Jan 31
Ever wondered what those funny looking square things are?
Why Should you use QR Codes to market your Business?
2. QR Codes catch your Attention
They nearly jump off the page at you. QR Codes give instant results. They are literally in the palm of your hand
3. QR Codes drive traffic to your call to action.
They give your website quick and instant access..so much easier to scan a code with mobile device than type url into mobile browser.
4. QR Codes have Wow Power
You can establish your business credibility by being practical and on the cutting edge. QR Codes need to be part of your marketing plan.
5. QR Codes make Affiliate marketing easy
You can promote a product discount coupon code with QR Codes. Affiliate marketing can be brought offline- promote affiliate product discount codes in the newspaper,on signs,and even on T-shirts, business cards, mugs–only limited by your imagination.
QR Codes are the up and coming trend that closely coincides with the mobile technology evolution.
QR Codes are new, exciting and make for interesting conversation.They are the new sensation. QR Codes – Quick Response.
Your Mobile phone plus a free decoding software transform the data in the QR Code to a “call to action” which could include a website url, email address, coupon or url to an event you are hosting.
Jan 13
Reach millions of people online, quickly and for free
I just learned about Google Places. What a great easy and free way to add instant visibility to your business.
4 Reasons why Google Places is ideal for Local Businesses.
1. Highly targeted listing
2. Creates a highly optimized web listing including map and relevant business information
3. Ability to offer coupons to enhance Mobile searches
4.Opportunity to showcase positive reviews of your business creating great testimonials.
This is a great feature by Google to promote your business for free,helping you to create a very visible and profitable business.
I can help create your profile and get google places up and running.. just give me a call.
Nov 21
I just found Twitter’s Daily Newspaper.
Paper.li is a new site that’s allows you to create a daily online newspaper composed of Tweets that include links from either selected people you follow or list on Twitter or for a particular #hashtag search.
It’s free to use and can be setup in just a few minutes.
At your option, your daily page can be promoted via Tweets automatically and people can subscribe to get an email notification when your new issue is available.
Ultimately what you get is something along the lines of a magazine or newspaper that’s created just for you and is updated regularly. It has about 18 different categories to choose from to create a page just for your business or interests.
Since it can be difficult to follow all your favorite writers on Twitter itself or even using an app like Hootsuite, Paper.li seems like a great idea.
I am following Social Media Confidential by Bill Hibbler.His focus is on Social Media.
Let me know what you think about Paper.li. Will you set up your own page on Paper.li?
Oct 28
1. Did you know that Twitter now does video?
Tool : Twitvid
This means you can combine the power of video and social media for big-time visibility. When you create a video, just upload it to YouTube. From here, use the handy “share” button to send the video to Twitter (You will have to connect your YouTube and Twitter accounts first.)
Once you share the video to Twitter, the video will now show up in Twitter’s new “sidebar” for all the world (or at least all of their followers) to see!
I encourage you to take advantage of Twitters new, expanded interface. This new interface also allows you to add images to Twitter.
2. Did you know that you can now add images to Twitter?
Tool: twitpic
TwitPic lets you share photos or images on Twitter in real-time.
As the saying goes, “Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words,” or in this case, sometimes a picture is worth 140 characters!
Let’s face it, there are times when a photo is more effective and just plain fun. I tried twitpic in my tweet and it was easy to do and makes a welcome change from straight words.
So, 2 new tools. Have you used them? I would love to know how they worked for you. Write a comment and let me know.
Sep 16
Have you thought about using SMS text messages to market your products or services?
Statistics point out that 94% of cell phone users will read a marketing text SMS and 23% respond to the SMS text. Now that is effective marketing.
SMS is an acronym for “Short Message Service”, often called text messaging, and is a means of sending short messages to and from mobile phones.
1. Cost Effective
SMS text marketing is cost effective, reaches more people and is simple to set up a campaign making it the up and coming tool to market your business. SMS makes it easy to implement a cost effective mobile strategy that can grow as your business achieves success.
2.A moving target audience
Get people where they are at the moment.Most people take their mobile phones everywhere – meaning they can be effective for time-sensitive SMS advertising messages
3. Personal touch
SMS advertising can bring a personal touch.Mobile phones have a very personal nature and even though bulk SMS is sent to a lot of people, each individual will feel the SMS advertising has come to their phone alone.
Text messaging means information can be sent to groups of people quickly and conveniently, making it an increasing popular e-marketing channel.
4 Get Audience Attention
People generally read every business SMS message they get, unlike junk mail, spam or adverts which can be ignored. A personal sms alert gets their attention.
To successfully use the power of SMS advertising, you will need SMS gateways. A SMS Gateway is your bridge between the Internet and the world of cell phone SMS text messaging.
Through SMS gateways, you can send single SMS advertising messages, or thousands of bulk SMS messages.
SMS gateways should provide a high quality connection so your SMS gateways give you the fastest and most reliable delivery rates. SMS gateways will also a delivery report.
EzTexting
A very easy to use, affordable text messaging company that can send texts in the U.S. and Canada. Lots of smart features including two-way messaging.
eNowIt
A solid text messaging company that features an easy to use interface, two way texting, has some unique services like their Trivia application. Perfect for retail businesses who want to do text messaging.
The effectiveness of mobile marketing has increased due to high end mobile devices which have better features, a moving target audience and a younger target group of customers. Innovative ideas are driving text marketing and making it more effective. By simply replying to a text message, customers are getting discounts on anything and everything from pizzas to movie tickets.
As a promotional tool, SMS advertising is hard to beat,So, if you have a business that you plan to take to the next level of success you need to try out SMS marketing. It is one of the most effective ways to reach out to a focused customer group . Mobile is the future of marketing.
Sep 07
How do you measure the success of your website-ROI?
Looking at your website stats is necessary for figuring out how well your pages or your campaigns are doing. But some of the terms can be confusing.
A question I get asked frequently is: What is a HIT? Is it the same as a VISIT? What is a View?
Hits represent the total number of requests made to the server during the given time period (month, day, hour etc..).
ReCap: Pages are made up of many items (images, text, etc) and each one of these physical resources are requested by the server for that visit. Each of those is a hit, while a view is the page itself
Visits occur when some remote site makes a request for a page on your server for the first time. As long as the same site keeps making requests within a given timeout period, they will all be considered part of the same Visit. If the site makes a request to your server, and the length of time since the last request is greater than the specified timeout period (default is 30 minutes), a new Visit is started and counted, and the sequence repeats. Since only pages will trigger a visit, remotes sites that link to graphic and other non- page URLs will not be counted in the visit totals, reducing the number of false visits.
ReCap: Someone comes to your web site and looks around a bit. They may go to one page, or they may go to 100 pages, but they are still only visiting once.
View – How many pages were seen by that visit
Think of it like a book store. A person goes into the store (visit) and picks up 5 books to buy (views). While he is holding the books, he flips through them and looks at a few pictures (hits). So he would have 1 visit to the store, 5 books handled during his visit (views), and maybe 30 pictures he looked at (hits).
So which value is more useful?
It depends on the use of the information. If you’re in marketing and you’re striving for bragging rights or high activity numbers, use Hits.
If you are using your stats to actually identify trends and the personal impact of your site, use Views and Visits.
Hits can always be inflated artificially, by adding a few more images to a page, for example. Visits and Views, however, represent people coming to your site and the number of web pages they saw, which is much more useful for analyzing usage patterns.
So we are actually trying to track what the visitors do. We want to learn more about the visitors that eventually become good sales leads or purchase from us.
Aug 19
Many businesses have caught on to a powerful marketing and communication vehicle for shining a spotlight on their brand and business using Slideshare.
I wanted to find out what all the interest was about so I took a Slideshare seminar. What a great tool to share information about your business through presentations, documents and pdfs. Slideshare presentations can be embed in your blog posts just like embedding videos.
Do you want to get the word out about your product or service?
SlideShare is the best way to get your slides out there on the web, so your ideas can be found and shared by a wide audience.You do not need video equipment etc. and this to me is a plus. Just need to type your info and upload. How simple!
Aug 03
Use Social Media To Attract Ideal ClientsHave you noticed how Social media is popping up all over your life? It seems everyone is engaging in Social Media – the nightly news shows, friends, non-profit businesses, and successful businesses, – Social Media cannot be ignored.
A question I get asked a lot is: What are the most popular networks for small business owners to use?
I have found Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are the best 3 for creating business visibility and connecting with target your audience. Chances are you have a profile in each of these and strive to be pretty active. But is your activity leading to productivity? Is your profile showcasing you in the best possible light–do people want to connect with you?
Being active in the social networks is much like networking in person – if you are doing it correctly. You should be making personal connections with people, having real conversations with them and above all, adding value to their lives and businesses. Those in your network will appreciate your efforts to be truly and genuinely helpful. Online or offline, this spirit is absolutely client attractive.
At first, it may start out with the little things like responding to a group question, or leaving your feedback on a blog post you saw in your Twitter stream. But if you’re genuinely helping people, being friendly and conversing with others, people notice. Then, you’ll be known as the “expert” in the group, the go-to person that everyone waits to hear from. And sometimes, you’ll be exactly the person a potential client is looking for to help them solve a challenge they’re facing.
The reality is that Social Media opens up more opportunities for you than you can imagine. Potential clients can sample your expertise before they even send you an email or pick up the phone to call you. If they like what they see, they will contact you. It’s because they have benefited from your work before even asking for your help.
By being helpful, honest and approachable, you are sending out a positive message to the world that will lead to positive results. No one can deny the positive energy created with these types of actions. Successful people seek other like-minded successful people. They also seek out individuals who are honest, transparent and generous with their knowledge.
If you need help, I am a click away. You have a unique opportunity to showcase your talents and reach potential new clients just by actively maintaining your social networking profiles. Be sure your profiles are filled out, in their entirety, and that you include a head-shot.
I would really love to hear your success stories of how social media has helped you grow your business. Please leave a comment.
