Category: Content Marketing

What Your Audience Wants to See on Your Social Media Pages

01 Dec 16 by Chris Jenkin

As they all say, content is king! But how do you continue to provide the best content when the demands for content marketing continually change over time? How do you make sure that your content marketing efforts don’t go to waste? One good thing to remember is to pay close attention to your audience. Do you still know who your audience is? Are you giving them content that’s useful to them?

HubSpot Research recently made a remark on how 2016 initiated a new phase of technology, one wherein consumer preferences and new innovations are important factors to consider for every marketer. If you are trying to improve your content marketing practices, the key to doing so is to identify if you are providing your readers the right content. So how do you determine this?

Here are some of the latest trends as told by industry experts:

 Videos

Video has largely become a vital part of content marketing. As projected by experts, 80% of web traffic will come from video by the year 2019. This will represent an impressive increase in video content and especially the amount of time people spend watching YouTube and Facebook videos.

How to make use of video content for your advantage?

  • Keep videos within two minutes in length to ensure viewers watch the entire clip.
  • Add captions and animations to your video so it’s easy for viewers to understand the message, even without listening to anything.
  • Cover breaking news, since this is something more users are interested in seeing.

 Social Media

Social media is never going to die, at least anytime soon. As a matter of fact, its audience is only growing bigger every day. To date, there are 1.7 billion daily active users on Facebook, 500 million on Instagram, 313 million on Twitter, and 150 million on Snapchat. These individuals are consuming more content compared in the past. Because of this, content creators have started to make use of these channels to connect with their target audience.

How do you maximize social media for your brand?

  • Use relevant hashtags sparingly. It’s not good to use multiple hashtags that aim to increase Twitter engagement. You can use a branded campaign hashtag for your audience to easily find content.
  • Use social media for your videos to gain more engagement through likes, shares, retweets or replies.

 News Articles

Nowadays, more and more people are using the internet to stay updated with the latest news. Based on the findings of experts, readers want to keep up with news articles; however, they don’t really read these articles thoroughly. Many readers tend to skim-read the articles or even get the gist of the content through the headline of the article.

How to boost engagement through news articles?

  • Provide an accompanying video to a long article so that those who don’t have time to thoroughly read the text can use the video.
  • Maintain your reader’s attention by using bullets, images, and by breaking up larger text paragraphs. 

Research Content

Readers are also looking for original research they can easily consume and understand. An evidence of this is proven by how successful infographics have become over the years. Your readers no longer want to spend long periods of time trying to decipher the information you provide them. Instead, they are more likely to appreciate it if you spent some of your resources providing a visual element that could prove to be useful for the content they are searching.

How does one make the most out of research data?

  • Make sure to provide effective data visualization through an infographic.
  • Remember to use color in providing the information you have collected as this improves your content’s readership and the attention span of your audience.
  • Break up text in easily digestible images. Remember, people tend to skim-read now instead of reading the entire text.
  • Provide actionable content so your readers know how they can apply what they just learned.

Information provided through an infographic can be more easily remembered by an individual compared to their reading text.

Knowing these things can help you with your content marketing strategy. You no longer have to second guess your tactics since you already know what it is your readers are searching for. In this way, you know that your efforts won’t go to waste.

Content MarketingDigital MarketingSearch Engine MarketingSEOSocial Media

Content Marketing Goals You Should Aspire to Accomplish

23 Nov 16 by Chris Jenkin

For years, the saying “content is king” has been used online to discuss how important content truly is. As a matter of fact, it has turned into a cliché that people try to use to justify their actions. But at the end of the day, no matter how good your content is, it’s just content unless it gets read by the right people. This is the big difference between those who have found success on content marketing. If you are a digital marketer and you wish to excel in your line of work, it’s time to know more about the secrets of content marketing and just what you really ought to be doing with your time.

In order to be successful with content marketing, you need to thoroughly understand your business goals and your marketing efforts. Having knowledge in this can be a big help for you to create content that serves these goals. It can be useful for you to know how you will be able to convey your message through blog posts, eBooks, email marketing, advertising, and podcasts. By knowing how to make your content work, you don’t waste any time with what you publish online.

Here are some content marketing goals you should be setting for yourself:

#1: Gain the trust of your audience

As someone who’s into content marketing, you should know that your ultimate goal is to gain the trust of your readers and build rapport with them. Whenever you post interesting and valuable content, your readers learn from it. And in the process, they start to trust in what you have to say. With continuous work, they’ll see that you know your topic and what it is all about. They start seeing your personality and what it would be like to work with you.

#2: Attract new visitors to your system

One way you can get new visitors to your website is to know how to stand out. You need to be able to publish compelling content that will attract your website visitors to share your content online and even start a conversation with you. Through this, new people start to discover you and your content. The reason why you need new customers to find you is so you can keep your business healthy. And with content that gets shared online, you’ll be able to start doing business with new people.

#3: Be open to prospect pain

As a content marketer, you have to realize that not everyone will be accepting of what you post. This is particularly true in a time when people can easily find a solution to all of their problems—health, parenting, money, technology, and even what to cook for dinner. The trick, therefore, is to understand how you can be of help to your readers. You have to understand what their problems are so you can target to answer these. It’s also possible that you can use this as a topic guide for future content.

#4: Talk about solutions

Going back to the previous point—you have to provide a solution to the problems brought up by your prospects. You have to identify the fixes you may know for those problems. If you are selling a business that can help them solve their problem, you don’t need to tell them that anymore. Instead, focus on showing them how they can get the help they need from the product you are offering.

By knowing how to set goals with your content marketing, you’ll be able to find success with it in no time.

 

 

 

Content MarketingDigital MarketingLocal SEOSearch Engine MarketingSEO

Important Digital Marketing Tips Every Startup Company Needs to Remember

11 Nov 16 by Chris Jenkin

For anyone who’s ever launched a startup, you already know how difficult it can be to kickstart the business and let other people know about it. Even if you are alone in your line of field, you may be competing against other startups who are doing the same practices as you. This is why you need to know how to properly launch your business so that it will become a success. The best way to go about this without it costing you a lot of money is to invest heavily in digital marketing.

Considering you’re a startup business, you are most likely deciding to do as much as possible on your own. This is so you can save money by not hiring another individual to take over the tasks you need to accomplish for your brand. Thankfully, there are a number of tools you can use to help you kickstart your brand online. Here are a few of the important digital marketing tips you need to remember:

Invest in Social Media

Social media is every startup business’ best friend. As a matter of fact, it is one way you can create buzz about your brand and the products you intend to sell to your customers. Prior to setting up accounts on these websites, you have to know how best to make use of social media. This includes knowing which sites will work for your brand and which ones won’t. You also need to know how often you need to post in these websites so that you don’t end up putting off your audience. At the same time, you need to know how best to speak through your social media posts so that your personality will shine through. You will need to learn these things especially since you will be the only one to handle your social media accounts.

Take Time to Learn About SEO

If you already have a website, you have to make sure it has been optimized across all platforms. This way, it will be the first website to pop up on a search results list. On the other hand, if your website is being used for e-commerce, you have to make sure that it is secure. On both, you have to check that your headers, tags, and descriptions are used appropriately. Avoid stuffing your content with keywords just so you can get a higher ranking on your page.

Produce Quality Content

Whenever you’re posting content for your readers, you have to make sure that it contains the right information and is valuable to them too. The content you produce should have a conversational tone with a mix of some humor in it. Every time you post on social media, you can use the content to connect with your readers so you can invite them to engage in.

Consider Sending a Newsletter

A newsletter can help your business grow because it helps remind your followers about the products and services you are offering. You just have to remember that the newsletter you send should contain all the right information that is relevant for your industry. If you can, start out with a monthly newsletter so that your readers will not be bombarded with information all the time. If you see that the newsletter is working, you can increase it to every two weeks instead of just once a month.

Offer Rewards to Loyal Customers

While you’re still budding as an entrepreneur, you may have already come across some customers who swear by your brand and trust in what you bring to the table. These customers may have even recommended your business to their friends and family, which is why you should be ready to reward them with something they will enjoy. As a bonus, you can also offer them a discount whenever they sign up for your newsletter.

Don’t Forget to Network Offline

You should not limit your business practices to just online. Instead, see to it that you expand your network by meeting more people from different walks of life. This is a great way you can introduce your business to other people so they will be aware of it. By tapping on offline networks, you’ll be able to continue your business’ growth and not just solely rely on social media to do it for you.

These tips are a great way for you to let people know of your brand, especially if you’re working with a tight budget. When you are able to put money into your marketing efforts, you can upgrade your strategy to include other things that can help grow your brand more. But until then, these tips will do a great job on their own.

Content MarketingDigital MarketingSEO

5 Ways to Use Emotional Intelligence in Your Marketing

03 Nov 16 by Chris Jenkin

As a marketer, you have to make sure that the campaigns you launch are hitting your audience. This is how you can measure how effective your campaigns are and whether or not you should be using these campaigns again in future projects. But in the case of making your marketing campaigns work, are you sure you are doing it right?

One of the best ways you can do a better job in your marketing campaign is by involving the use of Emotional Intelligence (or EI). But how do you measure EI? How do you know you are doing it right?

What is EI?

First things first– it’s important to dissect what Emotional Intelligence is and what it’s not. In a nutshell, EI refers to an individual’s ability to understand behaviors, impulses, moods, and control these to relate to a particular situation. By using EI with your marketing campaigns, you are able to target your customers at the right time and place as well as get to know them deeper.

In order to incorporate EI onto your marketing campaigns, you will need to establish a meaningful relationship with your customers. The best way you can do this is to understand what goes on in your customers’ minds when they think about buying your product. You will have to understand your customers’ experience with your product before they even reach out to buy it. Based on this, you can start carrying out a successful strategy to use to hit the right buttons when you market your product.

How to Use EI in Marketing

So how do you incorporate EI onto your marketing campaign? Here are 5 important things to remember when reaching out to your customers:

Listen Genuinely

Nowadays, there are a number of social listening tools that you can use to understand what your customers are passionate about. Before you invest time, money and effort in digital media, make sure that you use tools like Hootsuite or Social Mention to get to know your customers’ thoughts. Once you listen carefully to what people are saying about your business, you’ll be able to come up with a strategy on how best to go about with your digital marketing. And in using these tools properly, you’ll be able to have success in your marketing campaigns.

Before Anything, Add Value

Before you try to sell your product to people, you should remember to add value first. This is usually pretty natural for individuals who prefer to give instead of take. In such circumstances, they will feel a strong inclination to help other people by serving them with the products and services they offer.

When you add value to your product, you get to find ways to improve and boost your customers’ lives. This will help you identify who your brand is and what it represents. Using this data, you’ll be able to show your customers your identity as well as know why they should be investing in your brand. You can do this by letting your customers get to know you. Before asking for a sale, you can let them know who you are as a business.

Concentrate on Attraction

When you’re marketing to your customers, focus on how you can attract your customers in instead of interrupting or distracting them. Instead of giving the idea of selling, be a storyteller. Talk about the features and benefits of the product you are selling so they know what makes it a good option for them. Let them know what your brand and company stands for and how you are attributing to making the world a better place somehow. With this, your customers will feel enticed to buy from you since you have taken the time to tell them a story you love to share.

Avoid Being Creepy

As a marketing professional, you have to identify when you cross the line between being insightful and creepy. You may not know it, but you have already crossed the line (and maybe even broken some laws in the process). You have to look for ways you can be insightful and delight your customers instead of creeping them out by the amount of information you know about them and the habits they have. Even if you use social media tools to get information you need, you have to keep things at a general perspective.

Show Respect

Respect begets respect. This is why you have to remember when you should avoid going overboard when you are trying to sell your customers something. Not only will this let them know that you respect them, it will also avoid getting your customers annoyed with you. If you keep on hounding your customers to buy your products, they will most likely get turned off and will avoid you altogether.

Knowing these things, you can use EI to your advantage so you can effectively segment your customers. This will not only help you get the business you need but will also improve your customer relations.

 

Content MarketingDigital Marketing

Tips for Successful Content Marketing

19 Oct 16 by Chris Jenkin

It’s been said many times — content is king — and it’s true, but there are still some business owners who don’t give importance to the exciting opportunities being provided by content marketing.

When it comes to developing a content marketing strategy, the process is not entirely easy. In most cases, it requires flexibility and experimentation. There is always something new to discover and try out to find a campaign strategy that works best for your line of business and the target group. You will need careful planning, research, and implementation in order to identify the best strategy for promoting a successful sales plan.

Here are a few ways you can be successful with your content marketing:

Audience

Get to know who your audience is

One of the surest ways you can be successful with content marketing is to see to it that you are targeting the right people with your campaign. You have to conduct a study to determine the demographics of what you are promoting. At the same time, you have to make sure you use the right tools to reach out to your target audience. When you are able to hit the right people with your campaign, you can be confident that they will also take the time to share your content to their friends. It becomes a valuable form of marketing with little cost.

Engage with your audience

It is not enough that you produce high quality articles every month. You should also take the time to engage with your customers. In the past, companies focused on building their brands by using a one-directional approach. This strategy, however, has long ago died when social media took over. You can now produce high quality blog posts, share new ideas on social media links, and even go on message boards just so you can interact with your readers. Not only are these great ways to engage with your readers, it also allows you to learn more about your audience.

Quality

Focus on content quality

Whenever you send out content, it will be read by your followers and other potential customers. For this reason, you have to make sure that the content you send out has been well-written, and probably by a professional writer. Whether you decide to write the content on your own or hire a talented copywriter, you have to make the decision carefully. This is because any poorly written article could potentially damage you and your brand. If you are not too confident with your writing, it’s best to hire the services of a professional so that you can most effectively get your message across.

Continue delivering quality articles

Once you have found the right copywriter for your content marketing strategy, you should plan to keep writing more articles. It is advisable that you produce up to 15 articles per month. If you can’t commit to producing that much, adding one or two blog posts per week may be a good approach, particularly if you are just starting with your content marketing campaign.

Measuring Effectiveness

Measure how effective you are

Keep it a challenge to continually improve your content marketing strategy. One way you can do this is to keep tracking comments, responses, and shares whenever you publish a post. There are a number of tools, both free and paid, that you can employ to help you decipher how effective your strategy is. Using this data, you can assess just how well you are able to get your message across and also identify what type of posts your audience looks forward to reading. In the long run, you can build your brand through the campaign strategy you follow.

Remember, the more content you produce, the better it will be for your content marketing strategy. Just make sure that the content you produce is useful, relevant and timely. But even so, don’t limit your engagement on just content creation. Above everything else, you need to cultivate your relationships with your customers through social media. Follow these tips and you’ll be on your way to a successful content marketing campaign.

 

Content MarketingDigital Marketing

How to Launch a Successful Business By Writing One Sentence

05 Aug 16 by Chris Jenkin

Good copy helps websites attract people and gain new business. No matter how much time or money you invest in your website content or blogs, nothing will ever be more important than the description of your company, in one sentence.

Digital Marketer’s Ryan Deiss shares the most crucial sentence you should craft to launch a successful business.

I have GREAT news…

The buyer of your new product or service is EXTREMELY predictable. They only care about one thing:

What’s in it for me?

I’m about to show you two simple exercises that answer this question for your prospective customer in a single, crystal clear sentence. This sentence is the foundation of your marketing and the reason your business, product or brand deserves to exist. You can use it in your…

Company tagline
Elevator pitch
Ads
Headlines (on sales pages, blog posts, presentations, etc)
Product descriptions
… and virtually any other marketing communications you’ll create to launch your new business, product or brand.

Determine the “Before and After”

You’ve likely heard some variation of this before:

“People don’t buy features, they buy benefits.”

The story goes that people don’t go to the hardware store to buy a drill. They go to the hardware store to buy a hole.

In fact, they don’t even want the hole — they want, for example, the feeling of satisfaction and happiness of seeing a family portrait hanging on the wall. They need the drill and the hole to get that outcome.

What is the outcome your prospects are searching for?

Picture your prospective buyer in their ‘Before’ state. They have yet to experience your product or service. They are unsatisfied. Discontent. Perhaps even angry, frightened or frustrated. What is causing this unhappiness?

Now, picture them with your product or service — what has changed in their ‘After’ state? What outcome or benefit have they received as a result of doing business with you?

Ask yourself these questions about your customer’s ‘After’ state:

What do they have? – “I used to have a leaky roof (‘Before’ state) but now I have a dependable, leak proof roof.” (‘After’ state)
How do they feel? – “I used to be worried about the future of my family if I were to die (‘Before’ state), but now that I have life insurance, I have peace of mind.” (‘After’ state)
How is their average day different? – “I used to drive to work every morning in my boring old car (‘Before’ state), now I’m excited to drive to work in my fancy new car.” (‘After’ state)
How has their status changed? – “I used to be a good father to my children (‘Before’ state), but now I am “Super Dad” because I bought the whole family tickets to Disney.” (‘After’ state)
It’s important that you determine your customer’s ideal ‘After’ state because…

Good marketing (and copywriting) simply articulates the move from the ‘Before state’ to the ‘After’ state.
Good marketing articulates the move from the Before state to the After state.

Once you know your customer’s ideal ‘After’ state, you simply need to be able to describe it in your marketing. To do that, you’ll need…

Exercise 2 – Create a Statement of Value (SOV)

If you want to describe the value your business or product or brand brings to the market — and you should because it’s all your prospects care about — you need to complete this sentence:

_____________ enables _____________ to experience _____________.
Here’s how to fill in the blanks on this Statement of Value (SOV)…

The first blank should contain the name of your product or service. Alternatively, go broader by inserting your brand or product name.

The second blank should describe your customer.

The third blank should describe the customer’s desired ‘After’ state.

Let’s look at some example Statements of Value…

Weight Watchers enables overweight people to experience a simple, proven system for losing weight and feeling confident about themselves.

Lego enables children of all ages to experience the joy and challenge of building something that is uniquely theirs.

These first two examples are Statements of Value for brands or companies and fairly generic customers. Let’s look at an example of a single product targeting a more specific customer…

Company: State Farm
Product: Homeowners Insurance
Customer: Home owners in areas prone to natural disaster
Statement of Value: State Farm homeowners insurance enables home owners in areas prone to natural disaster to experience peace of mind that their home and finances are secure.
savings

Once State Farm is clear on the value they bring to this specific customer for this product, they simply need to articulate it in their marketing. Notice how this Facebook ad from State Farm remains congruent with the Statement of Value. Notice how it speaks to the customer’s ideal ‘After’ state. Notice how it speaks directly to the “What’s in it for me?” the prospect cares about.

Before you create a new business, product or brand — you need clarity on the value you bring to market.

Take some time to fill in the blanks on your Statement of Value.

Author Ryan Deiss
Digital Marketer

Content Marketing

5 Summertime Marketing Ideas

08 Jul 16 by Chris Jenkin

Summer is the perfect time of year to launch a campaign that drives new customers and increases brand loyalty. Get inspired by the following 5 summertime marketing ideas, and give your customers a well deserved break from ho-hum sales.

Giveaways- What’s better than free? Your customers LOVE to be appreciated and provided the opportunity to score some cool swag for a change. Clear the remaining winter and spring inventory off your shelves and send it off into the universe. Host a social media giveaway, and ask for subscribers while you do it. You’ll get rid of the old, and make room for new loyal followers who are excited to learn more about your company.

Creative Summer Sales- From a small purchase discount to a birthday or summer soireee sale, gift your customers the opportunity to indulge in something, and make it easy on the pocketbook as well. Because summer usually involves vacation, activities, and extra household spending, your customers will appreciate a promotion while the dog days of summer leave their wallets strapped for cash.

I you want to incorporate a feel-good cause for support, why not offer customers something free or discounted in exchange for donated goods or services.

Stock Up on Promotional Items- Build brand awareness and loyalty with creative promotional products that represent your company, as well as the season. From sunglasses to water bottles, now is the time to pass out logo gear in a variety of materials and bright colors. Invite your customers in through email or social media announcements, and be sure to attract new curbside traffic by drawing attention to your storefront.

Host a Party- Nowhere to go? Get dressed up anyway. Throw a summer party right at your local business and make it themed for summertime as well as your products. Whether it’s a tropical getaway or a sightseeing escapade, dress the part and send out invites to your loyal customers via email, mail, and of course on social media, to promote your company summer bash. Consider extending store hours to accommodate sales and new customers.

Be Fun- People love to support a business that’s bustling with life and energy. When the sun starts shining, fill your vases with flowers, place bright balloons around your door, and use sidewalk chalk in bright colors to promote sales and new inventory. Invite people to sit aspell and take a break from the heat. Be sure to provide complimentary fresh water to keep customers comfortable as they shop.

While many shoppers retreat to the indoors and vacation while your business remain open, summertime is still an ideal season to reach out and attract new clients as well as greet the old. These 5 summertime marketing ideas will keep your sales sizzling while the temperatures soar.

AllContent Marketing

Improve Your SEO Now With 5 Easy Tips

29 Apr 16 by Chris Jenkin

While it’s always wise to hire a SEO professional for guidance in improving search engine rank, you can improve your SEO now with 5 easy tips (and save some cash).

This list is for the digital marketing do-it-yourselfer. Keep in mind the depths of search are vast and complicated. This entry level guide will give you enough confidence to dive in, and swim.

Start in Production

In the early phase of your website production, you’ll need to carefully determine which keywords are relevant and most popular about your business, goods, and services. These keywords will be part of the original blueprint for your website, and as the developers build your site page by page, these words will be used to name the page urls, which will help improve your overall SEO score, improving the usability and indexing of your site.

When carefully analyzed in the very beginning, this research can be used to create a website that Google loves to share in its top search results. If your website is already developed and you’re suspecting some mistakes might have your rank down, it’s essential you contact an SEO expert, like gotcha! Mobile Solutions, for a free assessment of your website. Our report will reveal crucial errors that could be affecting your website’s traffic and overall visibility.

Optimize Keyword Usage in Design Structure

In addition to building the foundation of the site, core keywords should be implemented throughout all other parts of your website design process. Page designers should be made well aware what focus search terms and words have been selected so that the structured pages can incorporate optimal keyword usage.

Just like the developers who work on the back-end of a website, designers also need to know keywords and direction to inspire their own ideas for the layout and visuals. Work together with your designers to ensure that SEO is drawn right into your website from the very beginning, and you’ll be fast on track for ranking success.

Create a Successful Content Strategy

Moving past the design, you can improve your SEO right now by mapping out an effective content strategy that incorporates correct usage of said keywords throughout the heading tags, images, page content, and blogs.

What does that mean at the moment? It means scour your website from top to bottom and from page to page. Once you have your concrete list of targeted keywords, you can begin to see the gaps in your published material. Don’t be generic when it comes to writing copy, and by all means make every word count.

Ditch any pre-written web text or product descriptions and customize all of your content so that it is packed full of rich keywords, which in turn will help improve your site’s ranking. To add even more value to your site, consider writing a blog. Yes, of course. You’re probably wondering why the heck you need a blog. The short answer is, the more SEO-packed content that you can continually add to your website, the faster your SEO score could improve. When in doubt, focus on writing engaging and evergreen web content that is timeless. Become an expert in your niche so that Google will identify you as such, and you’ll rank higher in search results just by producing frequent and compelling content. If you can’t pen that many words in a week, hire a professional content writer who can. The results will be worth it.

Incorporate SEO in Your Social Media

It’s not all pins and memes. Don’t forget to integrate social media into your successful SEO strategy. After all, social websites are considered search engines, all in themselves. Google will search social pages for signals that a website is active. While links may not improve your social ranking on their own, viral posts can have significant impact and will increase your page visibility.

Social profiles are often the first introduction a potential consumer has to your brand. Keep your social profiles updated and interesting to help boost the engagement on your pages, and to help direct traffic to your website. Increased web flow will organically improve your SEO score.

Hurry Up and Wait

It takes time to improve your SEO ranking, but these 5 do-it-yourself tips will help you save some money, when time is all you have to spend. Small start-ups and at-home businesses can still tackle SEO at-home without having to hire a professional web developer or SEO company. Then again, when you’re ready to expand, you’ll need to incorporate much, much more to continually improve your SEO score and ebb and flow with any upcoming Google updates. Search is always changing. The best way to stay ahead is to make sure your site checks off with each of these SEO tips.

Ready to hire our team of SEO experts? Let us do the work.

Give it your best, and then call gotcha! for the rest.

AllContent Marketing

How Your Business Can Make the Most Out of Facebook

22 Jan 16 by Chris Jenkin

Facebook activity has increased regularly, to the point where people use it just about every day. At the end of 2015, Facebook had over 1.5 billion monthly users. Amongst smartphone users, the average amount of time spent on Facebook is one out of every five minutes. With so many things to do on Facebook, it’s not a surprise that there are people who spend the whole day just browsing their news feed. After all, it’s free!

As a business owner, it’s important that you know how to properly use Facebook to your own advantage. Because Facebook has a huge number of users, you can easily get your message or product across without spending too much money. For the most part, Facebook is an effective marketing tool for your business. If you already have a Facebook page for your business, it’s time you put it to good use. Here are 10 tips that will help your business make the most out of your time on Facebook:

Separate Your Personal and Business Account

One of the first things you should know about using Facebook for your business is how to separate the things you post on your personal account from your business page. When you post the right things on your Facebook page, you appear professional and serious about your business and what you’re trying to promote. Avoid posting something that you wouldn’t want your suppliers, customers, or co-workers to see on your business account. Apart from looking unprofessional, this can turn off potential customers from following your page.

At the Same Time, Be Friendly

While you shouldn’t post personal information on Facebook, you should practice being friendly with all who send you a friend request. For your business, the goal is to gain as many followers as you can. Just remember that when you’re approving friend requests, they should be from real people and not fake accounts.

Be Careful with Your Tags

A common mistake of business owners on Facebook is that they tend to abuse the tag button. Users don’t like seeing a tagged notification on a post they are not even part of, or have shown no interest in. While it does get their attention, it also puts them off. You should only tag people in your photos or posts if they are interested in the products you are offering.

Do the Opposite with Likes

While it’s important that you don’t go overboard with the tags, liking posts is a different story. When you like a post, Facebook sends a notification to your friend. And the more posts you like, the more curious they will be as to who is giving them a like. At the same time, Facebook’s algorithm works in such a way that when you don’t like a person’s posts, it will stop showing them to you. This is why you should be generous with your likes.

Don’t Ignore Your Comments

One way you can build your brand is to engage in discussion with your friends/followers. And when someone leaves a comment on your post, it means that they took the time to do so. In response to this, you should acknowledge their comment by giving it a like. This builds interaction and lets them know you appreciate their thoughts.

Use a Photo When Posting

According to studies, picture posts tend to get more attention from users compared to text-only posts. This is a great way for you to get your message out to your users, even if you are just sending out a holiday greeting. At the same time, Facebook promotes picture posts more than text-only posts.

Remember to Greet Your Friends

Another way you can increase your followers is to spend some time sending out a Happy Birthday greeting. Think of it as a daily task that you do first thing in the morning. This helps you increase interaction with your followers and let them see you as someone who’s taking the time to know them.

Secure Your Account

Remember that when all of your posts are publicly available, you should also set a setting for the things your friends post on your wall. You can turn on the option of approving tags before they appear on your timeline. This way, you can filter out other people’s posts that are not good for your business page.

Be Interesting with Your Posts

The things you post on Facebook should be informative and interesting. Avoid trying to push your products to your customers as this is a big turn off. Get creative with how you post things on your page. Carefully think about each post you make so you can build your brand and increase your interaction with your followers. This also helps your friends stay interested and looking forward to your next posts.

Post at the Right Time

With Facebook, you have to remember that you should post business-related posts at the right time. The best time to do it is to post things during the late afternoon and early evening on weekdays. On weekends, you can post in the mid-afternoon. Timing your posts can help you ensure that your followers see them. Otherwise, they’ll end up on the bottom of their news feed and they’ll be too tired to scroll all the way down there.

These 10 tips can help make your business’ Facebook page earn more likes, comments and shares. At the same time, you’ll be able to make good use of Facebook to reach your customers without paying for anything.

AllContent Marketing

4 New Ways to Trump Your Sales Competition

11 Sep 15 by Chris Jenkin

The following 4 new ways to trump your competition will give you all the edge you need to entice your prospects to close the sale, and come to the other side.

1. Make Recommendations- When your potential customer informs you they already are “working with someone”, you can still provide some value to their time and meeting with you by providing some recommendations or solutions for their business challenges. For example, you might suggest that if they are ever looking for a different product, that you offer XYZ. Planting the seed and leaving a good impression while they’re working with someone else is a strong strategy in earning future business.

2. Ask to Share Contact Information- Because companies and products are always changing, it makes sense to ask for contact information for future reference. If you have a brand new shiny product you want to share, asking for their contact information first is a bit of insurance for how that later pitch might be received.

3. Don’t Bash Your Competition- Once you find out your lead is already “taken”, your first instinct might be to tell them the company or person they’re currently working with sucks. Don’t do it. In fact, find something you DO like  or respect about that company and provide an authentic (as possible) compliment. Nobody wants to hear you diss the services they’re likely paying good money for. You’re not there to criticize their current choices. You’re there to understand WHY they are using someone else, and then pitch what you could do differently.

4. Understand Their Needs- Now that you know what your customer likes about the current company, you can work on your sales strategy to win them over to the other side. Don’t do this in all one visit or call. Instead, go through your notes, evaluate their business, discover what challenges you could alleviate or which needs you could provide, and then reach out again with a fully developed game plan.

Trumping your sales competition isn’t rocket science. Always remember the following:

If they feel pressure from you, the answer is no.

If they feel like you’re trying too hard to be liked, the answer is no.

If they don’t think you understand their business, the answer is no.

If they get overwhelmed by what you’re saying, the answer is no.

Learn to drop your sales and marketing hat, and instead act as though you already have the job. By doing this you change the relationship into a collaborative effort from the very beginning. Instead of being “sold” your services or products, your leads will see you as someone who has joined their team to help them achieve their sales goals.

 

AllContent Marketing