I just love to show you this new 2014 CMO’s guide to the 2014 social landscape. It’s about SEO, Brand Awareness, Customer Communication and traffic generation. I hope it will inspire you to consider new channels for your marketing campaigns.
Posts
Steve Jobs was a great guy and I am a big admirer of him.
But not everything he did was a success and he did make some big mistakes too. So take a look and see some of the big mistakes Steve Jobs did.
Can you think of any more mistakes?
Enjoy the SlideShare – please go and like and share it on SlideShare 🙂
All the best to you, Henrik
There is a remarkable reason why blogging platforms such as WordPress allow for the creation of static pages. They are not the most visited pages but could turn into gems by getting a visitor to the site for the first time to try a product or subscribe.
As you consider these crucial pages, it is very important to step into the reader’s shoes and ask yourself what you would like to see; helpful content that inspires them to return or recommend the site to others.
These could be pages to know a little more about the owner of the site, contacts, subscribing to an opt-in offer or list, subscribing to future posts or simply accessing resources needed to understand the niche better.
The essential four pages each new blog requires include the Home, About, Archives and Contact.
1. Home Page
WordPress bloggers should not worry about the creation of this page. It is the front page with all the latest content on the blog in a reverse kind of chronological order and usually automatically selected as the Home page.
You will also find a link created in the navigational bar to make sure visitors have found their way right back to the home page, no matter where they might be in the site.
In case you would like to have a static page, perhaps to introduce the blog to the visitors and let them discover what is in the blog later, you should create a new page right away.
This will make the blog look like websites with secondary content in blogs. If you decide to go for the static front page, include in the main menu a link to the blog so that it can be visible and to let every visitor know the blog is active.
2. About Page
After you have made up your mind on where you want the home page to be, visitors to the blog would like to know more about the owner or the blog.
Thus, an about us page is important, a popular page that will be clicked by visitors from social networks, search engine and other blogs. In the ‘about’ page, the visitor is told about the face behind the work on the blog.
This can be done through the creation of very short introductions to say who you are, the objective of the blog such as connecting with people of similar interest and sharing ideas. If you are an artist, it is the best place to have your statement, accomplishments and biography.
You might also want to add a number of links to a social profile you might be using to associate with your audience.
3. Archives Page
The archives page appears very dull as a garage shelf but plays a very crucial roll of having content at a central place.
Remember not every visitor to the site is human since search engine spiders will crawl the site to index the content, gathering information usually fed into a specific algorithm.
They evaluate the content of the blog and its popularity, before having it indexed the in the right way.
Archives page is the best place for a blogger to practice SEO (search engine optimization) strategies. This is done in the simplest way possible by making it easier for search engines to access the site and content.
For WordPress users, there are themes that come with archive formats. Other plugins make organization of content in terms of category or month possible, or pretty much the way you would like it.
4. Contact Page
Through the contact page, visitors are provided with various formats of getting in touch with the blog owner.
You can provide visitors with an actual email or contact form that cuts down spammy mail considerably as well as the place to socially connect with the blog or you, such as through Facebook or Twitter.
Once a reader had read something on your site and likes it, he or she might want to stay in touch or peruse more about you on Twitter or Facebook. After successfully starting the blog, you will find a number of things that should be done right before publishing the first post. This consideration is on the four pages any blog needs to have, which are extremely necessary.
Author Bio – Jason Smith is an online manager for SEO company. He likes to blog about online strategies that are related to SEO, Content, PPC & Lead generation.
PS Read also this article – Important Link Strategy for a blogger
Unless one is measuring Twitter marketing efforts, marketing through this medium is a shot in the dark. It is through the analysis of data on Twitter campaigns that you will be able to evaluate and pull insights on whether the operation is benefiting your company or business.
However, Twitter does not offer any way of measuring how a marketing exercise is paying off.
If you are using Twitter, you should start measuring it if you have not already.
Avoid just measuring for the sake of the metrics.
Rather, measure your Twitter activities to learn what is paying off and what is not while at the same time how this can be improved.
There are measurements you can use for your business. This can be done by addressing a number of issues:
* How effective are your Twitter activities
* How to choose the metrics to be monitored
* Calculation of the metrics
* Interpretation of the numbers after getting them
There are many ways of doing Twitter or social media measurement.
You can decide on ongoing monitoring analytics that tracks over time the social media activities. Metrics focused on a campaign can be used where the event analytics have a clear start and end.
Use of ongoing analytics is very important to keep the general impetus of general conversation on a business. After brand setting has been done, let it run; leave it to run on its own and pop in frequently to see what has been happening.
Metrics focused on a campaign will help to understand the impact of targeted marketing strategies and variations from one campaign to the next, depending on the goals each has.
For an effective measure of whether Twitter campaigns are producing results, both measurements can be used.
Establish social goals
Prior to measuring each tweet about your brand, have your social goals in mind.
Know what you are trying to accomplish though the channel. Generate a list of what you want to accomplish from Twitter usage.
It can be used to serve a number of purposes such as broadcasting information, answering customer queries and perhaps engaging a particular community.
Think through what you would like the targeted audience to do with the information; whether you would like them to engage, buy, click, reply, read or share by listing the goals.
Make goal measuring metrics
Match goals to real behavior and actual metrics that are measurable.
For instance, if you are measuring engagement, you must know the most pragmatic engagement form that should be tracked.
Measure awareness by using metrics such as amplification, exposure, reach and volume to know how far the message has been spreading.
Measure engagement by looking at metrics around participants, replies and retweets, knowing how many individuals are taking part, in what form and how often.
In case your aim is to drive as much traffic as possible to your site, track conversions, clicks and URL shares.
Know what people do when they arrive at your site and if they are going there at all.
Measure
After listing the metrics to center on, find the tools capturing the metric and begin measuring.
Twitter lacks a unique analytic tool and you might be required to use third part analytic tools or building your own. Most of these tools deliver results in real-time.
Plan ahead by setting the tracking even before the
Twitter marketing campaign has started or before reporting on the same. You will make it very easy to access all the information needed at a later date.
Monitoring and reporting
The results from the measurement must be reported.
The initial findings will set the benchmark for other measurements in future and the figures need to be shared if you are in a company that has stakeholders.
You need to know how the numbers compare with your expectations, your competitors, campaigns and related commodities.
The analytics are so crucial since it is possible to know how your competitor is doing.
Keep a regular check on the metrics, whether you are busy or not, otherwise all your efforts could be going to waste.
As they accumulate over a specific period, the value of the data will be clear after a number of months have lapsed and new data to compare with it has been collected.
Always remember to carry out careful review of the measurement to know whether anything is amiss, the state of the metrics and whether the entire or a part of the process was unnecessary or superfluous.
It will help in making changes and doing some improvements for the sake of your future Twitter marketing campaigns.
Author Bio – Jason Smith is an online manager for Inbound Marketing Company. Jason likes blogging about online strategies that are related to SEO, Content, PPC & Lead generation.
I just came across this awesome Infographic about the billion dollar startups. Not many companies made it to a billion dollar valuation right?
This Infographic from Straff includes companies started in 2004 and onwards (2004 is the year Facebook started).
As social media engagement increasingly becomes an important metric for small business marketing, many entrepreneurs and business owners feel overwhelmed by the available options.
These days, Facebook is usually the go-to platform, but Twitter can play a valuable role in a strategic marketing approach.
It can be hard to find the right balance between playful and professional, relevant and current, and pithy and informative when it comes to 140-character tweets. Read on for five ways companies can boost interactivity on Twitter and improve their bottom line.
Tweet relevant content
As you grow your community, you want to fill a specific niche for your followers. Make sure your content is generally tied to the company’s industry. There is, of course, some wiggle room for “tweeting outside the box”, but it’s a good idea to offer up content that is relevant to your business to keep things consistent.
Optimize message times
Take advantage of programs like Hootsuite and Tweetdeck to prep tweets first thing in the morning (or at the start of each week) to avoid any lulls in messaging.
While you certainly don’t want to rely completely on auto messaging, it can make it easier to stay consistent with tweets throughout the day.
Another timing trick – write unique, interesting tweets in the afternoon when other tweeters are tired after lunch. Your tweets are more likely to be retweeted when followers don’t feel like putting in the effort to make up their own content.
Use hashtags
Hashtags are a great way to expose your brand to those who wouldn’t normally stumble across your tweets.
Look on the homepage for the trending hashtags of the moment and include the most relevant one to the end of your tweet. Hashtags are easily searchable and, depending on your industry, they can make a “boring” company seem fun and worthy of engagement.
Mention others
Twitter is a great place to get the attention of people who could be major brand influencers down the line.
Interact with people with large followings on twitter and mention them whenever possible to ensure that they see your tweets.
When important tweeters engage with your brand, you increase the odds of gaining free publicity from them.
Just include @username to the end of a tweet when you want to direct someone’s attention to your message.
Ask questions
Asking questions is a great way to get followers engaged and interacting with your brand.
Questions also serve as a valuable, informal survey tool. The merchant account provider, HighRiskPay.com found that posing questions about convenient payment solutions for small businesses was one way to determine what services were most valuable to customers.
The process of asking questions via twitter is not as scientific as conducting official market research, but in this case, it provided the company with information about their business model and made it easier to appeal to customers down the line. All thanks to inquiring tweets.
Twitter might not be considered the most professional of social networks but it’s a valuable tool for any company looking to promote a brand and gain visibility on the web. Not only is twitter a way to interact with users around the world, it’s also a way to share industry news and build a community of potential customers.
About the Author – Brian Patterson is a Marketing Analyst with Online Trading Academy, a day trading education firm with 33 locations spread internationally.
Getting a whole bunch of new followers in a short space of time is no easy task. If the answer were simply lying around online then the whole world would be using it right now.
So, before you read on you should really temper your expectations as to what you’re going to gain from this article, as we do not promise you the world and all its gold as other articles may do.
This article offers you ways of increasing your Twitter followers by means that are possible to implement instantly. This article does not offer advice that will take you months of work for very little return.
Pay for followers
The shortest way to a destination is a straight line, so consider paying for your followers. It is the most efficient way to increase your followers in a short space of time.
Advertise
Advertising works and will get you a lot of followers in a short space of time. All you need to do is advertise your profile of things in it. This is a way in which you can increase the number of your follows in the short space of time.
The only downside is that some you will only increase followers to through the duration of the advertising campaign. It is still however of a fast means of getting new followers.
Hire writers
One way of getting more followers is to hire a team of writers and have them write your Twitter posts for you. A better idea however is to have them all make their own twitter profiles and gain followers over a period of time.
All they then need to do is direct them onto your Twitter profile. Your staff needs to simply write about how great your Twitter profile is and how great your most current posts are, and their followers will move over to your Twitter profile and follow you instead.
Tell lots of lies
If you tell lots of lies then you will gain some attention from the people who think you’re being sincere.
If your lies are grandiose enough then they may gain the attention of other people who are interested in finding out if what you’re saying is true or not. You will also gain the attention of the friends of the people who start following you.
You will gain the attention of your current followers friends, which is especially true if they use some means of sharing the things you say, such as via the Re-Tweet function.
Preview your tweets on other social media and kick up a big fuss about them
You can do this by being controversial. You can claim that your newest Tweet is going to rock the world with its content, and you can preview a bit of it on other social media to show people how ground shaking it is.
Whatever method you choose is up to you, just so long as you kick up a fuss about your Tweet on your other social media sites. It is up to you to gain as much attention for the Twitter posting as possible.
The more fuss you kick up then the more likely that people are going to go and look at it.
Actively promote your efforts
Be shameless if you have to be. Spend a full day promoting your Tweets and Twitter profile.
There is nothing more powerful than simply concentrating your energy on one single task. Spend the entire day on Twitter getting to know people and convincing them to join you.
Go to online forums and brag about your twitter posting and encourage people to go and have a look at it.
Submit comments about your Twitter profile on the comment section of articles and blog posts. Give out your Twitter handle and tell people to come and have a look at you.
Concentrated and ruthless self-promotion online is free and the more you do it then the better you get at it. You will find that you discover the best places to brag about your Twitter profile.
You will find good places to spread your message, where the other users are responsive and supportive (if you are lucky). You will also learn new things to say to people to get them to look at your Twitter profile.
Learn what to say
Taking the reins from the previous paragraph, you will soon discover that the more you self promote yourself, the better you will become at it.
Imagine you are a sales person in a shop and every day you learn something new about how to sell your products, after a few years you would be an expert. The same happens online when you self promote yourself.
You soon discover the things that you can say in forums, and on comment sections, and on other social media–that will get you the attention you crave. You soon learn what signals to look for in others and you come up with replies for questions you have already heard in the past.
You discover that you come up with a whole catalog of potential responses for potential questions and comments; so that you can fire them off as-and-when you need them.
Author bio: Korah Morrison, writer on essay writing services that help students to write essays, course works and . She writes about seo, blogging, social media, internet marketing and other tips.
There are numerous social networks throughout the online world. For each of them, there is a different audience appeal and application. Every business must be able to understand the full capabilities of their social network and how to employ those abilities in order to generate a quality online presence.
Amongst the social networks, Twitter is one of the most popular social sites for business use, mostly because of its open networking abilities. Anyone can find anyone else so they can see or listen to what they have to say. And while this social site has already gained great appreciation, there is one other beneficial tool that many users overlook.
This often overlooked tool is your “favorite” function. Normally we would use this to simply save a clever quote, an important resource, or even a thread that is noted as something to remember. It proposes a simple job, to store what you enjoy, but there is another far more effective way to utilize this basic tool.
When people visit your Twitter page, they see your stream along with a background, the groups you follow, and those who follow you. But, they also see your favorites which are commonly the things you pay the most attention to. So ask yourself: what is it that you pay attention to? Shouldn’t it include the positive things people say about you as well as trending topics?
Consider that these favorites could be used as third-party testimonials. This is a great way to build a recommendation wall for your business. When people mention you or discuss you in topic, this is a great opportunity to capture a testimonial. Eventually, threads dissipate and old tweets disappear, but not if you favorite them. Favorite the people that say something positive about you- be it an article, comment, product, service, or book. When your name appears, don’t just respond to it- save it as a testimonial. Another advantage is that you can later re-tweet it or share it on other social sites like Facebook or reference them in a blog.
Twitter’s favorite function can basically be used as a testimonial resource, making it an excellent candidate for word of mouth marketing. When others talk about you, it’s stored on your wall to endorse your professionalism and capabilities. With Twitter’s open network, it is possible for anyone to see these recommendations, especially if someone is researching you for a future business prospect. You can let others speak for you because what they have to say tends to have far more influence than all the finessing you alone could manage.
There are plenty of social networks out there where an open audience discusses the things that interest them. Along with these networks are tools that can be employed to accumulate testimonials on them. Always keep your eyes and ears open and be innovative when it comes to utilizing these outlets. This opportunity shouldn’t be passed up, so put it to use today and start building your recommendation wall on Twitter.
Author: Maria Elena Duron, is CEO (chief engagement officer) of buzz2bucks.com – a word of mouth marketing firm. She helps create conversation, connection, credibility, community and commerce around your brand. Maria Duron is co-founder and moderator of #brandchat – a weekly Twitter chat focused on every aspect of branding that is recognized by Mashable as one the 15 Essential Twitter Chats for Social Media Marketers.
Twitter is becoming an increasing important source for traffic for many websites. I get around 10 percent of my traffic from Twitter. Maybe you are showing how many followers you have on your website – but why not show a picture of all your followers? And why not make it dynamic because a lot of people will unfollow you every day and new people will start to follow you.
I love coffee and Social Media- so this Infographic is just perfect for me – and I hope you will love it too.
In fact it can tell you about all the different kind of social media. I am already inspired to get myself a cup of coffee now. Cheers everybody.
Coffee is on me, Henrik
Source MarketplaceMaven.com