Amy C. Fitzjohn's Blog, page 29

5 Ways to Boost Your Digital Marketing

I had a request from a serviced office business in Bangkok this week to be featured as a guest blogger on digital marketing. Intrigued, I agreed to showcase her tips.

Sarah Marshall works with Antares, who host small businesses in their collaborative workspace in downtown Bangkok.

I work mostly with clients in the UK, however, as I build by online course, I’ll be taking my tools and techniques to build your business with a blog to overseas markets.

It’s encouraging to already be spotted by businesses overseas!

Small business has the power to change the world for the better, and we underestimate the power of our own words to get us noticed. The digital space offers us amazing opportunities to be heard… even in Bangkok!

These 5 quick tips are a great foundation to focus on for your own digital marketing strategy.

For me, tip 3 ‘Create Quality and Noteworthy Content’ is key, because it feeds in to all the other areas:

You need to know who your customers are to know what to write and who will read it.
You need to say something interesting in your email campaigns, otherwise they’ll get deleted along with the other spam landing in our inboxes daily.
Content is what search engines look for. A website can be responsive, but if its content does not convey what people are searching for it won’t get seen
…And again, Social Media won’t work if you have nothing to say.

 Quality content is the foundation of effective marketing

 

If you want to write for your business, or want to improve your writing to create your own brilliant blogs and compelling content, talk to me about ‘Content Coaching Power Sessions‘.
Download the Power Session Information Onepager HERE

 

Over to Sarah…

Digital Marketing Guide for Small Businesses
– A Guest Blog by Sarah Marshall

 

With the increase in technology usage and eCommerce sites, it’s easy to start an online business from anywhere in the world. Utilizing the internet to reach customers from all around the globe has never been easier. With all the app creations, software services, and online stores, the possibilities of selling goods and services are endless.

 

One thing that still remains certain, an online company (just like any other company) should focus on their marketing strategy. There are many great social media tools and outlets, pay-per-click advertising, and other digital strategies. Yet, if you’re a small company just starting out, it’s best to look at all your options and see which ones fit your needs the best.

 

We’ve put together a digital marketing guide for small businesses based on our experience working and consulting with businesses in our serviced offices in Bangkok. We hope you’re able to incorporate these tips into your marketing strategy.

Find Out Who Your Customers Are

Before you start your marketing plan, it’s a good idea to survey your current clients so you know how to market toward them. For example, if you’re in the beauty industry, it might be wise to design your marketing efforts and events around women. You might find that you have multiple customer targets, and therefore, it might be beneficial to have several different marketing strategies for each customer niche.

 

Google Analytics is a great audience capturing tool that can tell you the demographic that’s already visiting your website.

 

Implement an Email Marketing Campaign Strategy

Email marketing is nothing new and it is still the best form of free marketing. Gathering hundreds of email addresses could lead to several successful sales, especially if you’re sending your leads coupons on great discounts and deals. It wouldn’t be surprising to discover that more people check their email inbox than their actual work mailbox. While advertisers pay hundreds of dollars on flyers and colorful mailers, digital marketers pay $0 to send an interactive email.

 

MailChimp is one of the best email marketing platforms since they allow you to send email campaigns for free (until you send to 2,000 or more subscribers).

 

Create Quality and Noteworthy Content

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When we use Google, we mostly do an organic search. An organic search refers to when we ask the search engine a question so it will lead us to hundreds of web addresses that can answer our question. Although you can advertise on Google, it’s more advantageous to create noteworthy and quality content that will show up on the first page of the search. You can study SEO (search engine optimization) strategies to learn how to get your website’s content to show up on the first page of an organic search.

 

This will not only increase your traffic on your company’s website, but it can also lead to more exposure and overall sales.

 

Making Your Website Fully Responsive

You might have heard the word “responsive” thrown around a lot in the web design world. This is what makes your website fit perfectly on any screen size such as a tablet, mobile phone, and flat screen TV. In fact, Google rewards companies that have fully responsive sites by placing them higher on their search engine page than companies who don’t. This is because Google wants to give the searcher the best experience, and since more and more people use their smartphones to search for things, Google wants to provide them with a responsive website.

 

Pick Your Social Media Platforms Based on Customer Demographic

Some digital companies are under the impression that they need to be active on all popular social media, which is not the case. It’s best to be more active on Google, Facebook and YouTube rather than 4 or 5 platforms since many people search more on those platforms than others. It also depends on where your demographic is going. If you’re a photographer, it’s safe to say that you’ll want to be on Instagram. Look into what your customers are using before creating an account on each platform.

 

Sarah Marshall, Guest Blogger for Antares

 

If you’re looking to relocate your startup team to a nice, modern office in downtown Bangkok, view our offices at Antares. We provide a comfortable and spacious office environment that helps startups and digital agencies create a collaborative working atmosphere.

 

 

 

 

 

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Three Ways Blogging Has Grown My Business

There are many reasons to build blogging into your business.

I’m currently developing my ‘Build Your Blog’ online course. It’s a series of workshops making up a step by step guide on how to blog to grow our businesses, with actions and accountability.

In the second workshop –  ‘Blogging for Beginners’ – one module covers the reasons to build blogging into your business. I share my 24 reasons and it’s by no means an exhaustive list.

The decisions we take in our business will be different for all of us. Our motivations and priorities vary.

For me, the top three reasons I blog are:

 

For the love of writing

I love to write and I’ve not only built a business on writing but by blogging I’ve improved my writing skills through years of practice.

Demonstrating my Expertise

I’ve been a skills trainer and coach my whole career (20 years). I started in HR then, supporting long-term unemployed people back into work, and then helping businesses to get off the ground and grow. But I’ve also had a life-long love of creative writing, and published my first book, The Bronze Box, in 2013.

 

My skills and experience are many and varied as a result, so I bring different points of view to both business and writing.

Blogging allows me to share that knowledge, but also to grow my knowledge through researching and sharing.

 

Creating information with value

I’ve built my business on a foundation of knowledge and information sharing. My whole career has been about knowledge and information sharing, it’s all I know!

What started off as a 365-day writing project became the basis for books, training workshops, online workshops, public speaking content etc. Much of which I’ve sold.

My online workshops are the culmination of those years of blogging. Not only sharing my knowledge and experience to help other businesses, but much of it is repurposed and built on content that started out as blogs.

 

 

How I make money blogging (without promoting other brands)

You never write a blog and use it once. There are so many ways that knowledge can be shared, repurposed and reused.

 

What about you? 

 

What’s your main reason for blogging?

 

 

Get ahead and be the first in line for my forthcoming online ‘Build Your Blog’ workshops – join a free webinar today for a taste of what’s to come.
I want a ticket to the free webinars!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Steps To Being A Better Writer

Some days, the hardest part about being a writer is just writing; getting started is half the battle!

Blogging is a fantastic way to develop healthy writing habits and improve those all important written communication skills.

Writing is the backbone of the internet, and although images and videos are essential tools in your marketing kit, you still need to describe that content for it to be found by search engines.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is basically writing the right things in the right place at the right time.

Writing impacts every element of our business and it’s enormously satifying to look back at your writing and enjoy the fruits of your labour!

 

Get help to improve your writing skills for your business. Book in for a FREE exploration call HERE

 

 

This short peice of contributed content offers three steps to be a better writer.

 

Steps To Being A Better Writer

 

We all hope that we have fantastic writing skills. After all, it’s the key to having a successful writing career, whether that’s as an author, a journalist, or a freelance writer. But sometimes our writing skills are not up to scratch. And it can stop us on the route to being successful. However, here are some easy steps to take to be a better writer.

 

Write as much as you can

 

As with most things, practice always makes perfect. After all, the more times you do something, the better you get at it. And the same goes for writing. You need to make sure you are writing a lot if you want to improve your skills. Otherwise, you are going to be at the same level as before. One way you can work on your writing is by starting a blog. It’s a great way to practice your writing skills. And if you are posting every day, you will soon get plenty of experience of writing. In fact, you will soon be able to see the difference in your writing over the months. And if you do a good job with the blog, you could soon be finding you get asked to do sponsored content. Therefore, you can start making money from the blog. Just make sure you check your posts thoroughly for mistakes using something like www.grammarly.com. You don’t want errors to be sitting on your blog which people will notice when they read it!

Pexels

 

Go on a short writing course

 

As much as a course can’t teach you how to write, it’s a good way to enhance your skills. After all, it can ensure your writing has better focus and is more precise in future. And the course can help you with things like grammar and proofreading which might not be your forte. There are many courses you can go online to help improve your writing. In fact, you can fit these around a job to ensure it doesn’t affect your life. Or you can look at doing a short writing course at your local college. And if you need help with things like coursework (especially if it’s been many years since you was in education), there are sites like www.brillassignment.co.uk/courseworks where you can get some professional help. Even if it’s just so they can proofread your work to make sure it’s top notch. And once you have a course behind you, you will find your writing improves.

Pixabay

 

Look and critique other people’s writing

 

It’s also a good idea to have a look at other writer’s work if you want to improve your own. After all, you can often find some good styles that you might want to incorporate into your writing. Also, going through and critiquing other pieces of work can often help you to see mistakes you are making with your own work. In fact, you can then make changes with your writing to ensure it’s much better quality. Therefore, look online to find work you can critique. You might want to do a spot of freelance proofreading which you can get via sites like https://www.peopleperhour.com/. That way, it will improve your own writing.

Image Source

 

And always ask for feedback from clients when it comes to your writing. That way, you can make changes to improve your skills.

 

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Why Pen and Paper Will Always Have a Place

Living in the digital age opens up amazing possibilities. Technology is moving at a breathless pace and it can be both scary and exhilarating on any given day. (but there will always be a use for paper and pens!)

Anyone born in the final decade of the 20th Century will be a ‘Digital Native’, they’ll have lived their life having infinite information at their fingertips.

We all carry a small computer in our pockets these days.

There’s more power in your average smartphone than it took to send people the moon!

 

A Child of the 80’s

I’ll admit, as a child of the 80’s, I still find the speed at which technology is evolving baffling.

 

My dad (born in the 1950’s) calls me an analogue person in a digital world!

In my last couple of years of school we got a ‘computer room’ and in it were a few BBC Micro Computers.

It looked suspiciously like this, in fact… (The National Museum of Computing)

(Image Credit: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-33291036

Yet despite this growing reliance on technology to improve our lives, there is still a place for pens and paper.

 

And they said computers would replace paper…

I’m biased, I am a stationery fiend. The biggest outgoings in my business expenses are notebooks, pens (and coffee). It’s not unusual to find me hunkered down in one of Bristol, UK’s (my home city) many coffee shops, sipping a cappuccino while scribbling intently in a colourful notebook, with some colourful pens!

 

But in all seriousness, there is an expansive body of evidence to support the fact that physically writing, sketching and scribbling down information on paper not only stimulates creativity, but also helps us to retain information.

 

Proven by science, and everything – see:

 

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/dec/16/co…

https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerdooley/2015/09/1…

 

Why I Still Love Paper

Here are my top 5 reasons for preferring physically writing on paper:

If it’s on your phone, it’ll get forgotten about. If it’s in front of you, it’s harder to ignore
Things seem overwhelming when they’re splashing around in our heads, but when you jot them down on paper, and look at them, they are often less daunting
Colour coding is a great way to prioritise information at a glance
Most of us are ‘visual learners’ – When it’s in front of your eyes, it’s easier to see patterns that would not be immediately obvious otherwise
Clear your mind. Once it’s written down on paper you can afford to stop thinking about it and save your energy for other things.

It may seem slower to write something down instead of recording it into your phone, but that’s the point!

Not everything in life needs to be rushed, and creativity is definitely one of those things!

So, next time your fingers are sore or your arm starts to ache from writing, just think of the workout your brain just had!

 

 

This blog comes from my Write Your Way To Success Teachable school… coming soon!

In the meantime, join the community on Facebook – for content creators growing their businesses:

 

Join the Write Your Way To Success Alumni Group

 

For instant updates when I publish a new blog post, Follow me on Bloglovin’
For extra goodies and exclusive new information, join my mailing list HERE.
I only send a newsletter monthly so I won’t spam you, I promise!

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Using Social Media Apps To Figure Out Who Your Customers Are

Before you write any content, you need to now who you’re writing it for. Successful businesses are more and more social.

Understanding who the main customer is in your business is fundamental to its success. It may seem counterintuitive to narrow your focus, but it’s much easier to communicate and build a relationship with one person, than with a crowd.

If you can imagine who the ONE person is that represents a ‘tribe’ of people, you can build everything you do around that person, create a number 1 fan for your business and someone who will bring their tribe with them.

I’m in the process of developing a series of online workshops to help you create great content that adds value, to grow your business, the first of these workshops will be ‘Create Your Customers’ – announcements on this coming soon…

In the meantime, this fascinating piece of contributed content gives you some useful tools and insights to start working out for yourself who’s really reading your content and why.

 

Using Social Media Apps To Figure Out Who Your Customers Are

If you’ve spent any time reading this blog, you’ll know the power of social media to help promote a business. Businesses, no matter how small, are going from strength to strength promoting themselves using social media profiles as a means to target their demographics.

How?

By analyzing and identifying their metrics. It might sound difficult, but it’s really not. Users will often happily hand over their information online in the development of these profiles. If you have the correct social media integration with your online tech solutions, you could be in for a world of positively useful demographic information.

But how can you best squeeze the most out of social media? By just hosting pages? That helps, but it isn’t the full solution. The following tips are:

Demographics

This has been listed above, but it’s really hard to understate how important this is for your business. If you know who you’re selling to, you can directly target them as objects of your selling. A concentrated attack is always better than a scattergun approach. That might sound like aggressive business terminology, and it is. That’s the point. A business billboard isn’t aggressive. It ‘coaxes’ it’s viewers into finding out more themselves. Targeted advertising through demographic information using social media not only identifies your future customer, but it allows you to approach them directly. Imagine a salesman only knocking on the doors of likely clients he’s going to be able to sell to. You’d think he was a genius. Social media allows you to do that.

Advertising ID’s

Akin to targeting demographics, advertising ID’s are collected and formed through a consumer’s travel of the internet. Every search they make, every location they go, mostly every item they buy is cataloged through Google and collated into the relevant information that allows you to understand the buying habits of the person you’re interested in.

This sounds creepy, and it probably is. But it’s useful. See what packages you can use to effectively implement targeted advertising, and like the salesman who knows exactly who to sell to, you’ll be making money in no time.

Own-App Integration

If you haven’t already, it’s incredibly wise to develop your own app for greater business/customer interaction. Here you can get the best mobile app development cost estimate. Once you’ve done this, be sure to integrate social media support, so your customers can create logins through Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. This will allow you to access their basic information and have even more reliable metrics for demographics and advertising ID’s at the same time. Having an app will also help you communicate more effectively with your customers by having security features that help you identify who you’re talking to, and also implementing ease-of-access for your support staff.

Social media is here, and it’s here to stay. It’s the digital ‘reputation’ of the modern world. People often half-live through their social media accounts, and so neglecting this from a business perspective is similar to ignoring half of your demographics through willful ignorance. Don’t be that kind of business owner.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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11 Essential Editing and Proofreading Tools to Polish Your Content

The content you produce can make or break your business. Poorly written content, littered with mistakes, makes you look sloppy and unprofessional. The real writing happens in the editing.

If you are writing your own content and copy, make sure you do it well and do so consistently.

There are loads of great online tools and apps to help you brush up on your writing skills.

It can be tough editing our own work, our brains read what it thinks it’s written so we can easily miss mistakes in our own work. I previously wrote about the importance of getting an extra pair or eyes on your content, and also some quick tips for editing your own work.

Sometimes, however, there’s no substitute for the personal touch. Perhaps you’re struggling to come up with ideas for your blog and content? Or perhaps you are struggling to maintain a regular writing routine and could do with a coach?

Talk to me about ‘Power Sessions‘  if this sounds like you.

I offer a free initial consultation, just book in a call with me HERE.

 

Content writer and an eLearning consultant, Gloria Kopp, has contributed this great round up of 11 editing tools

11 Essential Editing and Proofreading Tools to Polish Your Content

There was once a time when SEO for online content was easily satisfied with a bunch of keywords, and customers would be impressed by the mere fact that you had a website. However, this is no longer the case, both SEO crawlers and your audience have become more savvy and sophisticated. Search engine crawlers now actually assess the quality and originality of your writing when they allocate your ranking, and readers will absolutely go to another site, perhaps a competitor if your content is sloppy. The following tools can ensure that your content is professional and polished, so both SEO and your readers will be satisfied.

1.     Online Correction

This is a great spelling and grammar checker that can pick up on any little errors. What’s particularly great about this resource is that you can make sure the English is perfect for you target audience – whether that’s America, Britain, South Africa, Australia, or New Zealand.

2.     Paper Fellows

When you first start writing content, it can be hard to know where to start, and even once you’re regularly posting online it’s hard to be confident that you’re doing things right. The forums on this website are full of professional and amateur writers who can provide helpful advice and support.

3.     Readability Test Tool

When you post online, you will probably have a target audience in mind, and you want to make sure your level of writing is appropriate. This helps you check the reading level of your content to make sure it’s not too complicated or overly simple.

4.     Boomessays

Everything you post online needs to be perfect, but sometimes it’s hard to assess your own work. Fortunately, there are plenty of professional editors and proofreaders available here who can review your content.

5.     Keyword Density Checker

There was a time when filling your content with keywords was the best way to improve your rankings, however, it’s now a more exact science. To make sure your keywords comprise the perfect proportion of your post, you can use the checker here.

6.     Polish My Writing

While there are thousands of options for spelling and grammar checkers, this tool is unique in that it will also offer suggestions on style. If you’ve made your points but aren’t happy with how fluid your language is then this could be an amazing tool.

7.     Slick Write

This is an increasingly popular tool for all kinds of writers, both professional and amateur, academic and fiction. What’s great is that it offers suggestions to improve your writing as you’re actually typing, which leaves you with an awesome finished product in the most efficient way.

8.     Write my essay

It’s great to have well-meaning family and friends who are happy to review our work; however, it’s not always possible to really trust their opinion. They may want to help, but not be too harsh, or be too biased in your favour. For that reason, it can be a huge help to hire a professional editor or proofreader from this site.

9.     Easy Word Count

We all are now aware that size matters when it comes to online posting, and SEO and engagement are both improved when posts are over 1000, or even 1500 words. You can monitor this easily with this useful too.

10. Language Tool

The business market is officially global, so you may occasionally need to post, or approve posts that aren’t in your mother tongue. You can make sure there are no embarrassing mistakes in your foreign language content with this amazing tool that can proofread over 20 languages.

11.Custom essay

As search engine crawlers will lower your website’s rankings, and readers will assume you are sloppy and incompetent if your content is littered with mistakes. Using this tool to find an expert editor or proofreader to make sure your work is flawless can be a great decision for any business or blogger.

Being able to consistently come up with engaging topics and original content is difficult, and there are no quick fix solutions to help with that. But, once you have your amazing topic, the above tools can be absolutely essential in making sure that it is presented perfectly, and ranked highly by both readers and search engines.

 

“Gloria Kopp is an educator and an eLearning consultant from Manville city. She graduated from University of Wyoming and started a career of a business writer and an educator, now she works as a content manager at Oxessays. Besides, she is a regular contributor to such websites as Engadget, Huffingtonpost etc. Read her latest post at Studydemic.”

 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/gloria_kopp

 

Thanks for contributing, Gloria. Some really useful links!

 

Personally, I have ‘Grammarly‘ installed on my devices – because even though I’m a professional writer, I still miss grammatical bits and bobs!

 

 

 

 

 

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Who’s the Sidekick in the Story of Your Business?

Who’s the sidekick in the story of your business?

So, you’ve done a piece of work for a client and you need to get the money out of them. A professional looking invoice and professional payment system reassures your client you are a professional business. You want to make it easy for them to pay you and pay you quickly. You want the customer to go away feeling positive about your service, from the introduction to payment, so they come back for more and tell their friends about you too.

 

This is sponsored content, by Invoice Home but I only share things with my readership that I genuinely think could be useful to them.

 

I also liked the way this article was pitched around a sidekick in a story, because stories are at the heart of everything I do.

 

Whether it’s creating fantastical fiction or coaching my clients to draw their story out, embrace it and hold their story at the heart of the reason they do what they do.

 

Customers don’t just buy what you do, they buy why you do it.
And that why is the heart of the narrative you share about your business.

 

Put your customer at the heart of your story. They are the hero of it, without them, you have no business.

(But every great story has a trusty sidekick…)

Invoicing: The Sidekick of Your Story

 

Having a business is like a heroic story. Every transaction and every step of the business process is part of the overall storyline.

You created a beautiful business, you advertised, you promoted, etc. Customers are coming and sales are increasing. In the beginning, simple invoice receipts were manageable, but as your business is growing, you find that it’s getting harder. The basic paper slip isn’t compatible with your business anymore. You might even feel that this part of the story is boring and tedious.

 

But it doesn’t have to be.

 

Every great story has a sidekick

 

In fact, think of invoicing as the helpful sidekick to the hero of the story. It’s there for everything! And the best sidekick to have around? Invoice Home -> https://invoicehome.com/ ! It makes invoicing an interesting task that takes little time. Let’s take a deeper look at the character of the sidekick.

 

Character’s description:

 

What does your sidekick look like? Any way you please!

With over 100 templates to choose from, you are guaranteed to find the perfect fit for you and your business that will make it stand out even more.

 

You can sort by colours to find that perfect fit or graze through all the different options, testing how it looks in the PDF preview window.

 

You can customise it further by adding your own logo or choosing from one of ours!

 

 

 

Character’s personality:

 

It’s smart

It will never forget anything you tell it. With unlimited storage, keep all your invoices in one place and when you need one, simply ask your sidekick! With the reports section, you can search for a specific document, status, currency, or date.

 

Your sidekick will definitely come in useful when tax season approaches or when small questions about a transaction arise.

 

And for your customers specifically, under the My customers tab, you can see all of them and which of their invoices are unpaid.

 

 

It can do anything you want or need. Don’t need an invoice quite yet? How about an estimate? Finished with an invoice? How about a receipt for your customer?

 

You can easily create new documents of any type and if you need to convert one document to the other, you can also easily change types by simply clicking a button.

 

It’s reliable

 

You can have your sidekick in your back pocket. Literally! Have access to the system through your computer or any mobile device with our new Google Play app! This way you can invoice from any location you desire and not just at your desk.

 

It’s quick

 

Straight from your account, you can email the invoice to one or multiple customers. And if you need the same invoice or a very similar invoice, you can make a copy of it and just change those small details saving you time creating a brand new one.

 

And of course, if you want to have a hard copy for your personal records or to email an invoice from your personal account, you are more than welcome to download the PDF copy.

 

All of which saves you time allowing you to devote your attention to other aspects of your journey.

 

It’s well-connected

Your sidekick also has friends to assist in your business journey!

There are different options to sign into your account, either by the standard password or by linking it with your Google or Yahoo account as an example.

By connecting to three different payment gateway options, your customers can pay by card through the site of your desire: Paypal, Stripe, or Authorize.net. Allowing faster payment and less hassle with cash transactions.

The End

Your sidekick wants you to succeed in your business journey and with the ability to have an invoice ready to email or download in less than 30 seconds, that’s pretty heroic.

 

 

 

 

 

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The Unspoken Rules of Online Marketing and How to Use Them (Guest Post)

I’m happy to support another blogger and writer by hosting this guest post about online marketing.

 

 

Jennifer Scott is a business developer that works in different areas of education, technology, security and various types of online marketing. Prior to business developing Jennifer was a consultant at Deloitte, and managed security services provider and developer of a wide range of security solutions.

Follow Jennifer Scott on Twitter

Thanks to Jennifer for contributing.Over to Jennifer…

Over to Jennifer…

 

 

List of Unspoken Rules of Online Marketing and How to Use Them Properly

Almost every aspect of business can be boosted by properly utilizing online marketing. You can reach a much wider audience; you can establish a powerful presence that can communicate with consumers, generating trust, loyalty, and a brand reputation.

Online marketing is low cost, almost every kind of consumer is online at least once a day, and you can increase traffic for both your business and the website itself.Most importantly, online marketing can directly increase sales – and the return of investment is substantial.

However, having a haphazard online strategy that lacks structure or direct goals will be of little use. Following the tips below can help transform your online marketing into a powerful tool for your business.

1.     Always Be Engaging

One of the advantages of marketing online, particularly over social media, is the potential reach of everything you post. The more it is liked, shared, and commented on, the wider the audience the post reaches.

However, while it’s true that your content should be centre stage, it’s also true that the comments section will be thoroughly inspected by savvy consumers. This means that you need to take advantage of this opportunity to open a two-way street of communication and post replies to comments and questions, include a polite response to anything negative. Being snippy with critics will attract negative attention to your business, and detract from the content of your posts. Plus, showing that you respond to your customers reinforces the fact that you prioritise customer service, and are a trustworthy and reliable business.

2.     Be Patient and Persistent

When you enter the online world, you are no longer competing with local or even national businesses. You are entering a global marketplace, and it takes a lot of time and effort to gain a following and start to stand out from the millions of other web pages.

While it may be hard to keep posting updates while you’re still finding your following and establishing your online presence. It can take up to a year to really start feeling the benefits of online marketing, even when it’s done well. Be prepared to keep working and not give up.

3.     Mix Up Your Formats

While a lot of content will consist of features like blog posts, testimonials, and written updates on social media, limiting yourself to this can really detract from your campaign.

Video blogs can be a great way to reel in followers, and infographics are much more pleasant if you’re explaining a dry subject.

Guest blogs can be effective in expanding your audience, and including photos or gifs with social media posts has been proved to increase engagement and responses.

4.     Focus on Quality Content

There is no substitute for quality content in your blog posts and online updates. Nothing will lose a customers’ interest as quickly as a poorly written or inaccurate piece. Nothing can capture their attention more than a compelling article that can benefit them. Plus, only quality content is even remotely helpful with fueling your SEO as most search engine crawlers do actually assess spelling and grammar, as well as whether or not the content is duplicated.

Marketing Manager Victoria S. Macdonald from Best Australian Writers confirms that having ‘original, well written content compounds your benefits’ – the people who read your posts trust you, and are more likely to share it, thus extending your audience. Plus, search engines are more likely to place it at the top of their results, which will also expand your audience. And on top of that, when your content is professional and has a clear goal in mind, it is more likely to directly turn into sales. This is one of the most essential elements of online marketing.

5.     Market Yourself, Not Just Products

As consumers know increasingly more about where they buy their products, it becomes essential to sell an experience. People are imposing principles and values over the price tag, and so you need to really tell your story in order to really secure their business. This could mean confirming that you source locally, that you’re a family business, sustainable, or any other anecdote about how you run your business. The important aspect is that you need to offer more than the product in order to really secure sales.

6.     Look Past Age

When you’re targeting your key demographic, don’t be blinded by age groups – instead use the smarter options offered by social media to choose your demographic based on passions or interests, and location, to really target your ideal consumer.

While frequent and structured posts, that are exceedingly high quality, are vital to the success of online marketing, following the above rules can really maximize the return of investment you see for your efforts. It may take a while to stand out from the millions of pages already available on the web, but these rules can help you succeed quickly and effectively.

 

 

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The Foundation Of Your Success? A Good Website!

This week’s contributed content covers the importance of having a great website. It’s the foundation of your business in the Information Age.

Think of your website as your digital shopfront, it’s the first impression people get of your business as they browse the digital high street.

However, building a great site is only half the story. You need to update it regularly, keeping it crammed with wisdom. If you neglect your digital shop, it will soon gather dust and stop attracting customers.

You need to update it regularly, keeping it crammed with wisdom. Neglect your digital shop and it will soon gather dust and stop attracting customers.

Having a blog on your website it will attract 97% more traffic (Source:  Digital InformationWorld).

 

Talk to me about unlocking the potential of blogging to grow your business.
Book a FREE Consultation and ask me about ‘Power Sessions’

 

Why a Website is the Foundation of Your Business

 

Foundations are extremely important things. A good foundation in life (a great childhood, a good education, the production of positive habits) gives us the best chance of a successful and productive life. Even with its true meaning, we can see the importance of foundations – which dig deep into the earth to help large buildings stay upright to steal a small piece of the sky. Foundations, in all aspects of life, are incredibly important as they allow us the best chance of success in every single area we can imagine. If something doesn’t have foundations, is it stable and is it capable of success?

Success in Mind

Now think of your business. Every business starts off with success in mind and over time, this can change into pure survival, but of course, when anyone starts off with a business idea, plan or proposal, it is usually with success in mind. There are plenty of things that can make this success a reality, and other things that can change that vision and force dreamers to return to the ground. Any business idea without a bunch of solid foundations is almost destined to fail unless the business owner is a master improviser. This doesn’t always happen and improvisation, while a great skill – should never be a foundation of business. Look for something more realistic to be a foundation of your business. Something like a website.

 

(source)

Websites have never been easier to make than right now. The internet, where web pages and sites are hosted with web hosting offers all the tools, advice, skills and knowledge needed to make a website. It also offers contact details for the agencies and designers you need to contact if you need to hand the job off. One thing is for sure though; your business needs a good website as that website will be the cornerstone of everything your business does on the internet. In some cases, sales will go through that site. In all cases, that website will be a digital representation of your business on the World Wide Web.

Work hard and Look Good

This means that the website needs to work and look good. This is key! Optimization is important as your website needs to actually run on a multitude of devices. If it doesn’t, you can’t get traffic and thus you can’t produce customers with your site. Good optimization is the foundation of the website, once that is in order, everything will run smoothly and you can get creative.You also need to think about space. Your website might not be a tangible thing that you can feel, but it needs to be able to accommodate users. It needs to have the room to handle a bunch of people simultaneously, otherwise, it will collapse and become inaccessible.

 

Every business needs a website, and not just that – but they need a good website. A website is a strong foundation for business success in the digital age and to be blunt a business can’t do much without a website. Produce a website for your business and produce it well to ensure that your business succeeds.

 

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The post The Foundation Of Your Success? A Good Website! appeared first on Amy Morse - Authorpreneur.

Inspiration in the Unfamiliar : Top Tips for a Business Retreat Day

Could a retreat rejuvenate your business?

Inspiration is easier to find in the unfamiliar.

When we see and do the same things every day, in the same place, before long we’re living our lives on a conveyor belt.

Stagnant, swaddled, oblivious to the unplanned momentum pulling us along in a gentle and soothing hum of self-delusion.

Many of us think we’re stepping off by going it alone. The wide stride into an unknown, where your only fuel for the journey is sheer bloody mindedness, conviction, and passion.

But, even though – as a business – our days are rarely the same, the pull of comfort, of security, of companionship, is alluring when you’re out on your own.

A need opens up, a new opportunity and suddenly empty office buildings become ‘work hubs’, ‘hot-desking spaces’ and ‘event spaces’.

We may have chosen an independent path, but us entrepreneurial types still flock together. Congregating in rooms, with frothy coffees and finger buffets, to ‘network’ or ‘co-work’.

I love this sense of belonging to a community, because, even through Author Amy likes to retreat into a creative bubble and craft stories, Entrepreneur Amy likes to be IN the story; fed by curiosity and the magnetism of other people with inspiring tales to tell.

 

Yet still, Monday’s can feel ‘Mondayish’ and Friday’s are still TGIF!

 

 

My friend, and Business Advisor, Emma Smith, suggested I take a ‘retreat day’ with my business.

Although, she did her retreat in style; booking a hotel room in another city, ordering room service and rewarding herself with soaks in a deep tub, bubbly, and snuggling up in 13.5 TOG feather and down!

My version was a little more low rent! Pitching camp in the Holiday Inn at the Bearpit (but hey, at least it had ‘holiday’ in the name!).

As a writer, the concept of a retreat is a familiar one.

Whole businesses – such as Arvon – are built around providing writers with distraction-free space where they do nothing but write for days on end.

Taking your business on retreat is much the same.

A whole day to step OUT of your business and work ON it, or a part of it.

Such a thought might give you pause, a small knot of panic tightening around your belly. So, here are my top tips to escape and reflect for a day:

 

Schedule in a retreat day

Choose a day far away enough in the future that you can ‘plan it out’ of your regular routine.

Not too far away, choose a day in the next month or so.

A deadline that’s too distant will be forgotten, then suddenly it’ll creep up on you and inevitably something else will take priority.

Choose a manageable day – If you know Monday’s are always hectic, avoid them.

 

Decide on an outcome

What is the ONE thing you’d like to come away with that day?

It could be a content calendar, the first draft of a short eBook, a series of blog posts, finishing that video you’ve been putting off, updating all your web content… whatever – it’s your business, you decide.

 

Delegate

If you are responsible for regular chores, make another arrangement on that day – If you always cook dinner, book a table in a restaurant instead that evening. Or, if you always pick the kids up from school, arrange an alternative that day.

Releasing yourself of something you are usually bound to, gives you a great sense of motivation. You really feel like you want to make the most of that opportunity, that gifted time in your day.

Are there daily admin chores that you can ask someone else to take care of? Can you call in a favour? Book a Virtual Assistant for the day? etc.

 

Plan ahead

This is the most crucial part…

All of the above involves some level of planning, but what about the actual tasks you will set yourself on the day?

Spend some time thinking about this. Maybe write a list?

The day before, pack a bag with the essentials and clear the decks (in the same way you would if you were going on holiday).

Put your out of office on your email.

Switch off your phone (go on, I dare you!).

Schedule your social media activity ahead of time (I use HootSuite) and commit to ignoring it for the day. Announce that on your timeline, if you feel it necessary.

Tell colleagues, customers etc. that you’re not available that day, and be OK with that.

The world won’t end if you choose not to participate for the day!

 

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