Expand your business with 5 creativity tactics

With so much PR and marketing advice floating around online, it’s important that you stick to an essential information.

Focusing on “the essential” can bring peace of mind—and can help you develop your business.

Business growth is not necessarily about getting more of everything. Instead, think of it as focusing your efforts to get more meaningful results.

Here are five ways to boost your business online:

1. Step up your social media game.

When marketers want to improve their brand’s presence online, they usually look to add a channel to their repertoire.

Although starting a Pinterest account seems productive, there’s little point in investing your time and energy into a channel that you don't enjoy using or don’t know enough about.

Instead, dedicate more time to the platforms you already use.

If you're actively sharing on Facebook but not using Facebook groups or ads, make those your next steps. If you're tweeting a lot, but aren’t using buffer to automate your tweets and reach users across multiple time zones, you're probably not maximizing your engagement.

If you're using Pinterest but aren’t seeing results, your next step could be taking a free Pinterest course or maybe a workshop at your local library or community college.

2. Repurpose your content.

This approach is beneficial if you’re overextended on a project or short on time.

When you write a series of blog posts, you can repurpose some of them as free opt-ins for white papers or parts of an e-newsletter.

If you’re creative, you probably don't want to use old content everywhere, but you should feel free to reuse your best work when you’re in a time crunch.

To start, ask yourself strategic questions such as, “Can I turn this series into something I can sell?” or, “How can I use this important piece of content in my welcome emails?”

The right questions can bring countless opportunities.

3. Package your services.

If you run a client-based business, you know the challenges of bringing in sustainable income. Luckily, there are ways to turn the famine into a feast.

I recently talked with a woman who runs a copywriting business. She's creative, but she struggles to get new business. I advised her to package her services, which means not to give clients an hourly rate of services but, instead, to offer "bundles.”

You shouldn't just put your services on your website and hope clients will find them. A better approach—as suggested in a recent webinar—is launching your services as you would launch a product. Try debuting a series of blog posts or emails as a way to introduce yourself to a new opportunity.

4. Streamline your processes.

So, what can you streamline? Start with your social media strategy, your sales channels or your list-building and networking.

Here’s how I streamlined my list-building process so it gets me a dozen new subscribers every day.

Most people find me on Twitter, where they can also find a link to my website. Once they're on my website, the home page sends them to any of three places:The Blueprint, my blog and the free guide. If they go to The Blueprint, they'll be directed to my coaching page. If they read my blog posts, there will be a link to my opt-in offer (free goodies for creative rebels), and if they go to the free guide, they'll see a sales page with a sign-up.

Every step of that process has a next step. You can achieve this by anticipating a potential client’s needs.

Many prospective clients will visit your “About me” before committing to an opinion. Make sure to introduce yourself in a way that makes them want to know more.

5. Invest in your business.

If you don't reinvest some of the money you make, your business probably won’t grow. The marketing and PR climate is very competitive, and it’s important to come up with ways to stand out.

I reinvest 50 percent of whatever I make on outsourcing tasks that I can't do alone, or on improving something in my business that lacks.

For example, you can budget for social media tools (buffer,Edgar, Tailwind), email marketing (Mailchimp or Convertkit), improving your website’s look (Squarespace), building your mailing list (LeadPages), and podcasting and webinars (microphone and webcam). You could also hire a virtual or physical assistant.

As online entrepreneurs, we can't just be creative and rebellious; we must also be savvy. It’s important to be strategic with your investments.

Source: http://bit.ly/22bUrvy

4 Marketing Mistakes That Cost Your Startup Money

Sartups often live and die by their marketing strategies.  While no marketing game is the same for two companies, there’s a number of common patterns that lead to success and a number of missteps that can cost your venture serious budgets.

Below are the four common mistakes startups make when it comes to marketing.

Not Tracking Your Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) Rate

When you are just starting out it’s hard to determine your best method for acquiring customers or growing your user-base. Be a smart marketer and don’t put all the eggs in one basket by investing all the budgets in one channel that was told to nail great result for company X.

Instead, create separate budgets to test different acquisition strategies – content marketing, email marketing, strategic PR and outreach, SEO, social media, growth hacking and so on.  The scale should be large enough to have an accurate sample number.

Ditch what didn’t work and focus on the tactics brining highest CPAs.

Not Trying at Least One Growth Hack

Growth hacking has been the winning strategy for a number of brands including Basecamp, Dropbox, Pinterest and Airbnb.  A smart growth hack can easily leverage your business onto the new level.  However, a lot of marketers prefer not to even try it.

Why? Growth hacking requires time, creativity and investments. You might be to busy looking into your analytics, analyzing previous marketing campaigns and counting the leads through affiliates, that you just don’t have the time to sit back, relax and dream how you can use technology to create a new creative way to market your product.

Good ideas are not necessary brand new ideas. So here are three strategies that worked great for other companies and may bring massive results for your venture too.

Worried about the financial aspect of the controversial strategy that may or may not work? Create a backup financial cushion with the help of a robo advisor or your CFO that will get your ends covered in case anything goes unplanned.

Ignoring Bad Numbers

Some great ideas simply don’t work. Sometimes what seemed like a winning marketing campaign just doesn’t pan out. And it’s not always your fault.

When it comes to analytics, leave your bias behind the door. If the numbers say that your marketing does not work, then you should pull the plug on it, even if it’s your pet project. Sure, if the CPC and CPV numbers don’t look attractive enough after a month of running the ad campaign, don’t wait for another month in hope that “things get better somehow” and cut down the project at the root. Reallocate your resources, so that in the long run you still receive the benefits.

Underestimating the Value of Long-Term Advertising

With marketing channels like display advertising or social media advertising things are simple: you pay X dollars and get Y impressions/clicks etc. You can precisely track the conversions you receive.

However, other marketing tactics are not so easy to scale e.g. influencer marketing or content marketing.  Both of them are long-term advertisements and you can’t try to price them the same as short-term advertising (display ads).

Long-term advertising take time to bring measurable results, however unlike display ads they don’t stop bringing value on the moment you stop investing into it.

Content marketing can continue to bring you results over a prolonged time span (and in fact it should!).  SEO takes time to start working; influencers will keep promoting your branded piece of content to their readers even after the campaign is over. Your brand recognition will continue to grow with time as reading has a much higher level of investment that an ad, which may or may not been viewed.

When you are creating budgets for a long-term advertising strategy you can’t simply rely on impressions.  Calculating the total media value is a better approach to use.  For this, put a price tag on each piece of content or action, for instance, $5 per Facebook share or $10 per one organic site visit with the help of SEO.

 Source : http://bit.ly/23Wzh8C

7 worthwhile ways to automate social media

Social media is an essential part of 21st century life. And, that’s especially true for business owners who are looking to connect with customers, influencers and even potential investors.

While having a social media marketing strategy is a necessity, it can become extremely time consuming. Between updating your profile, responding to customers, coming up with content and sharing content, managing your social media accounts can become a full-time job.

Over the past six months I've really been dialing in my social media efforts for minimal time effort and maximum output. Thankfully, there are a few tools and strategies I've found that help automate social media so I can focus on growing my business. If that sounds like a plan, then give these seven techniques a try.

1. Social media automation software and apps

The easiest way to automate social media is by using automation software and apps. These include Hootsuite, Buffer, SproutSocial, HubSpot, Social Oomph and Social Flow. Each tool may have unique features of their own, but essentially they all allow you to schedule social media posts in advance and monitor your accounts when someone mentions your brand or leaves a comment.

If you’re just starting out, select just one tool and experiment with it by scheduling a couple of updates. I personally use Buffer and really like it. Most of the tools above have apps so that you can stay up-to-date with your social media accounts while on the go.

I also like using Brand24 to find out who is talking about my company online. This is a social listening tool that shows me every person that mentions my brand both on social media or a blog post. They don't do any social posting but the social listening feature is amazing. You can then acknowledge these mentions and thank people publicly.

2. Fill in the gaps

Automation tools like Hootsuite can be a real timesaver. But, you can take that automation to the next level by using tools like Zapier and IFTTT. Basically, these resources make it possible for apps, systems and websites to talk to each other. For example, you could create a "zap" that automatically posts new WordPress posts into your Facebook page.

IFTTT gives you the ability to create "recipes" so that you can sync your online profiles or Google Calendar with social media so that you never forget a birthday. The possibilities are endless. Check out this Buffer post to help you get started with IFTTT.

3. Sync your blog

You’ve worked pretty hard on that blog post or creating that infographic. Why not ensure that it’s going to be seen by your friends and followers on social media? If you use WordPress, this is pretty easy to do since there are more than enough plugins that allow you to add social share buttons onto your page or automatically post on social media whenever you publish a new article.

However, you can also sync your blog content and social media updates in advance with a tool like CoSchedule. This handy service lets you plan out your editorial calendar in conjunction with the social media channel that you want the content to be shared on. Remember not all types of content will work on all social media channels. Share content on the channels where you know your fans will see it. I find that the content that does super well on Twitter doesn't do as well on Facebook for my audience. My Google+ audience likes more in depth articles while my Twitter likes short nuggets of advice. Test out and see what your audience likes and then automate it as much as possible.

4. Recycle evergreen content

Unless you literally started a blog last week, there’s a very good chance that you have some old blog posts in your archives. While it wouldn’t make much sense to share an article that discussed the hottest marketing trends of 2010, you could share evergreen content.

Evergreen content is timeless content that is still relevant. You could go through your archives, or you could also use a WordPress plugin like Revive Old Posts to simplify the process. There is also a killer tool that I use called MeetEdgar that allows you to publish a post and then automatically recycle your top posts several times on a schedule.

5. Tweet multiple times

While you don’t want to be the person who is flooding your fans' feeds with the same link to a recently published article, there’s also no rule saying that you can’t post that multiple times. In fact, the most effective Twitter users tweet 3 times per day. Even if you only send out the same content, you’re increasing your chances of it getting noticed by a different audience.

If you look at your audience and get to know them you'll find that they are from all over the world. This means that whenever you tweet, you'll have followers online. I like to setup a schedule for tweeting several times a day at specific times. I then go online and find the best content (mainly motivational quotes as they do super well as you can and schedule them out over the coming months. This allows me to spend two to three hours once every three months finding good quotes. Keep in mind that you can always post something important to social media whenever you want. This is just scheduling out so when you get busy, you don't look inactive.

6. Curate content

Social media isn’t just about sharing content that you’ve created. It’s also about sharing other people’s content. Thankfully, curating is easier than ever with the help of those automation tools that you’ve been using. For example, Hootsuite gives you the option to discover suggested content that you’re interested in based on keywords. Buffer allows you to create a posting schedule based on updates from within your network.

Newsfeeds like Feedly, dlvr.it and Scoop.it can also be used to curate and share relevant content. But, if you need a more robust content curation tool, there’s no better option than Curata.

7. Focus on one task when you have down time

Finally, you have to realize that you can’t automate 100% of your social media activity and have it be exactly what a dream account would look like. If you want to have a huge strong following, automation won't ensure this. There needs to be moments when you have an actual interaction with customers, fans or followers. And, trust me, people can easily notice when an account is basically a robot. Instead of getting overwhelmed, focus on accomplishing one task whenever you have some down time.

This could be anything from responding to or leaving comments, personally sharing updates or refreshing your profile. You don’t necessarily have to do this every 30 minutes, but try finding a little bit of time each day or each week to give your account a human touch. I find that the more personal touch I give my account the more real I am to my followers. This gains their trust and with their trust you can make a more powerful impact online.

Source : http://on.mash.to/1PqKt3x

10 companies with outstanding social media presences

Some can discount the importance of online marketing, especially when brand managers' efforts on social platforms become stale. Model your campaigns after these organizations instead.

There's been endless debate over the last few years as to whether or not social media marketing is dead.

Recently, the Content Marketing Institute finally put the debate to rest—or tried to—with a podcast arguing that social media isn't actually dead, we're just using it wrong. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that there are still plenty of companies that are rocking social media marketing and can inspire the masses to follow suit with their perfected strategies.

Here are 10 to start following today:

1. Old Spice

When Isaiah Mustafa stepped into the role of the ultimate Old Spice guy, the drugstore cologne-turned-viral sensation attracted a legion of followers across multiple social media channels.

The brand's managers keep exploring unexpected ideas, like having Mustafa answer tweets on YouTube. What Old Spice really gets right is the emotional element of marketing, making followers wish their man was as suave as that cologne guy.

2. TEDx

It’s not easy to take informational lectures and turn them into sensational content that everyone is talking about.

TEDx doesn’t just nail its medium, it also manages to turn authentic storytelling videos into bite-size, shareable content across social media. Check out the organization's Twitter page and you'll see everything from how asteroid mining can help us live in space to how loneliness scrambles our thinking.

All this is sandwiched in between awesome food pics from TEDx events around the world.

3. Newcastle Brown Ale

Newcastle pioneered self-aware advertising in a quest for "no bullocks" messaging, and got it right.

For starters, the brand took the genius concept of not having enough cash to put together a Super Bowl ad, and produced one anyway. Without the funds to broadcast it to millions, Newcastle instead spread the ad around social media to poke fun at itself, its budget and the Super Bowl.

Essentially, Newcastle called bollocks on the idea of needing millions to effectively earn global recognition.

4. Starbucks

Unlike Newcastle, Starbucks probably has the budget for Super Bowl-worthy ads. However, the coffee company's stand-out feature on social media is how it has taken the idea of engagement to a whole new level.

For a while, Starbucks even gave customers the option to manage and reload their coffee cards on social media. The company also makes it easy to find nearby locations, look up international Starbucks spots and apply for jobs at its stores.

5. Denny’s

This dining franchise has quickly earned the reputation of being deliciously weird on social media.

Denny’s has mostly ditched the idea of traditional promotional specials and asking diners how they like their burgers and omelets. Instead, Denny's has worked to stand out from its competitors and attract a younger crowd.

6. Staples

The office-supply juggernaut gets plenty right, like educating and informing its audience and offering gift card giveaways and product promotions. Staples also thrills followers by making fun of office culture and the doldrums of cubicle life.

The chain recognizes that its followers are into more than just paper clips and office furniture. Staples engages that audience by asking questions like, “Who is your favorite “Star Wars” character?” alongside offering quirky videos on office party etiquette.

7. NASA

It’s not just geeky space talk and shuttle news on NASA’s social media channels. The organization's Mars Curiosity channel on Twitter wows followers with the latest mission to explore that planet's surface.

Its Rover takes photos of everything from two-story Martian dunes to silica deposits. It also turns out that those nerds at NASA also have a great sense of humor. One of their recent Tweets simply said, "I'm on a road trip to Mars' Bagnold Dunes. What's new with you?"

8. Pampers

Pampers knows its target audience well and embraces that nurturing parent vibe accordingly.

The company regularly hosts photo contests to encourage moms to upload photos of their babies and offer information on their rewards program. Pampers' #BetterForBaby campaign tugged on heartstrings by showing struggling families trying to make their babies’ lives better.

By the time we see how Pampers transforms their lives, social media followers are wiping away tears in secret.

9. GoPro

YouTube turned GoPro into a viral sensation with its extraordinary videos created by users wearing the tiny camera. GoPro understood that user-generated videos and the value they created wasn't just a trend. Scores of GoPro converts are creating amazing videos, from pelicans flying to skydivers taking their first jump. The videos are contagious and widely shared.

GoPro videos have become more than just people watching shaky adventure footage on YouTube. There’s even a GoPro channel on Virgin America Airlines and a streaming option right from Xbox.

10. XBox

XBox’s Twitter page resembles a buttoned-up corporation sending out news, promotions and slick advertising photos. Meanwhile, over at its @XboxSupport handle, gamers can get near-instantaneous answers to their issues.

That may be their most powerful strategy in social media marketing. In between tweets assuring users that it's working hard to answer everyone's questions, Xbox also offers resources such as phone numbers and common topics addressed online.

What are your favorite companies that are still rocking social media marketing? 

Source : http://bit.ly/1P5QSnO

10 Reasons Why Brands Should Be on Snapchat

There is no denying Snapchat’s growth. Since November, the messaging app has gained another billion views bringing it to seven billion views, Business Insider reports. The number of views has been growing exponentially for the brand, which has tripled its views nearly six months earlier. It is still just shy of Facebook’s 8 billion video views a day, but with Snapchat’s growth points that they will be passing Facebook very soon. As 2016 gets underway, it is clear that Snapchat is one of the social apps that marketers should have their brands on.

So what should you know about Snapchat before diving in?

1. Everything is short-lived; Snaps and stories only last one day on the app. Snaps are individual pictures or 10 second videos; while Stories are the compilation of the day’s stories. The ephemeral nature of Snapchat means users are continually checking in on their favorite channels and users. Users create about 800 million snaps and videos per day.

2. More than 60% of smartphone users, between 13-34 years old, use Snapchat. 37% of Snapchatters are between the ages of 18-24 years old.

3. There are at least 200 million people using Snapchat; about 100 million users are snapping daily. They are highly engaged and they are staying with the product. Snapchat thrives on engaging their users through user created content that never stays the same.

4. Snapchat Discover allows brands to get in on creating their own content. Like Stories, Discover allows brands access to 24 hour storytelling for their company. Snapchat’s layout of vertical videos and full screen layout are conducive to easy viewership. Brands like Food Network, Refinery 29, IGN and Wall Street Journal are just a few brands that are taking advantage of Snapchat Discovery.

5. Snapchat Live is a unique feature that curates user created content. Users who are at the same event location have an opportunity for their snaps to become part of the Snapchat Live story. In Brixton, London fans spontaneously gathered to celebrate David Bowie, and the snaps and videos were curated as a tribute which runs through the end of January 12th.

6. Snapchat counts video views that are less than a second; however, the user has to proactively play the video for the tally to count. Other social media giant, Facebook considers three seconds to be a view, but their videos will automatically begin to play as the user scrolls past. According to Business Insider, 90% of all brand advertisers are repeat advertisers. While it is still difficult to really monetize the ROI with Snapchat, the audience keeps bringing advertisers back. Why? It is the “in” place to be. As we said before, Snapchat tripled its video views per day in six months, and added another million views per day over the holiday period.

7. Lenses and filters are two ways that marketers can reach users on user created content. Lens is a type of feature that allows users to change their appearance. Brands can sponsor the 24-hour lens, like Beats did on Black Friday. A lens will cost a brand about $500,000-750,000. Filters (geofilters) are tied to a location or event and allow users to put a sticker, frame or drawing that overlays their snap. McDonald’s created one of the first sponsored filters which allowed users to add a burger and fries to their snap whenever they were near a McDonald’s location.

8. Snapchat is growing quickly outside the US. In the UK, Snapchat users account for 25% of smartphone users and in Norway 50% of smartphone users. The app itself is also expanding offices to the UK and taking along some powerful social media presences with them. The former director of agency partnership at Facebook in the UK, Claire Valoti, and former members of Twitter, AOL and Buzzfeed have, joined the Snapchat UK offices.

9. Snapchat is building an application programming interface (API), according to Digiday. This will allow advertisers more precision and better execution with their marketing campaigns. While the API maybe a few months off still, Snapchat has made advertising growth their focus for 2016. “Snapchat’s ambition going into 2016 is to have many more opportunities for e-commerce on the platform and other stuff that is more about building audiences,” said an ad agency executive with direct knowledge of the plans.

10. The numbers do not lie. Snapchat has set themselves up to be one of the strongest contenders in 2016. Their quick growth and their highly engaged users make Snapchat a great place for marketers to stretch their creative muscles, and tap into that hard to reach 13 to 34 year old market. With their promises of stronger e-commerce opportunities for the upcoming year, Snapchat is where marketers want to be. 

Source :http://bit.ly/1OxpDio

How to Find the Best Hashtags and Boost Your Social Media Engagement

Before we start talking about how to find the best hashtags, let’s do a little review of what exactly hashtags are — this is for those of you who aren’t exactly social media gurus; the rest of you can feel free to skip over.

A hashtag is just a way of labelling and finding social media updates. It could apply to something that’s trending, like #Movember, or it could be specific to a certain campaign, like #CureBreastCancer.

Hashtags started out on Twitter, but now they’re used across all social media. So, which ones are relevant to your niche, and which ones should you use? I’ve given advice on hashtag use and overuse elsewhere; today we’re mostly going to focus on the tags themselves.

There are a number of online tools that you can use to find the best hashtags.

Twitter is still one of the best resources for finding great hashtags, but don’t discount the usefulness of other tools. The following are three of the best — and they’re free!

WhatTheTrend

WhatTheTrend is a veritable wellspring of Twitter statistics and information. It’s owned by Hootsuite, which means that you can track hashtags as streams within Hootsuite. It lets you see trends globally, nationally, and even trends that are specific to your own city. You can track by the day, or by the month. The basic service is free, but if you want more options you can upgrade to paid service. 

Hashtags.org

This venerable service got its start in 2007 as a freebie, and the basic tracking functions are still free — you can see what’s been trending over the previous 24 hours. However, if you want to store hashtags and monitor them over longer periods of time, you will have to upgrade to the paid service.

Trendsmap

To be realistic, Trendsmap isn’t the most exciting tool visually when it comes to helping you find the best hashtags, but it does allow you to see hashtags by city, country or continent on a world map. If your main focus is local, this is a very useful, very practical tool.

Using hashtags effectively

It’s not enough to just know how to use hashtags. You need to make sure that your hashtags are relevant to your subject matter. It’s also a good idea to base your hashtags on popular keywords. Google Keyword Planner is a great resource you can use. You also want to be careful how you structure your hashtags.

After you create your hashtag, read it, read it again, and then say it out loud. Why? Because a bad hashtag can make you an object of embarrassment and ridicule…it’s happened to personalities as wonderful as singer Susan Boyle and companies as big as Research in Motion (RIM).

Measuring the competition

I often head over to Twazzup to see how people are using a certain hashtag at any time of the day. You sign in with Twitter and then enter a hashtag or keyword. You get all the latest results scrolling down your screen, as well as how influencers are using the hashtag.

This lets you see what kind of competition there will be to get eyeballs on your hastagged tweet. Twazzup will also tell you about how many times that hashtag is used in one hour. If you’re using a hashtag that is used 3,000 times per hour, you know two things:

• It’s a popular hashtag, and
• Your post will be pushed off the top of recently published posts very quickly.

Those two attributes play against one another. You want to use a hashtag that gets some use, but if it’s too popular, your tweet might get instantly buried.

To decide what to do in situations like these, you’ll have to do some testing. You can also develop long-tail hashtags and use them along with the more popular hashtags; for example #smallbusiness and #smallbusinessorlando.

Now for a final word: #goodluck!

    Source : http://bit.ly/1ZfVCZp

Small Business Power Tip

Dominate Your Niche Online Then Move to Offline

IN THE EARLY part of this decade , I managed a Restaurant that attracted foodies looking for exotic, Asian dishes.  We were generating  a decent monthly income but due to the ‘exotic’ part, foot traffic wildly fluctuated.  In any given Sunday we could have barely two tables full or a busload of tourist barging in the front door, at any given minute.  Being a ‘family business idea’, our restaurant didn’t have solid systems to handle such large influxes of people.  We hear it all the time, “you are the best exotic Asian food in the area!”Even the local foodie magazine, agreed with the chorus of what people were saying.

Two problems started to arise:  Bad financials — cost analysis was deeply flawed and I was getting bored out of my mind waiting for customers.   

I’ve never been a patient kind of guy, I guess; classified as a ‘go-getter’ I like going after opportunities rather than waiting.  I view minutes sitting down and waiting as hours misspent.  I also believe in the importance and power of focus.

I can already hear people say, “then just find something to do while waiting.”  I did.  I didn’t literally waited and stared at the ceiling.  I would go at the backroom at do inventory, call suppliers, stock supplies,etc.  The problem with that ‘set of things to do’ is it might be productive but it’s not an effective way of taking a business to a higher level.  For that, you need strategic planning, face-to-face time with interested people, building relationships with companies who might be interested in bulk orders.  You need to build a system and more importantly, the time and resources to see it through.

It’s hard to do that when you’re waiting for the next customer to barge through the door.  So I went on a different direction and started a website Reno Homes.  That was in 2007, I’m really glad I made the leap.

With the reach and limitless leverage of internet, small businesses can now dominate their niche online just as well, if not more efficiently, as in a brick and mortar store.  There has never been a better time in the history of the world! (If you think I’m exaggerating, think about this: we are the last generation to experience life on planet earth without the world wide web.)

Some facts about small businesses and online marketing:

• A large majority is unwilling to invest significant time and resource in building their online presence.  That’s why Google tried to buy an unprofitable, but local-centric business, for six billion dollars.

•  I was a small business owner three times over.  We just didn’t have time to deal with ‘internet stuff’.  The urgent bullied us to forgetting the important.

• In short, you have Google’s good graces.  Search engines, especially in the last two years, has tried to win small business owners  by giving them favor in their search results in the hopes of letting them see the benefit of search to their core business.

• It doesn’t cost a lot to build an online presence.  But it takes time, consistency and initiative.  Don’t forget the older your site is the better.

The best thing is you can do a combination of Groupon-Living Social-Whatever-New-Coupon-Company, Twitter, Facebook, SEO online marketing campaigns.  Meaning, if you try out these avenues and do a bit of testing to see where you get results, you can leverage it to shoo-in traffic to you brick and mortar business.

Now, there simple is no reason, just to wait.  I just wish I knew this back then.

Source : http://bit.ly/1OZUYtx

VISUAL CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGIES FOR 2016

Stand Out on Social Media with These Visual Marketing Strategies

Visual content is still the best kind of content for social media marketing. Images and videos get more likes, shares, comments, and other engagement than text-only updates. Creating and sharing visual content    is essential for any social media marketing campaign. In order to stand out, create content that resonates with your audience in a way that speaks directly to their needs and desires.

According to a recent infographic on  Curalate, only seven percent of marketers feel confident about their current visual content strategy:

Today’s savvy social media prospect quickly dismisses the run-of-the-mill or average image that doesn’t directly appeal to their emotions or needs. When your business is able to craft the right message for your   target market with a personal approach, your images can leads to more prospects and growth in your networks.

1. Creating Stand-Out Visual Content

The best way to go visual on social media is to create and share your own unique content. This can include photographs, professional images, videos, infographics, or memes that you make using tools and editing programs.

You don’t have to have a large budget to achieve this, and many free and low-cost resources are available to use such as Canva, Pablo by Buffer, Flipagram, Adobe Photoshop Express, SlideShare, and more.

2. Snippets and Previews

In addition to sharing your own visual creations, you can share snippets or movie clips as a preview of the content you want to share. On social media sites such as Facebook, the site automatically picks out an image from your content to create a preview. Along with a catchy headline, this thumbnail image gives your followers an idea of what to expect if they click your link.

3. Focus on the Right Style for Each Social Network

Depending on where your target audience is hanging out your business will want to focus on crafting visual content that not only matches the format of a particular social media platform, but also is the most responsive for your community. Facebook and Instagram posts, for example, garner a larger response from personalized photos, quotes, emotional or funny videos, or product images.

Here’s a great example on Instagram from marketing expert, Rebekah Radice:

If your audience loves to hang out on Pinterest then color tends to do better than low-saturation images, like this Pin from   Mashable:

The most effective images can be discovered by researching what your competition is posting or tweeting, and creating your own original spin. Keep a record of what garners the most response and any repetitive patterns that are working the best.

4. Crowdsourcing Images

Another shortcut to create visual content is to crowdsource. Give your social media followers a challenge. For example, ask them to take pictures of creative uses of your products. They give you the images and you post them on places like Facebook, Instagram or Pinterest. This method gives your followers a way to participate directly in your brand and gives you easy, fun content. If you set up a contest with prizes, you’re even more likely to get a slew of interesting visuals to share. Applebees   involves its fans and customers by posting their dining experiences on Instagram:

5. Getting the Most out of Visuals on Social Media

Sharing visual content will get you more activity on your social media profiles, but here are some other ways to leverage your visuals and make the most of them.

• Actively use Pinterest, Instagram, and other visual social media platforms and take advantage of their sharing capabilities to share on Facebook, Twitter, and the other social media sites you use.
• Take time to create or choose a picture for your profile that conveys your brand message and vision (this is particularly important for your Facebook Timeline cover photo).
• Invest in tools that are easy for you to use and include all the features you need, and get into a regular routine of visual content creation and sharing.
• Find good sources for visual content curation to augment your content creation schedule.
• Get into a regular routine of creating short, one to two minute videos for social media sharing.

6. Size and Style

Be careful with sizing and take note of size requirements when adding images to your social media profiles. Always look at your images as you post them to make sure they look the way they should. Make sure that you understand the sizing requirements of the social media sites you use, especially Facebook, which often makes changes to these requirements.

Here’s a great chart provided by the Marketing TechBlog:

The general rule of thumb is to    create your images at the largest possible size  according to each network. If you’re sharing video, direct uploads work best on Facebook while Google Plus is integrated with YouTube. For shorter videos on places like Instagram and Vine you can try on programs like iMovie or Flipagram to make edits or upload directly and edit right from Instagram.

7. Focus on Fun

Just like your regular content, focus on providing value and sharing content that’s relevant. But with visual content, another important element is fun. This is a major reason why people share the content they like: it inspires them, makes them laugh or entertains them in some way. Try to strike a good balance between informing and entertaining.

Visual marketing for the upcoming years will continue to climb as a dominant force in growing your business online. Through creative, relevant, and original images or video that directly speak to your audience you can create a stronger loyal following with higher conversion rates. High quality content that best represents your brand message can go a long way in making new connections who will want to share what you have to offer.

Source :  http://bit.ly/1IVMsPQ