives on repins and repins provide a source of traffic.

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usinessbanter

Blogging & Content Marketing

Establish yourself as the expert in your field by delivering remarkable and timely content

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HOW TO WRITE CREATIVE HEADLINES THAT WORK Ever wonder why some articles and blogs attract more readers than others? To the audience the headline is everything. It is the first impression to the content you are trying to get the audience to read and without this initial impact, the reader will simply find an attractive alternative. The headline is the attention grabber, the snippet that gives a taster and hints at the story that is about to unfold.

In a readers mind, a mediocre headline which is not attention grabbing probably means the rest of the content doesn’t deserve much attention. Which takes me back to saying, a good headline should promise to deliver rewarding content and a story that will be valuable to the reader. For not only are they going to take the time to read the story, but if you want them to react and comment then it must be both beneficial and worthy.

The news headline - Let’s begin with the most well known type of headline - the news headline. One that announces . . . announces something of great importance, piece of news requiring immediate attention or something about to be newly released. For example - Introducing Mac OS X Mountain Lion The ‘how’ headline - Let’s face it, have you ever seen a ‘how’ headline that doesn’t sound inviting, well at least in most cases? The truth is ‘how’ headlines are generally very powerful and tells you exactly what it’s about. This headline can be effective both on and off line. For example - How to roast marshmallows without burning them The demanding headline - This kind of headline usually means what it says on the tin. Demands you to take action in one or more ways. The sentence is normally constructed in a short impulsive manner. For example - Subscribe to MyVideoPress.com Today The formal headline - The formal headline introduces a matter of fact to the audience. The headline is not trying to be fancy but simply stating the fact. For example - Sale Now On or, Receive a Free Marking Handbook The informal headline - There is nothing informal about this headline. It is just as powerful as the others but instead, uses implications to visualise a picture or create a double meaning in order

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to draw in the audience. For example - Youngest ever CEO takes the bull by the horns to revive a failing company The question headline - This headline is often seen when trying to connect the reader to the content. Of course, thereafter the content must reward the reader by answering the question with the ability to gain something. For example - Why our product is the preferred product for women?

The benefit headline - This is associated with tips and number of benefits that you’ll find within the article you are about to read. They are normally idea generating and can help towards technique building. For example - 30 Winning Ways of Presenting a Pitch to a Client The ‘truth’ headline - A very effective way of communicating a subject matter with simple headlines. The simplicity of such headlines is the reason why it’s so popular. It’s simple and it’s honest.

For example - The Truth About Autism The problem headline - The problem headline, similar to the question headline, connects the reader directly with a problem they may have and the content shall prove to resolve that problem.

It is used often and is very convincing. For example - Have you ever had a computer drive fail? Was it business as usual the next day? Probably not. Let us help you to never fail.

The testimonial headline - This can be a tricky headline as it needs to be well formed and very accurate in length. The headline should form as part of a previously given testimonial.

It’s influential because it is receiving validation by another and so creates an outer audience relationship and credibility. Use quote marks to draw in further attention of reality. For example “EyeWitness has increased our yearly turnover by 35%” The headline list is expanse. However, I feel the list above have been tried and tested by us and the world over, and can formulate part of a great online or offline ongoing marketing strategy.

Remember, your blog title should be remarkable enough for your readers to dive into and read further.

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ATTRACTING A HUGE READERSHIP TO YOUR BLOG The problem most businesses face with marketing, especially blogging is time. It takes a lot of time to develop a new blog and maintain the blog in order to become well established. You will notice how engaging established blogs are and as a result a huge readership and following.

It goes without saying, success comes with hard work and persistence and the same goes for building a fantastic fan base and readership to your blog.

Plenty of hard work goes into setting up your blog, attracting visitors and driving relevant traffic on a consistence basis. However, the initial setting up and planning of your blog so that you can attract a definitive target audience is probably the most important as this will set the foundation for all future posts and interactions.

Here are some tips on attracting a huge readership to your blog: Headline is big news Headlines reel in your readers. When people come across your blog whether through social media or search engines, they are more than likely going to have a very quick browse of the headlines and only click on the ones that make an impact.

Think of newspapers and journals. Firstly, the headlines are intended to give the reader a little taster of what’s to follow. Secondly, each newspaper is in competition with the next paper, and thus, the most catchy and thought provoking headline is the one that is going to be picked up and bought!

Learn from expert news editors, they really are experts in headline creation.

Make your headlines speak to your audience with confidence. The chances are there is plenty of resources similar to what you’re writing about and so, if it doesn’t strike them at first glance they will continue browsing leaving your site behind. Make your headlines unique and learn to be creative with the right use of words. Involve the same process with sub-headings which are required if your post is detailed and lengthy.

Both headlines and sub-headings are vitally important for the reader. They may want to read the entire post as a quick mental summary and this will enable them to do so.

Content is king Established blogs will provide content that evokes some kind of response from the readers. Content comes in many forms and details various aspects of a particular subject.

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The more niche your blog content, the better the long term potential it offers.

The quality of the content is everything. The fundamental starting point is the headline followed by quality content which should hook your readers into expecting more. If you’re a veteran blogger, you’ll know the importance of good content. By producing amazing content all the time, the readers will regard you as an expert and will keep coming back for more as well as subscribing to your RSS feed and probably following you on your social media channels.

It’s not all about writing, add strong visuals such as graphics, photographs, videos, podcasts if available and this will boost your posts readership and increase the number of links back to your site. Inset the relevant visuals into various part of your blog to split the written content so that the entire post is more palatable and not mentally overwhelming.

You should keep a keen eye on other established blogs especially, those who you will qualify as your competitors. See what interesting posts they are writing about and the kind of response being received from their readers. Is it worth writing about? Can you elaborate on it with a twist of your own and make it better? Always keep your target audience in mind when researching your posts because what you write about will determine their interest.

SEO for search No, it’s not a myth. Blogs and SEO go hand-in-hand and can do absolute wonders in terms of visibility. SEO is short for Search Engine Optimisation, and as it reads, your blog posts can be optimised for search engines so that they appear when a search is being performed.

For example, an artist might write an article on ‘how to nurture a creative frame of mind’. By optimising your blog you are allowing search engines such as Google to serve up your post when a person searches for ‘creative frame of mind’.You will receive traffic from all kinds of places on the internet, however, by making your blog search engine friendly, you are making the best possible move in attracting an abundance of traffic.

Share links to your blog wherever possible. If you’re actively using social media platforms and bookmarking services such as Stumbleupon, Tumblr then why not link back to a few of the most promising blog posts you have produced. There is no harm in asking your most involved contributors to do the same. Note, it’s all about driving traffic and showing popularity of your blog.

Social media networks Social media is indeed a very powerful way of distributing your blog posts and getting search engines to pick up relevant content. Social media is about providing your connections with direct content

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links to your blog. If they click and go through to your blog and are totally fascinated with your post, this may give them incentive to share it with others. I would imagine most people use between 3 and 5 different social channels to drive content through. Google+ is an amazing way of sharing and bookmarking your blog. As a social platform closely linked to the Google search engine, this powerful association serves as a good base for distributing links and content for effective search results.

Facebook is also a useful place to post content links to.You could achieve this by posting to a Facebook page or even posting to your personal profile allowing friends and family to further share the content. Facebook groups are also prime, but be cautious of adding links here as the group may not be relevant or related in anyway to what you’re posting and by doing so, can create a dismissive atmosphere.

Twitter is probably the easiest and fastest way to share your blog posts. The 140 character limit forces you to write the best possible headline to share, but also encourages instant retweets by your connections if they find it of immediate benefit. Think about it for a minute... you could be exposing your blog to thousands of people who in turn may also have thousands of connections! The fact that Twitter delivers such an interactive environment, gives you even more potential to discussing feedback regarding the blog.

What about the king of all business networks - Linkedin? Similar to Twitter, a perfect environment for posting your blog, encouraging engagement and potentially increasing the level of business traffic to your blog. Once again, dropping links within discussion groups you may have joined on Linkedin is a good idea, but only if it is advantageous to the group and the discussion that’s unfolding.

Social media is very powerful. Use it wisely without being forceful and you could benefit from building a huge readership for your blog.

Make your readers part of your blog One of the most fundamental thoughts to take away from this section is ‘make your readers part of your blog’. Meaning, speak directly to your readers and allow them to be affiliated or associated to your blog. A sense of belonging is nothing more than a friendly invitation encouraging your readers to come back again.

Whilst you’re establishing yourself as an expert, you’re also uncovering a coaching experience for your readers. By speaking to them directly, although to the masses, it appears that you are actually talking to your audience on a one-to-one basis by simply involving them. The word ‘your’ and ‘you’ sets the tone for how they envisage their involvement.

Loyalty towards a blog is not easy to achieve, but it is an absolute goal to aim for. Make your readers and regular contributors loyal to your blog. Loyalty goes a very long way, especially, when there is so much fantastic content on the internet that may be similar to yours. By speaking to your readers,

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replying to their comments, involving them in your posts, taking on board their suggestions and ideas, all contribute towards a healthier, loyal relationship.

Loyalty increases sharing If you like something... you will probably share it.You see a half price offer on a holiday, you will probably share it with your friends. If you find a blog post beneficial, you will probably share it in order to help others in your circle.

Having great content, sharing awesome stories, showcasing testimonials and simple give-aways and download offers is a start to getting your readers to share your blog.Your readers are the ones who will continuously share you content, and thus, spreading the news of your blog to pretty much every connection they have in their social channels. If you haven’t already done so, why not ask them to share? Ask the new readers and followers to share? If you know your content is good you’ve got nothing to lose.

Don’t be afraid to ask your loyal readers and followers to share the blog, they might be establishing themselves as strong content distributors and in return get lots of followers themselves. With all kinds of social sharing widgets available, instal one on your blog and more importantly, on all your individual blog posts for this would make it ultra easy for one-click sharing.

Comments and feedback In order to improve your blog, it is essential for you to get feedback and reviews from your audience. There is nobody in a better position to tell you about your blog then your readers themselves. Don’t be afraid of criticism. Take it, analyse it and if happy, implement it. Give your readers what they want without destroying what you have built so far.

Comments on your blog posts is equally important. Again, you might see some criticism, positive responses, amazing reactions and down right negative comments. The point is you are creating engagement and interaction with yourself, the author and thus, creating an even more apparent sense of belonging for your readers.

Your readers have taken the time to write comments, so remember to reply back to their comments. This is an essential part of building loyal readership and an absolutely positive move to building a bigger, better community around your blog. The commenting and feedback will not only enable you to improve your blog, increase your traffic, but also, will be key to research and finding out more about your readers and what makes them tick.

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Invite guest bloggers Once you have established yourself and your blog, and you see gradual growth and momentum building, you can start inviting other bloggers to write on your blog. In effect, you are inviting fresh content and style, but at the same time you’re inviting the blogger’s own circle and readership.

In reality, it is a two-way stream.You are inviting a blogger’s audience via their guest post whilst linking back to their blog allowing your readers to visit the guest blogger’s blog to read more content. This shows your readers that you are open to new content and happy to involve other content creators to participate on your blog.

This in itself creates more of a community and brings out a shared responsibility of having superb content on the internet. For example, you would not entertain anything but the best guest post on your blog and likewise, if you were to guest blog for another blogger they would expect nothing less from you. It is fair ground for all round compelling content which attracts a huge readership to your blog.

Measure and monitor It is pointless putting in so much time and effort if you’re not going to measure your growth and monitor what is working and what isn’t. Measuring and monitoring is absolutely paramount to the future of your blog.

A simple solution is to add Google analytics to your blog. It is free and encompasses some fantastic features which will be useful in analysing your sites potential.You can use Google analytics as advanced as you want or keeping it basic but informative. The more you use it, the more advanced your blog’s fine tuning will become allowing you to market your blog in much better ways. It is crucial that you know where the most traffic to your blog comes from, how many unique and returning visitors you are attracting, how much time is being spent on your blog, how often readers visit and what your bounce rate is. The bounce rate determines how disengaging your content is and so, pushing away your visitors.

Analytics also helps you measure the social engagement around your blog. It tells you whether your traffic is coming from Twitter, Facebook or other social platforms and how often the referral traffic is derived from these social platforms. Remember SEO? Well, analytics helps you understand how people have come across your blog, what keywords your blog picked up and more significantly, helps you track keywords you never thought of using. It is a pivotal way of finding what people are searching for on search engines before they land on your blog.

Take your blog seriously and focus on your target audience. Remember, you can make miracles happen, it just takes time and effort!

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TIMING IS EVERYTHING - HOW TO GET YOUR NEXT BLOG POST OUT ON TIME A deadline is the typical short term goal. You normally set a deadline when timing is essential and by which time something has to be finished and submitted. I am probably the world’s best procrastinator.... in my personal life that is, but when it comes to business and performance, I would like to think I never miss a beat. Deadlines and goals should be the driving force behind your business, and motivation is the fuel that compels you to complete those goals.

Blogging should be fully integrated into your business with a timely routine. There is no replacement for creativity and writing, and if you prepare yourself along with weekly blog deadlines, the creativity and manner of how you push your next blog post out on time will be free from any obstacles.

If you say, time is your biggest problem then make it the least of your problem. Why? Because time is money and if you want to make money then you’ve got to invest time. Why else are you blogging?

Here are some ideas on how to get your next blog post out on time Manage yourself There is no point in starting a blog if there is no intent behind it. There must be a reason why you’re blogging and why each blog post is relevant for your readers.You must decide what you’re going to blog about. Is your blog related to another business or is it a stand alone blog? If you’re an expert in your field, can you create a more niche styled blog?

Find a catchy blog title that will hook your readers and off you go.

Treat each blog post like a self contained project A blog post must be treated as a project. A project that is developed over a period of time and then published. The moment you publish your blog post is the moment that your goal has been achieved. No matter how elaborate your blog post, there will be some tasks you will be required to undertake in order to meet your deadline. Start your blog post project by researching your topic, referencing any quotes, collating and drawing up illustrations relevant to your post and finally, establishing a catchy blog post title.

Create a timeline for each step of the way This is absolutely essential. By creating a timeline for each step, you will be permitting yourself to be thorough with each blog post, and also, figure out how to allocate time

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scales for each step in order to meet your deadline. Some phases of creating a blog post may be more time consuming than others depending on the elaborate nature of the post. Get this balance right and you will soon see that blogging need not be difficult nor too time consuming.

Set time limits If you’re posting a blog on a frequent basis and by that I mean at least once a week then time limits need to be set. For instance, if you plan on posting a blog post every Wednesday morning, then ideally, you will have all the content, graphics, titles and resources in place by Tuesday evening at the latest. Whilst most of the proof reading is ongoing as you collate the post during the week, Wednesday morning should be prioritised for the final changes in the content and final proofing. Remember, your deadline is only worth something if you publish your blog post on time and your goal is complete.

Achieve your goal There is no hard and fast rule about blogging; how frequently you publish a post, what to write about, whether you use stock images or create your own graphics and what sort of routine you establish. However, if you want to attract the right audience and monetise on your efforts then you will need to set up a consistent blogging routine along with a very good knowledge of your field as well as total focus on achieving the best results on publishing each blog post.

Goals can only be met if the deadlines have been adhered to.

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usinessbanter

Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the fastest and the most effective communication tools

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in partnership with

HOW TO BUILD & EXECUTE AN EFFECTIVE EMAIL CAMPAIGN Have you ever deleted an email just by looking at the preview pane? I know I have, not once, but countless times. Everyone does it. It is of no surprise that so many emails get deleted without a second glance as a more in-depth look is simply not in question. When this impersonal, detached and somewhat insincere looking email arrives through the inbox, our actions of whether to open it or bin it are the only two that come to mind. Therefore, I wouldn’t be far off by saying that your email has less than 50% chance of being opened.

It is no wonder over 70% of emails sent to potential customers are actioned within the preview window and deleted immediately? The point is not to give up. Email is still one of the best and most reliable ways to get your message across to clients, potential customers, subscribers or friends of the business if executed correctly.

To avoid a total massacre of your email campaign, I have put together a set of email marketing operatives that will encourage a better success rate.

Personalise and articulate Identifiable Who you receive an email from is the first thing you will notice when it arrives in your inbox. People have become very savvy in the way they spot and interpret a spam email. So, to begin, have an email address that is identifiable preferably with a name of the person sending it. Therefore, your ‘from’ field which is most likely looked at first has a recognisable name.

Subject line The next part on the incoming email you notice is the ‘Subject’ line. This is the one area of the message that the recipient deciphers completely within seconds of receiving the mail. Therefore, the subject line must work extra hard for your email to penetrate successfully into the inbox and read.

Avoid any jargon that reads as spam, avoid lines that express ‘buy this’ and try keeping away from words that include ‘newsletter.’ Instead, think about how your email could benefit the customer followed by reasonable action you would like them to take. It’s not easy, but done correctly can reap great rewards.

Top of main content To continue with the personalise and articulate, the top of the main email content should preferably have a name of the person you are sending it to followed by a strong opening message. This too will be acknowledged within the first few seconds of opening. I would say this is a prime advertising area

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for any business, if executed correctly, by avoiding to use jargon that will discourage the reader from scrolling down to the rest of the email. Another reason this is such prime space is because most email applications will preview the first few lines of the main content as part of the message in the preview pane.

Imagine the above being the administrative work behind deploying a sound email.

Composition and graphics Words It all depends on what and how the message is being delivered but as a rule of thumb, keep the body text simple and easy to understand. Think long and hard about the word choice and composition as this is critical in conjuring up an interest and inducing an action.You don’t have to use them, but here are sample words and their significance that will encourage interest; Free - motivator for immediate response, Guarantee - serious offering, Proven - removing all dread of the unknown, Save - spending less or offering cheaper, New - arousing curiosity, amongst many other power words that make an email actionable.

Graphics Essentially, there are two types of emails - NON-HTML and HTML. One of the best ways to spice up your email marketing campaigns is to add visual appeal and create impact with every delivery.

When designing the emails, don’t fall into a trap of including too many images or graphics but most importantly, never include irrelevant images. Finding the absolute balance of style, composition and substance is pivotal in observing the success of the campaign.

Contact It is best practice to include your contact details.Yes, it sounds obvious, but over the years I have seen many emails that only direct you to a website or off to a landing page with tons more details.

The point of this exercise is to allow the potential customer to contact you immediately should they have a need to do that. By all means, include links to other products, services and offers, but by having your details available also reassures the recipient and removes all doubt. The contact details may also include your social biosphere such as Twitter and Facebook which altogether enhances your appearance.

Call to Action Last but not least is preparing your email campaign with the relevant call to actions in place. There must be a clearly defined call to action for your clients and potential customers whether it is to obtain more information, progress to the sign up area, directing them to purchase or nurturing them to consider the offer. Without the call to action, the email marketing campaign would be a worthless exercise.

To summarise, design, build and execute the preparation of your email creatively by utilising the pointers above. The more you do it, the more creative you become and the more effective the emails become.

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HOW TO GET YOUR EMAIL MARKETING WRONG There are many ways to get your email marketing wrong. You have probably seen email marketing gone wrong in action many times, you just didn’t label it that way. For example, have you ever received an email and had to search top to bottom for an unsubscribe button, but just couldn’t find it? Or, have you been bombarded with the same uninteresting sales email over and over every week? Sometimes, even the emails you subscribed to in hope of receiving great deals turns a bit sour after the deals become repetitive or no better than the next company offering similar deals.

So, to help you get your email marketing right, here is an attempt to show you how to get you email marketing wrong. How to get your email marketing to not work for you. How to get the recipients of your email distribution list upset and annoyed. How to get your existing customers and potential customers so annoyed that they unsubscribe and never want to ever receive an email from you again. This will eventually lead you to create the most stunning emails. So take note and push the email marketing boundaries to compel and bring benefit and excitement to your recipients.

How to get your email marketing wrong Not giving a real reply address This would be perfect for getting your email marketing wrong. Send a potential customer or an existing client an email hoping they can’t reply back to place an order! Email is very personal, probably just as personal as writing a letter to someone specific and so it needs to be personalised.

Offer a legitimate reply address if you want more business, offer 29946_no_reply@hotmail.com if you want to generate no enquiries.

Subject lines that mean nothing The best way to get no one clicking on your email is by having a subject line that means nothing to them. Give them an uninteresting and irrelevant subject line and you will have forced them to walk away. If the email subject is one of the first things a recipient looks at, why wouldn’t you want to give it your best shot and come up with a fantastic subject? I have written an entire article on ‘persuasive email subject lines that won’t be ignored’ which elaborates on this topic. Just imagine your own email inbox piled up with unread emails of which most will be dumped, but you’re hoping one of the subjects you see in the preview window will catch your eye and enrich your life even for a few minutes.Your email must want to be one of those!

Making unsubscribing complicated It’s simple. The more difficult you make finding your unsubscribe button the more the recipient is

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going to look for it and the more they are going to despise you for it. No matter how beautifully your email is crafted, how relevant your content or even how special your offer may be, people are going to want to unsubscribe. This is a superb way to annoy your recipients and allow them to come back at you armed with a vengeance. Wouldn’t it be better to keep it nice and simple, easy to unsubscribe so that the recipients depart reasonably? Be sensible and they will honour and respect you for not wasting their time.

Defy unsubscribes One of the finest ways to get your email marketing wrong is by defying unsubscribes. Why not try it? If a person unsubscribes from your email distribution list, ignore them and continue sending them emails which they wanted to unsubscribe from! You will gather lots of attention from enraged people who will not stop at anything in order to get to you. Now that would be slightly uncomfortable don’t you think? You must honour unsubscribes the very moment people request to do so. Those recipients are not interested in what you are emailing them about and hence, cannot be converted as your customers at least for now.

Send emails infrequently Send your marketing emails infrequently and have the pleasure of being forgotten. What a great way of disregarding your existing customers and paying no attention to new potential customers.

Customers, new and old, need to be frequently fostered and actively nurtured in order to inform, update and generally, take care of them. Remember, the same rules apply to your new business leads too.

Email attack, attack, attack As the sub-heading suggests, attack your recipients with email blasts on a daily basis in order to obliterate their inbox. This would be a wonderful method of destroying not only your email distribution list, but also the relationship you’ve built with your audience. No matter how compelled you feel about sending marketing emails every other day... Don’t! You will experience a wonderful flow of unsubscribes and by the end of your rampage, you will definitely not gain benefit. I say, test the frequency of your email campaigns to what suits your time, budget and conversion rate.You will want to create a clear balance that allows you to engage with your recipients, but also, to monitor and convert business leads.

Ignore mobile devices Since nearly 40% of people check their emails on mobile devices on a daily basis, ignore formatting your email for easy viewing on mobiles. That way, you can suffer from non-click-throughs, generate less leads and reduce the amount of conversions. Have you thought about what it feels like when one of your emails is opened on a mobile phone or tablet? Are your recipients having trouble viewing the content on various platforms? Do forgive those who have busy lives and tend to check their emails on the go, but you have no excuse but to cater for them. That is of course, if you are happy with 40% less click-throughs. Test your emails before you begin your campaign and assure that they are compatible with the various email applications and devices.

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Disregard all call-to-actions If you really want to get your email marketing wrong, don’t include any call-to-actions. Why waste yours and more importantly, your recipients time by making them click-through to another web page? Well, how else are they supposed to interact with your email? Surely, the purpose of your email is to inform your recipients through valid email content and help them to take the next step into becoming a customer. Just imagine what a misuse of time it would be for them when they got through your email and there was no meaningful, actionable response for them to take. This is your lead generator, make the recipients react and take the next step into becoming your greatest lead.

Why bother checking and testing Since you’re not really bothered to get your email marketing right, why not get your email marketing wrong to the point of no return! Let’s face it, one thing you can’t recover is the word after it has been said. The same goes for email, once you have distributed your email may it be in the 100’s or 1000’s, there is no recovery of the data sent. So, does it not make good business sense to double check, triple check your content to make sure it is error free? Rectify any spelling mistakes, correct sentence structure the best you can, click on the links to make sure they are going to where they are supposed to and most crucially, forward the email to a friend or colleague who could also help in the proofing process. Once that is completed, blast out a live email campaign to a small group of people who you know will help you test how it appears when it is received in the inbox and opened.

If you don’t have an opportunity to run a small group test email, simply send it to yourself and test on a couple of the most popular email applications.

For the most part, you are now ready to blast out your email marketing campaign. Don’t get your email marketing wrong, get it right!

PERSUASIVE EMAIL SUBJECT LINES THAT WON’T BE IGNORED Who said email marketing was dead? Well, a few clients said it wasn’t part of their marketing mix, many said it just doesn’t work for them, others hadn’t even thought of it, but no one said it was dead. That’s too short sighted because email marketing is alive and executed correctly will produce consistent results. Remember, email is like direct marketing and a ‘one shot’ distribution isn’t going to create great results. It’s about consistency, timely delivery, measurement and knowing how to react.

My previous heading, ‘build and execute an effective email campaign’ attempts to guide you through how to make the most of email marketing. In this section, I will steer you through developing persuasive email subject lines which will make impact on every delivery.

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Rule number 1 - Treat email subject lines like any other headline. Although, emails have their own method of being read and deciphered, the headline strategy can vary a little as it is more flexible. Be warned though, the simple understanding and fundamental criteria of creating a good headline still applies. Here’s a little reminder of the fundamentals followed by the persuasive email subjects.

• Are you showing value to the reader or recipient?

• Is it clear as to what the reader or recipient is being promised?

• Is what you’re promising powerful and vividly inviting?

• Is it clear as to the benefits the reader or recipient will receive?

• Is the message compelling enough to encourage reader/recipient to read now?

• Instinctively, will it deliver on what it promises to provide?

The above headline questions need to be understood and analysed before drilling down to the email subject lines in order to produce persuasive and fulfilling subjects.

Express yourself - There is no sure-fire way to find what works for your email subjects.You have to measure, learn and customise accordingly.

Visualise - If you were to receive the email what would you think.

Urgency - Urgency can motivate to move quickly and put into action. Use sparingly and do not make every email urgent for that just means nothing is urgent.

Simplicity - Simplicity is the key. Keep your email subject line free from jargon. Use simple and easy to understand subject lines.

Personalise - Personalising the subject line based on the group of people the email is being sent to can be beneficial. Especially, if that group has had previous correspondence with you.

‘Free’ - There’s no harm in using the word Free. Free is not harmful if used correctly. Don’t begin your line with Free, don’t use FREE in caps and definitely, avoid Free followed by the attention seeking exclamation mark!

Keywords - Use relevant keywords when formulating the email subject line. This relates to your content and brings value to the recipient.

Short - Compose short, meaningful subject lines. Create benefit and promise of amazing content within a short sentence.

Avoid - Avoid using words that will filter your email straight to the junk mailbox. There is content checker for email software on the market, but if you research, try and test and gradually work through email marketing, you will be able to naturally compose persuasive email subject lines that are safe from the spam filter.

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Clear formation - Email marketing is a form of direct marketing done digitally. How and what you deliver matters! Email is very personal and you must treat each recipient and delivery as first class.

Building and executing an effective email campaign is worth every effort. The email subject line is just one aspect of the email composed, the other elements are the ones that will ultimately produce the actionable results. Nevertheless, the initial contact that shouts out a compelling message lures in the reader and that is the result of persuasive email subject lines.

In your daily schedule, some things stand out more than others. Same with email. How does your email stand out from the others?

TIPS FOR ACHIEVING BETTER RESULTS WITH MOBILE EMAIL MARKETING Your smart phone, a bit like your wallet goes everywhere with you. An absolute necessity as a communication tool and a tool, that helps you stay in contact with the people in your personal and business life. One of the main reasons, people can keep in constant contact. You can share your experience with others in your circle through social media. You can send and receive emails on the go and of course, you can video conference or talk to your customers wherever you may be.

It’s a known fact that more and more people are using mobile devices to access their emails daily (22% prefer to receive information by email and 40% of people read emails on their mobile phones DMA). So, imagine this. A reader of your blog has subscribed to receiving your latest posts by email.

Fantastic! Someone else has registered to receiving your training schedules by email too. Great!... and as per your promise, you send out regular marketing emails to inform them and above all to keep them interested.

Your marketing email has been received by the recipient. The recipient opens it in excitement, but all they see is a maladjusted email with a bunch of images floating in awkward places and the text squeezed to one side! Not great, they try and turn the mobile device horizontally in an effort to save the email and expand the content, but they’ve failed. With a failed execution of the email and one that offers no benefit, what are they going to do next? Delete is the answer.

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Don’t let that happen to you. Sure, you may have tried and tested the email on your desktop, but that doesn’t mean it will deliver the same results on other mobile devices. Here is one site that will help you visualise your mobile email marketing campaign through simulation.

Take these step to ensure you get the best results from your email marketing campaigns and the recipients get the most possible benefit out of your emails.

Tag your images correctly Most businesses use HTML email content to be more creative in engaging the viewers. In this case, the emails will include some images and graphics to make it more attractive and drive results. Tag the images using the ALT tag method to accurately, but briefly describe what the image illustrates.

This will enable the recipient to understand the graphic in case the graphic is not available.

Remember to describe the image/graphic in context and do not use it to stuff keywords for potential gains as this could confuse the viewer.

Deliver a Non-HTML version along with HTML version There are some mobile users whose readers don’t support HTML emails and many voluntarily turn off the HTML feature. This could be problematic if you only send out an HTML version as some will not be able to read it. Adding a simple link to a web version of the email could solve the problem, but more often than not, frustrate the recipient who will simply move on or delete the email.

By enclosing a text only (Non-HTML) version, the recipient will still be able to read your email and navigate to any links that you’ve embedded into the email. It helps to qualify your email marketing campaign in one way or another.

Hook the recipient with subject lines that matter I previously wrote an article on ‘Persuasive email subject lines that won’t be ignored’ which covers a lot about what I’m about to say here. Treat your email headline as you would any other headline. This is probably one of the most important aspects of any email marketing campaign as it will be the hook that drives people to opening and reading the email.

Subject lines or headlines need to be short, to the point and engaging. Look at your local newspaper, how do they deliver powerful headlines? Read blog posts, how convincing are the titles? Keep your subject line no more than 7 short words for best impact.

Keep links separated and clean The last thing you want to do is to cram your content together with all the links running into each other. On a small screen, it’s difficult to navigate which link you click on and the one that you really want to click on. This will destroy any Call to Actions you have in place as it will become a hit or miss game! Talking about Call to Actions....

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Clear and concise Call to Actions Along with the subject line, a Call to Action is also a very important element of your mobile email marketing. There is a reason you have sent the email and part of that reason is to drive traffic off to the relevant places of interest. It would be a wasted campaign without clear call to actions.

Make this call very visible to the recipient. People who use mobile devices to read emails are normally on the go and have very little time to spend on each incoming email. Position it near the top of the email or within the top third of the email along with some important content. Keep it clear and concise at all times.

Think of mobile email marketing as an electronic direct mail mechanism. People can make decisions wherever they are and you are empowering them to be informed and make the right choice by delivering an email directly to their mobile device. These tips will help you distribute a well crafted mobile email marketing campaign that will assist in driving positive action.

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usinessbanter

Video Marketing

Use the power of videos to engage viewers and create a revenue channel for your business.

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in partnership with

WHY INTERNET VIDEO ADVERTISING IS MORE POWERFUL THAN TV TV was the monster of advertising until recently. Although, still a very popular advertising choice for moving images, the internet is aggressively making its mark as we see more and more people flocking to view videos that are being uploaded in their masses. Internet video advertising is probably the fastest growing medium online and the biggest contender for TV advertising.

The use of internet video comes in many forms from advertising to infomercials, training videos to ‘how to’ guides and many more. The fact that there is such a wide variety of videos and video topics that can be found on the internet is testament to the size of audience and online video community.

10 reasons why internet video advertising is more powerful than TV

Time factor - People are spending much more time on the internet than they did before. With internet available everywhere utilising high speed downloads on mobile devices, far more video is being watched on a daily basis online than on TV. Targeted audience - Online video can be targeted to specific audiences anytime of day or night.

Likewise, people can search for specific videos online, view them instantly and share them with their online friends.

Sharing potential - Most social platforms where videos are being viewed have fantastic sharing opportunities.You can share the video with your connections, who further share it with their connections which can have a reach of millions within a few hours.

Video optimisation - Social media optimisers or video optimisation can offer specific search marketing results for businesses. Optimising or tagging keywords correctly with an audience in mind can offer viewers the exact content they have been searching for.

Versatility factor - Whatever type of video produced, it can be uploaded and shared through many channels. A video can be uploaded to YouTube, a video sharing site; posted on your blog for clients and potential customers to view; embedded on your website; video email marketing... the potential is endless.

Mobility factor - Videos can be watched on the go. Do you have a smart phone? Carry a tablet

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such as an iPad? Videos are extremely mobile and the viewership of mobile video is growing faster in audience than any other medium.

Nearly Zero cost - That’s right. Online video costs you almost nothing.Yes, you will pay for internet access but that’s about it. Businesses can upload a 1 minute introduction video or a filmmaker can do the same with a 20 minute video . . . the cost is zero if you use fantastic free platforms such as Youtube,Vimeo etc. Try putting your video advert on TV! Search marketing - All the major search engines like Google, index videos as part of their search. So, you can search for content on Google,Yahoo, Bing and the results that show up will also contain videos related to the search criteria.

Interactive conversions - Videos, whether used for business or personal, can be embedded with hot triggers around it to lure the viewer in once they have watched the video. The conversion rate following watched video content is very high. Make no mistake though... related content has to be of high quality for good conversions!

Affordability factor - As mentioned above, there is nearly zero cost for showcasing your videos online. The affordability factor is even greater now that the cost of video equipment, sound equipment and production has reached minimal. No more paying £millions in production and TV advertising!

These are my 10 reasons why Internet Video Advertising is more powerful than TV. I encourage more businesses to use video as part of their marketing whether a single video or multiple videos for video blogging, just as long as they are created, produced and executed in the best way possible.

There is nothing worse than having to watch video content produced with ghastly visuals, terrible sound and no obvious message to trigger a reaction!

DOES YOUR BUSINESS NEED A VIDEO? Video is a fantastic tool for any business, but it’s what you do with it that really matters. A video that has been correctly produced needs to be clearly understood from the beginning. They need to raise appeal, drive emotions and engage response from the viewer. Not all business videos are themed in this way and so, each will drive a different kind of reaction and response. However, a common eventuality with all business videos is that they have to introduce the product and show positive benefits by using the product, and by doing so, revealing the human side of the business.

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There are many reasons why having a video for your business is a good idea, but you must know videos come with many challenges despite the positive effectiveness. High quality videos can be expensive to produce, takes a lot of time to execute the final video and are not easy to change which again, can escalate costs if changes are required. Saying that…. let’s dig deeper into why having video for your business is a good idea.

Does your business need a video? Yes, it does and it is a good idea.

It is the best way to explain your business If you know exactly how to explain your products or services through visuals then this is the ultimate decision maker to whether you want to use video as an introducer to your business. As it is the ‘handshake’ introduction to your business, you will want to get it right by conveying a positive and beneficial message.

There is nothing worse than landing on a page and being greeted by a video that gives you no confidence in that business. It must be appealing to the masses, emotional, beneficial in some way and introduces the company in good light. Like I said, it should be the initial ‘handshake’ to the official ‘handshake’ that follows should the viewing convert into an enquiry. Now that you’re aware that videos can be expensive to produce, you must be 100% comfortable in your business and a 110% comfortable with knowing a video can tell your story best. If so, work with a reputable video marketing agency who can help you deliver the best results.

When your product or service is better ‘shown’ Some businesses will find more benefit by showing people how a particular product works rather than explaining it to them in text. This is especially true if you feel your product has an amazing visual appeal such as a new car video, or if the user benefit comes from the simplicity of the product and can only be ‘sold’ by actually illustrating how it works such as software, hardware or even ‘how to’ tips for commercial products.

It’s a no brainer, if you feel your customers would greatly benefit and are encouraged to enquire or purchase a product through showing them a video then go for it. At the end of the day, you want to help your customers and by helping them understand your product quicker will better position you further down your sales funnel.

When you want to validate your business Validation from customers is essential. It is a great way to explore and develop your business further and a fantastic source for marketing purposes. Creating a custom video on the back of what your customers are saying is a good way to validate your product, and showing potential clients that it’s a product that works and is being used by many.

Produce a testimonial video by getting your customers involved. Interview them with a view to elaborate on your business, product or services and ask them the all important question of how your product has benefitted them? Show multiple testimonials on a single video as this would

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provide maximum impact as far as conversions and marketing in concerned. It goes without saying, avoid any negative feedback and only include users who are convinced by your product and are thoroughly happy with the benefits they have received.

Of course, take on board the negative feedback and rectify the problem as quick as you can with the best possible outcome.

When you want to solve a problem through training Most products and services have been created to solve a problem or arouse interest in purchasing something of better value. However, here we are talking about using video to help train your customers through problem solving videos. As mentioned, videos are not cheap to produce, but if you have a healthy marketing budget and if you’re convinced that you would like to help solve problems using a proactive, alternative method then video is the ideal medium.

Rather than typing out pages of trouble shooting notes, a phenomenal way to help your customers solve problems or answer any questions is using video to do exactly that. Curate a series of all the major problems and list them in order of importance. Start with the most important problem that is affecting a large number of users down to the one that is creating the least disruption to your business.

Once you have published the video online, encourage your customers to view the video which will help them rectify any issues concerned. The video should illustrate exactly how you solve the problem in a step by step manner. Don’t forget, if you have missed any steps or provided incorrect information, then you will need to revisit the video and update this. Therefore, you must spend some time and plan the video in order to avoid the extra charges that may incur doing corrections.

Remember, a new product will bring with it a new set of problems and hence, a new series of videos.

Why your business shouldn’t produce videos?

1. Good quality videos are expensive to produce and you don’t have the budget.

2.You have the budget to produce a video, but can’t stretch as far as making changes as the product evolves.

3.Your customers are of a certain demographic and videos will not benefit them.

4. If you’re not 100% sure of which direction your business is going and are unsure of your product.

5. If you know that video brings no benefit to you or your customers in anyway.

If you are using video to communicate, what types of videos are you using? Is your message showing the right results.

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TOP VIDEO CREATION TIPS TO REMEMBER It is a great idea to put some thought into having a video for your business on the internet. This is a wonderful form of advertising your service or product as it is visual and interesting for any customer. Press, magazines, brochures or any other printed material can display information with a logo, slogan and a few pictures, however, video marketing is a moving medium that can say a lot in a very short amount of time.

Finding a good, professional online marketing company will not only save you money in the long run, but also advice you on how best to get customers, or businesses (B2B) to find you. They will do the Video Search Engine Optimisation among other services whereby you can track the progress of your advert and navigate the right businesses to your website.

Some points you must incorporate in order to have a successful marketing video Branding - The main thing not to forget is to ensure that any video that you have, whether it be on YouTube,Vimeo or your own website is to have clear branding. The name of your business, its URL info and any other information that will get a potential client to get in touch with you easily.

Don’t get lost in the visuals and ignore putting the real message across.

Voice - Know what it is that you are saying. Is your video to educate the public or are you instructing them to do something. Do you want to raise awareness? If you understand how you want to explain and inform others about your business then it is vital that you keep this uniform in all the marketing that you do as it will also filter through to the user experience as well. Think of the tone and manner in which you portray yourself.

Be Personal - It is always a good thing to tell it as it is. Do you have a story to tell that you have experienced? If you share something and appear friendly online, then this will attract people to you.

Interact and engage with your clients. Evoke emotion in your video so that they can connect on a certain level with you and your business. After all, successful business relationships are based on how good a rapport is with the ones you are dealing with.

Create action - It’s all well and good to show moving graphics and footage, but what is it that you want your viewers to do next after they have seen your video? You can’t just show a video and give

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them your contact details and hope for the best. Activate them in some way. Give them something to do at the end of your video. For example, direct them to a link of your website. Let them apply for a demo or fill out a free consultation form so that you can call them back and talk further about how you can help them.

Stand Out - There are billions of videos online. Some are not informative but just for fun, yet a majority of them have a purpose and are trying to direct traffic towards their business.You must freshen up your video marketing in order to stay on top. Add a little humour, make it fun. Keep it interactive in some way so that your viewers don’t get distracted or bored.You are trying to invite them into your arena. Making a video and not following it up with new material will only make your video blend in and be lost among the others.

VIDEO BLOGGING EXPLAINED The name says it all. Video blogging also known as vlogging, is a form of blogging utilising the medium of video. Video blogging is not a new concept, it’s just that the uptake by people is slow. I find myself bemused as to why more people, companies don’t engage in video blogging now that it can be produced using own equipment which is now cheaper to buy. If the required experience and skill is an issue, there are many production companies who would be willing to produce the videos on a contract basis thereby, bringing the costs down especially, if you buy in bulk. Distribution has also become troublefree with online platforms like Vimeo and YouTube who make it manageable.

Although the concept isn’t new, the attempt to aspire to a theme and continually produce content is unfamiliar. The idea is foreign to most people, however, you see a part of it happening everyday in journalism. I will attempt to unravel video blogging and guide you through the right tools and steps you will need to be successful. Guiding you is one thing, but how you use the information is down to each purpose.

So, what makes a good video blog? Let’s start with yourself. Are you passionate about a specific topic? Is there something you care about so much that you’d like to bring the whole idea to life? What about talk-back, you think your politicians have it all wrong and you have the right answers? Whatever the topic and subject, if you know a lot about it and are passionate then you may have an idea for a video blog.

Keep your target audience in mind when researching your subject for the video.You have to entice and grab the viewer within the opening seconds of your video. Most viewers will base their decision

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on the first 10 - 15 seconds of your video, therefore, ensure the tone is right, the content is grabbing and the visual quality is good. The length of a video blog can vary depending on the topic, but bear in mind the audience. On average, whether the video is a promotional, informational, publicity or an educational piece should be no more than 2 minutes in length. This is within the optimum zone for the internet users video attention span. But again, depends on the content and theme.

When producing the videos, remember it is the content that the audience is switching on for.You are welcome to have a good mixture of video styles but keep the tone and content consistent. Not all the videos have to be grand productions taking weeks to produce, allow for a combination of well produced videos, simple showcase videos and even simpler talking head videos just as long as the content is passionate, compelling and buoyant.

How do you create a video blog? Creating a video blog has become much easier, but the success of the blog is very much dependent on your topic and style. For example, if you were going to live in the Antarctica for 6 months video blogging about the giant rivers of ice that flow slowly towards the sea, your equipment and filming style, will greatly differ to someone who was filming children at schools and having discussions about healthy food. The success will rely on the content, integrity and quality. The equipment you will require is a video camera, microphone, a computer or laptop preferably an Apple Mac as it comes with good editing software, some additional software with audio and video tools and of course, the internet.

If you are new to video, I would suggest keeping your video production basic until you have an in-depth knowledge of all the tools. Experiment with all the tools, learn to get the best sound and produce the best video blogs with your capabilities. As your experience, professionalism and quality of video blogging grows in terms of production and audience, you will probably find yourself investing in higher-end, better quality equipment in order to engage with your audience with superior quality productions.

What next? Distribute your video blog. You have got your video created, the sound has been perfected and you’ve compressed and output the video ready for distribution.You have several online portals where you can start to distribute your video blog such as Vimeo,YouTube,Viddler, Blip. tv etc. Do your research, select the best online channel for your video content, create a profile and start using the channels consistently as you will want to grow your video blog and start to ‘own’ that channel as a brand.

If you have a separate blog running such as a Wordpress blog or a blog on your website, then you will want to publicise your video blog channel by adding trailers, snippets or even the entire video blogs on them. Whilst on publicity, why not use social media to connect with your friends and followers by inviting them to view your video blog. It is in your interest to grow an audience around your video blog, the more your blogs are watched the more awareness your branding will get.

Think about it for a minute . . . what are you video blogging for? what is your motive? And is there a mission? There is an answer for each and self-branding will have a lot to do with the final outcome be it for business or awareness.

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Plan of Action GETTING STARTED - Outline and understand your complete goal sets - Define your target market & customers - Set aside a budget & time for your marketing WEBSITE - Make your website shine as this is the hub of your business - Remember, function & design makes a difference - Measure the performance of your website SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION (SEO) - Submit your site to search engines - Research your competition - Select & optimise targeted keywords for your business - Aim to get ranked top of search engines SOCIAL MEDIA - Investigate where your potential customers hang out - Select the best social media channels following your research - Connect, interact & engage with people - Measure your social performance BLOGGING - Create a niche blog within your industry and establish yourself as an expert - Provide genuine, informative & compelling content for your readers - Make sharing your content easy to major social and bookmarking sites - Add call to actions & direct people to relevant information & your website - Deliver timely content consistently to grow your audience EMAIL DISTRIBUTION - Grow your opt-in email distribution list - Design & develop fantastic emails with the right positioning of call to actions - Build HTML emails for cross-platform compatibility including tablets & mobile devices - Inform & educate your audience without hard selling VIDEO MARKETING - Use video as an informational & educational tool to excite your viewers - Distribute the videos to video channels including hosting it on your own website - Encourage sharing & include call to actions to drive relevant traffic

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That’s it folks. Get your marketing started!

There is plenty for you to go through in this guide to driving traffic to your business and converting that traffic into customers. This guide does not target any specific industry or business type, but instead delivers a detailed understanding of internet marketing and equips you with the knowledge to go out and start implementing and actioning what you have learnt.

The idea is to give you a better understanding of each area of marketing and how to strategise your goals by actually getting involved and doing it correctly. As mentioned, this is an overall guide to internet marketing and anyone equipped with a laptop and internet access can put it into motion.

How you put your strategy into motion is up to you. Be creative with your marketing and think ‘outside the box’. Creativity should be embodied into everyday marketing and by using the tools described in this guide, you will enhance and promote that creative thought to your target market.

Try and test the different marketing channels and strategies, and see which one works best and which one’s you need to amend to work better.

Creative marketing on the internet is to think of something new in order to solve a problem, show an understanding, portray an emotion or simply, to brighten up and bring to life a business situation.

I would like to encourage you to get your business to grow at a faster pace by using a balance of all the activities mentioned here. Spend some time investigating each, especially, if you have never used them. Observe how your competition is using the tools, produce an action plan and timeline, and most importantly, set your goals and go for it!

As a consultant, I focus on bringing out the best of the brand and elevating the core entrepreneurial efforts that are apparent within each business owner. This is done through establishing their expert knowledge, delivering a positive interpretation and drawing attention to the benefits and value their brand or business represents. Now it’s your turn to do exactly that and more. Remember, whatever you implement, whether it be SEO, Social Media, Blogging, Email Marketing or Video Marketing you must measure and monitor your progress and results. This is a must.

It is also a good idea to keep in mind that marketing is meant to be fun and genuine, and through this your passion for your business will grow along with your revenue. So, go out and have some fun growing your business reach, and reach for your goals!

I truly hope this marketing guide does the best for you and your business, and that you raise your own business marketing game to an even higher level in order to reach full potential. For any feedback or enquiries, please contact me on shameer@businessbanter.com Blog: www.businessbanter.com

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