Erik Qualman's Blog, page 553

A Guide to Increasing Social Media Followership

You can have the greatest social media campaign or strategy in the world, but it’s useless without any followers. Whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, or any site in between, your brand’s success is dependent on its followers. Thankfully, it’s not an impossible task. However, before jumping into the task of acquiring followers, make sure you prep your profiles so they are professional and filled with quality content.

Build Professional Pages

Have you ever visited a poorly designed social media profile? It’s a major turnoff and almost forces you to click the back button on your browser. Then, you get professional profiles like Park View Legal’s CrunchBase page, which has complete information, details, and resources. These pages encourage you to stick around and learn more.

In order to ensure your page falls into the latter category, you want to pay attention to the three C’s: completeness, correctness, and consistency. Your profiles should be complete, in the sense that you have a brand logo, links to external pages, and contact information. Furthermore, each of those elements needs to be accurate, or correct, so as not to be misleading. Finally, the page should have a consistent tone and overall message. 

Post Quality Content  

Crafting good profiles is like building a home. While the details, like profile image, contact information, and theme styles, are the foundation and framework of your social media profiles, the content you post is the front door, siding, paint job, and landscaping. It’s what tells people to stick around and come inside.

When people click on your profile, they’ll immediately judge you by conducting a quick scan of your most recent posts. In 2015, your content needs to be visual in nature to succeed. This means placing an emphasis on infographics, videos, and images. According to reports, tweets with images get 150 percent more retweets than those without, while the total number of videos in Facebook newsfeeds increased by more than 360 percent in 2014.

4 Tips for Adding Followers

Now, let’s take a look at some of the top ways to quickly and effectively expand the size of your social communities:

Encourage social sharing. On any website or webpage you have, you need to include or enable social sharing buttons. These make it easy for readers to share content with their followers, which ultimately gives you access to more leads.


Build a foundation. The truth is that people are more willing to follow pages that already have followers. The best way to get over the initial barrier of having very few followers is to encourage employees, customers, family members, and partners to start following.


Cross-promote. Do you have a strong followership on one platform, but not the others? It’s perfectly acceptable to tweet about your Instagram account, or vice-versa.


Run a contest. People love winning free things and are more likely to follow you if you’re offering a giveaway. Run contests, ask your existing followers to share related content, and require people to follow in order to be eligible to win.

There are obviously plenty of other ways to gain followers – so don’t limit yourself to just these four tips – and remember that it’s always better to have fewer engaged followers than lots of detached followers.

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How Google Analytics Can Boost eCommerce Business

Google Analytics is an excellent service provided by Google. It provides a wide range of statistics for all kinds of websites including online stores.  As Google Analytics tool is easier to implement,  more & more web based businesses are now using analytics for tracking their web activities for increasing their e-commerce business.

Although, there  is a wide range of web metrics tracking applications available, Google Analytics is one of the most talked about a tool for analyzing the statistics of the data.  Following are the several features which make it useful for eCommerce platforms:

Goal tracking & funnel visualization assist you in optimizing the checkout processes so that a higher ratio of the visitors will purchase from your site.

E-Commerce tracking help to track your revenues and exhibit you how your customers found your online store and which advertisement is providing the best outcome.

Dashboard saves you lots of time by imparting you with a synopsis of  important statistics at one place.

In What Way Google Analytics Matters?

Google Analytics include analyzing, collecting, measuring and reporting web site traffic to optimize your site.

If you want your website to generate more leads, boost e-commerce sales or enhance brand awareness, Google Analytics data can be implemented to gain wealth information about your businesses and customers. This information will provide you, how customers get your site and for what purpose they visited your site.

Moreover, analytics can assist you to figure out how much time visitor engaged on your site and can give the reason that why they left your site.

Overall, Google Analytics is a tool that can attract a huge number of visitors to your site as well as convert these visitors into paying customers.

 How To Make An Impact On Key Metrics:

When implementing Google Analytics, maybe you come to know that you are getting a lot of visitors to your site but not getting  as much as a sale.


If the number of users visiting to your site is low, You can put a PR campaign, advertise your product, implement informative product data entry or you can optimize your content for search engine as a result it can get easier for the visitor to find your site easily.


Additionally, if you come to know that visitors are just browsing, but not completing the purchases, maybe your product page is not having an engaging image, might be they don’t have a detailed product description or might be the shortage of detailed product uploading service. If you are lacking either of these faults, that could be the reason for low sales.


Overall the goal of any business platform must be to provide as much as information to visitors they require.

Conclusion:

Google Analytics has now become an effective web analyzing tactic followed by online business owners, which helps in improvising the usability of your website.

Overall, your main objective is to design a eCommerce web site for effective ecommerce product entry where visitors get engaged to browse your site and purchase.

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Pregnancies Becoming More Social

When pregnant, whether for the first time or the fifth, there are a variety of emotions that run through you.

You may feel anxious, sad, worried, excited, scared, hopeful and curious all in a 24-hour period. Between morning sickness, dozens of doctor’s appointments and prepping for the baby, pregnancy can seem overwhelming.

Many women have turned to social media to help ease their concerns, get tips on curing morning sickness and give them peace of mind.

How to Use Social Media When Pregnant

There are multiple ways that women can use social media when pregnant.

Whether you’re looking to read about women who are due around the same time you are, looking to see how the baby is growing or curious as to what other pregnant women are craving, social media can help.

But what about giving birth?

Social media can help ease your mind when it comes to delivering your baby by offering birth stories from other women, tips on what to bring to the hospital and other important delivery day decisions.

The article “5 Important delivery day decisions” discusses decisions you should make before giving birth to your baby, including who will be in the hospital room with you and if you’ll hold or feed the baby, if you plan on giving him or her up for adoption.

Other ways social media can be used when pregnant include:

Read blogs – When pregnant, women can oftentimes feel isolated, especially if they don’t know anyone in their social circle who is also expecting. Luckily, a lot of women nowadays blog about their journeys through pregnancy and motherhood. If you’re pregnant, a great way to meet other women is by reading blogs and even starting your own.
Find pregnancy products – Blogs and other social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, are great ways to find pregnancy-related products. Bloggers will oftentimes review a product for other expecting women to read. Companies also advertise their baby products on social feeds, such as Twitter.
See where your baby is at – All expecting mom’s want to know how big their baby is at 10 week, 15 weeks, 20 weeks and so on. They want to know if their baby is developing fingernails, growing hair and blinking. These weekly updates can be found on social media. By following baby websites, you’ll be up-to-date on everything going on during your pregnancy.
Meet other expecting moms – Of course, the best way to use social media when pregnant is by meeting and connecting with other moms. Even if you don’t know anyone personally that’s expecting, there are definitely women in similar situations to you that are sharing their story online. Reach out to someone by sending an email or a Tweet so you can know you’re not alone.

Social media is a way for people to connect, learn about each other, share products and form relationships.

When pregnant, social media might play an even more important role in your life than ever before.

Photo credit: Image courtesy of adamr at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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What Entrepreneurs Need to Know about Crowdfunding Startups

The internet is a goldmine for entrepreneurs; especially when it comes to funding startups and raising capital. However, for every success story, there are hundreds of failures. The difference lies in the approach. You can’t simply post a fundraiser and expect it to succeed. You have to develop a strategy and market your way to the top.

The Rise of Crowdfunding  

As any billion dollar industry does, crowdfunding started with very humble origins. In fact, you could probably trace the first roots back to 1885 and one of America’s most nationally recognized icons, the Statue of Liberty.

As the story goes, when New York received the Statue of Liberty from Europe – as a gift from France – it came in pieces. The only problem was that the state lacked the necessary funds to assemble and install the statue. While the problem was certainly embarrassing, Joseph Pulitzer stepped in and raised more than $100,000 from some 125,000-plus supporters. With those funds, America’s iconic statue was erected and the concept of crowdfunding was introduced to the public.

Now fast forward nearly a century and a half later and crowdfunding has become one of the most popular and exciting forms of raising capital in the startup world. While the concept is the same as Pulitzer’s, entrepreneurs are now using the capabilities of the internet to connect with investors all around the world. In fact, the three biggest crowdfunding platforms are collectively growing at an annual rate of around 75 percent over the past five years. And as a whole, the entire industry is valued at around $5 billion.

6 Tips You Need to be Successful

So, with such a large opportunity, how do you get in on the action? How do you tap into crowdfunding and amass capital for your startup? You must strategically approach the situation to maximize your potential. Here are six helpful tips:

Use social media to your advantage. Social media is something that should be taken into consideration long before a campaign is launched. What platforms will help you best reach your goal? Probably Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, but consider all your options. You can share your campaign on your personal profiles, but that will only get you so far. Make sure to create campaign-specific pages or groups that funders can follow, and post often to keep people in the loop. Furthermore, make your posts quick and concise, and find alternative ways to request funding. Instead of asking for money (which nobody likes), try saying “help me spread the word,” and include your link. If you create a campaign and nobody hears about it, how much money will it raise? Use social media to do what it does best, and spread the word. 


Pre-raise a portion of your goal. According to crowdfunding experts in the industry, the pre-raise is the single most important financial component of a campaign. That’s because it’s most difficult to attract your first few investors and gain traction. By bypassing this major hurdle and showing potential backers that you already have support, you’re more likely to attract additional funding faster. Ideally, you want to pre-raise between 5 and 35 percent. Not only does this prove you’re serious, but it almost always gives your campaign a boost in the rankings – depending on the crowdfunding platform you use and how the algorithm works.


Create a killer campaign. Half the battle is creating a sleek, compelling campaign. In order to do this, you have to think about things from a funder’s point of view. What would make someone invest in your campaign? If you simply list a few bullet points, throw in a basic image, and ask for some capital, you’re not going to be very successful. You need to engage with users and appeal to their emotions. According to Nikolay Piryankov, an entrepreneur who successfully used crowdfunding to raise around $300,000 for his online jewelry business, you have to clearly convey your identity. He advises people to “Create a great video that really helps people to understand who you are, what you are doing and why you’re going to do it better than anyone else.”


Actively market and advertise. While your onsite campaign can be wonderfully optimized, unique, and compelling, it’ll only succeed if you’re able to drive traffic to the page. That’s why it’s extremely important that you market and advertise your campaign continuously. According to GoGetFunding, a leading crowdfunding website, it’s the users who take action who see the best results.


Study and learn from past successes. Piryankov believes that one of the other keys to successful crowdfunding is observing others and learning from their successes and failures. You can save a lot of time and frustration by knowing what not to do. It’s also possible to learn from success stories and adapt your campaign accordingly.


Provide tangible rewards. Again, it’s important to think about your campaign from a different point of view. If you were an outside individual viewing your campaign, what would encourage you to make a financial contribution? Many times a tangible reward does the trick. Offer supporters a token of appreciation based on the amount they contribute. For example, you may send a bumper sticker to someone who gives $20, a product sample to someone who gives $100, and a personalized gift for someone who gives $500 or more. Not only do rewards encourage funding, but by incorporating tiers – such as in this example – you can persuade people to give more.

Successfully Fund Your Startup Today  

Using these six tips, you can increase your chances of successfully funding your startup through the power of online crowdfunding. Good luck and happy crowdfunding!

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Apple CEO Tim Cook Plans To Donate His Wealth

Wall Street Journal – Apple CEO Tim Cook is joining a cluster of executives planning to give away the majority of their wealth to charity.

The detail is part of a wide-ranging profile in Fortune that looks at how Cook is changing Apple on several fronts, such as sharing credit with the executive team. It’s the latest story to run a status check on Cook’s vision for the world’s most valuable company; a profile in The Wall Street Journal last year recounted how Cook’s changes at the company are bigger than just numbers.

Cook is setting aside money to cover his nephew’s education, Fortune said, with the rest going to charity. In making the promise, Cook becomes the latest executive to take up the Giving Pledge, an effort created by Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Berkshire Hathaway.

The list of executives who have taken that pledge includes billionaires whose fortunes reach into 11 figures. Cook’s amassed wealth is smaller, and his decision fits with his pattern of taking up social causes. From Fortune:

“Representing their companies publicly is obligatory for CEOs, but Cook takes public stands on issues including stopping the transmission of AIDS, human rights, and immigration reform. He sees them as opportunities for leadership. “You want to be the pebble in the pond that creates the ripple for change,” he says, adding that Apple’s people have long cared about such issues even if they haven’t previously spoken so openly about them. To Cook, changing the world always has been higher on Apple’s agenda than making money. He plans to give away all his wealth, after providing for the college education of his 10-year-old nephew. There should be plenty left over to fund philanthropic projects. Cook’s net worth, based on his holdings of Apple stock, is currently about $120 million. He also holds restricted stock worth $665 million if it were to be fully vested. Cook says that he has already begun donating money quietly, but that he plans to take time to develop a systematic approach to philanthropy rather than simply writing checks.”

 

Article by Brian Fitzgerald for Wall Street Journal

Thumbnail from Shutterstock

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Getting Down to the Skinny on Social Media

Your skin is often the first thing people see on you.

You can only cover so much of it up, and it can reflect your health and well-being. Healthy skin glows, with or without make up, while drab, dry skin can bring you down.

How can you find out some of the best tips and secrets of healthy skin and some of the latest trends? How about taking a look at social media?

Social Networking is Colorful

Social media is an awesome tool for finding out information, not just scouring out what your friends are up to. You’ve got a plethora of formats and can choose which platform you’re most comfortable with.

For instance:

• Toss out a question on Facebook to your friends about their favorite skincare products and routines.

• Search twitter with hashtags, like #skincare #glowingskin or #dryskinredemy.

• Follow your favorite product lines of skincare on Instagram and learn their latest tips, trends and products.

These and other social media sites like Pinterest and Google+ can take you directly to articles and it’s much easy than using a search engine.

As the following article looks at, you can search sentences like “Combat winter with coconut oil for the skin” or search a hashtag like #cocountoilforskin. Social media can help you find just what you’re looking for.

Proper Skincare Important on Several Fronts

Good skincare is important not just for appearances.

Remember, a routine is important to combat skin cancer and premature signs of aging. In fact good skin care habits can prolong the youth like appearance you want, and fight the wrinkles, fine lines and spots that nobody wants.

Skin cancer is the most common form of cancer in the United States; according to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), in 2011, more than 65,000 people in the United States were diagnosed with melanomas of the skin. Nobody wants to be one of those numbers

Skin cancer is often preventable with certain precautions:

• Use sunscreen

• Use the shade

• Cover up

• Use good skincare products on a daily basis that have sunscreen in them. Make it a habit.

Using moisturizers and foundations with sunscreen will not only help prevent skin cancer, but it will give your face and hands a healthy glow and fight the dull, winter dryness people so often experience.

Whereas sunscreen is more than a trend, here are some 2015 trends in skincare:

• Coconut oil  – it is becoming more and more popular with skincare touting many benefits, and people are using it straight up as well as finding products that have it as an ingredient.

• Gluten free and vegan products – people are just as concerned with what they are putting on their skin as they are about what they are putting in their bodies.

• Seaweed products – different seaweeds and algae add to the elasticity of skin, sort of like collagen.

So check out your social media and some of these new trends for great skincare.

You’ll be surprised how much information those sites like Facebook and Twitter can offer you!

Photo credit: Image courtesy of Shutterstock

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How Videos Can Be Best Tool To Market Your eCommerce Products

Over a last few years, we all know that product marketing through videos has become important for online as well as offline products. Promoting your product through videos not only increases the possibility of better conversion rates, profit, and sales, but also attracts the customers and build trust in them for your product which help to retain the customers. Just like how the other makes different marketing or merchandising strategies same applies with implementation of videos.

Creating a video that shows your product in action and highlight the feature allows you to sell your product to your audience and increases the selling rate and also reduces your return rate. A product data entry shows the quality of a product and provides all the details to the customers and also you can show the process of how the product is made, which can build trust factor in customers. If done right, videos do not just benefit business, but also benefits the target market. Perfect product videos can be simple, informative, short, and straight to the point as you want them to be. But you should remember that like articles, videos also need to be incorporated with the right keywords to make them easier to find in search queries and search engines.

Here are some tips that can help you with creating perfect, effective and efficient product videos that will result in conversion.

1) Focus on the goods: For product uploading services you don’t need any celebrities or models to show off, just have full focus on the product, how it can be easily described and how you can give more information to the customers without boring them. Try to say more about the product.

2) Promote product videos on category page: The best place to upload your eCommerce product video is right on the category pages and site search result pages so that you can promote those videos at the earliest possible moment. If you have gone through all the possible trouble, and expenses to make a product video then why would hide it. Target all the best possible place to show your videos.

3) Make graphics and photos professional: It becomes very important to recognize the power of the visual. Hostage eCommerce product platforms like Amazon and Etsy they never feature sloppy or amateur looking photography on their home page. The product should be clear and well pictured so that customers can have a crystal clear view of the product.

4) Use images and text: In any video of eCommerce product it come important to explain your product weather through action or writing, not everyone has the time to watch videos so providing extra content like adding bullet points will make easy, short and quick understanding of the customers.

5) Film the product where they belong to: Remember that you are not just showing the look of the product, but also showing the functionality of that product. Make sure that your videos should tell all the possible information and it uses and also the effect of product to the customers at short span of time.

Here are the types of videos which work best for eCommerce product entry.

Testimonial videos
Corporate videos
Explainer videos
Product videos
Product demos
Videos ads

While creating eCommerce product videos your goal should be to educate your customers in making the best buying decision, ever with the offer of free return. Educate your customers about your product and make them comfortable while buying. It increases the customer’s retention percentage and customer loyalty ratio too.

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Google’s New CFO and her $70 Million Pay

CNN Money – Ruth Porat, formerly the CFO of Morgan Stanley, received a $70 million-plus cash and stock deal from Google for making the transition from Wall Street to Silicon Valley.

Porat’s salary will actually be less at Google: $650,000, compared to the $1 million she made at Morgan Stanley, according to a filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

But she’ll get a $5 million cash signing bonus after spending one year at Google and a special $25 million stock grant that she will receive incrementally over the next two years.

But wait, there’s more! Starting next year, she’ll begin receiving a $40 million stock grant every other year. That grant will vest over the course of four years.

She was paid well at Morgan Stanley, but she’ll make quite a bit more at Google.

Porat made an average of a little over $10 million in cash and stock at Morgan Stanley over the course of the past four years. At Google, she’ll average about $18 million a year over the same amount of time.

As part of the announcement, Google said that all of its executives will start to get the same biennial stock grants that Porat is getting, rather than cash bonuses. That will tie their pay more closely to the company’s stock performance, but it’s not clear how that will impact the amount they get paid — most senior executives had been eligible for cash bonuses of roughly twice their annual salary.

Porat’s pay package is substantial, but not unprecedented, for Google. Her predecessor, Patrick Pichette, received $39 million in cash and stock in 2012 and $18 million in 2011. (Porat is being paid the same $650,000 salary that Pichette earned.)

Pichette will stay on at Google “until such time as Google determines that there has been a smooth transition to the new CFO,” according to the filing. For his knowledge transfer to Porat, Pichette will get the biennial equity grants he was due to receive through 2018, prorated based on the amount of extra time he stays on at Google.

For Porat, Google’s new hire orientation is held every Monday (or Tuesday if Monday is a holiday). Google noted that the number of spaces in each session is limited; so Porat’s start date hasn’t yet been determined.

Article by David Goldman for CNN Money

 

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How the Apple Watch Will Change Social Media and Digital Marketing

While the release date of the much-anticipated Apple Watch is still a few weeks away, early indicators suggest it will achieve resounding success. According to a new survey by Reuters, almost 40 percent of Apple iPhone users (which is north of 100 million) have expressed a degree of interest in purchasing the device.

If even a fraction of those millions follow through on their verbal interest, then tens of millions of these smart watches could be in mainstream circulation by as early as the summer. If 20, 30, or 40-million-plus Apple Watches turn up on the wrists of consumers, it’ll be hard for this new technology not to have a significant impact on digital marketing — and social media in particular.

But what kind, and to what extent? Below are some possibilities.

Five ways the Apple Watch may affect social media

The most expensive Apple Watch will be the luxurious gold edition. It will retail for $17,000.

While that model obviously will serve mainly as a fashion and high-status statement, the basic models (which retail for a few hundred dollars) are expected to be highly practical and consumer-friendly. We’ve seen how smartphones and tablets permanently changed social media and digital marketing, so let’s take a look at some of the ways experts believe the new Apple Watch will have a similarly significant impact.

1. Even more access

If you thought we might have reached maximum connectivity by now, think again. The Apple Watch will enable consumers to stay connected to their favorite social media sites without even pulling their phone from their pockets.

This will likely increase overall levels of engagement and continue to expand sites such as Twitter and Facebook as the places where news breaks first.

2. New content formats 

Because of the small size of the Apple Watch screen, marketers will be forced to change the way they format content so it’ll be easy to consume and share. This may involve some trial and error, but it will undoubtedly force some kind of shift.

3. New networking sites 

If the Apple Watch is as successful as predicted, who’s to say an entirely new line of social networking sites won’t pop up for owners of wearable devices? It seems like new platforms blossom every time a new screen size is introduced, so it wouldn’t be a major surprise if that trend continues in the wake of the new hardware.

4. More selfies

You read that right. The Apple Watch will probably mean more selfies on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Every device will reportedly come with a remote camera feature that allows users to line up and time shots. While there may not be as many extended arms in selfies, don’t expect them to disappear altogether.

5. Better overall user experience

Can you imagine a world where people actually speak their statuses into their wrist? This is the world we’re getting ready to enter.

While we can debate whether this is ultimately good or bad, the likelihood is that social networking sites are about to become a lot more user-friendly and interactive.

The future of wearable devices

Whether the Apple Watch will be a hit or not is anyone’s guess, but one thing’s for sure: wearable devices are probably going to change social media and digital marketing forever.

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Renovate Your Home by Being More Social

If you’re ready to give your home a facelift, then it’s important to use every research tool possible.

Whether you’re redoing your kitchen or taking your home down to the studs and starting from scratch, social media can help.

With social renovations in mind, here are a handful of handy ways social media can help with your remodeling endeavors:

Home Improvement Social Media Superstars

When home improvement comes to mind, you probably think elbow grease, swinging hammers, and sawdust.

Well, before the fun begins, it’s important to do plenty of research to ensure you’re making the right choices when it comes to designs, materials, and DIY techniques.

Fortunately, a number of major home improvement companies are on social media to help you throughout your home improvement endeavors.

Both Lowes and The Home Depot have Facebook business pages that include expert advice on everything from replacing a leaky faucet to remodeling a bathroom.

In addition, there are a number of home improvement websites like HGTV, DIY Network, Houzz, and This Old House that have huge social followings on sites like Twitter and Instagram.

These sites are inspiring millions of homeowners across the country to breathe new life into their homes.

Social Advice

As the following article looks at, social media is great for finding helpful advice on the home renovation process.

Where can I find renovation tips? Which DIY projects can I handle and which should I leave to the professionals? Which tools will I need for home inspections? You can answer many of these questions by posting them on your social accounts.

By following the business pages of home renovation stores as well as local contractors, you can stay up to date on home improvement. You can also post questions to these business pages or read the feedback from similar questions other homeowners post.

Search for DIY Projects

Whether you’re about to embark on a total home renovation or you just want to revamp your dining room, social media is the perfect place to search for project ideas. Social sites like Pinterest and Instagram have tons of design and project ideas in the form of photos.

If you find a project or design you particularly like, most photos include links to homeowner blogs with specific directions and materials lists.

By following other homeowners’ Instagram and Pinterest projects, you can gain a better understanding of what it takes to accomplish your home improvement goals.

Seeking Recommendations

Sometimes home improvement projects are too big to complete on your own.

Whether you need to find a local contractor or hire a designer, social media is a great place to ask friends and family for renovation recommendations.

You can ask your Facebook friends and Twitter followers which electricians, drywall installers, plumbers, or any other contractors they used to complete their home improvement projects.

You can also use social media to vet the recommendations you receive by visiting the contractors’ business pages.

When it comes time to remodel your home, take a social approach to your home improvement endeavors.

Photo credit: Image courtesy of Shutterstock

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