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Creating a business blog is not so complicated, as you might think. The hard part is to create an efficient blog, and dedicate time and efforts to develop it, being committed to it, is not always easy to do while managing all the other aspects of your business. Outsourcing your business blog can be a great way to have your business blog set and going without worrying whether things are done right. Here are the reasons why you should consider outsourcing your business blog.

Outsourcing your business blog enables you to stay efficient in you Business.

Unfortunately for you ( and the rest of the population), there are so many hours in one day, and only so much you can do during that day. So instead of doing it all half way, why not focus on what you do best and outsource your business blog? It gives you the chance to have everything done in the best way possible. By outsourcing your business blog you can spend the time you need to do what you do best. Stay efficient where you need to be efficient. Whether you are a startup or a grown business, do you  have time and dedication that it needs to make your business blog a success? Stay focused on what you do best: Run your company, find clients, develop new products and the thousand other things you need to do to keep you business running. Your business blog is important, don’t get me wrong,  it can improve your customer service, inform prospects about your company and much more, but it most likely not give you a 50% increase in Sales. Outsource your business blog and stay focused on running your business. This way, you will have a efficient and interesting blog, taken care by experts; and keep running your business effectively. Even though you might enjoy writing about your business and know a thing or two about blogging yourself: Leverage the time in your hands to keep your business growing and get things done.it

Experts know best, let them take care of your business blog.

- If you outsource your business blog, it means your blog will be between the hands of experts who know exactly what to do. They know the technical terms, and all the tools to make your posts successful and you blog efficient. One of the most important steps in writing a post for your blog is the keyword research. Experts know how to find them, where to place them and the pitfalls of using the wrong ones. They are trained for this, just like you know how to manage you business, they know how to take care of your blog. Therefore, they can analyze the impact of Social Media Marketing better and use all the tools to your advantage. They have references you may not know about and they also have a great deal of experience.
- Thanks to this experience, the expert taking care of your blog also knows how to adapt the language of your post to your audience. He knows how to target the right audience. This will save you time and research. Outsourcing can help you achieve your blog goals faster and better. Don’t be scared to give your blog and your business the tools it needs: trust that experts will be more efficient in finding the right readers, the right niche and make your business blog an important asset of your Social Media Marketing plan.
- Also, ask yourself, who is going to take care of your business blog, multiple times per week and with a lot of dedication? Do you have someone within your organization that has a talent to write, knows about blogging and marketing, SEO and keyword research and also has the time to take on a time consuming project like a business blog? Let the pro do it. You need to make sure you have  topics on your blog that spark interest in readers to check it out and convince them to come back regularly. Remember that the topics you choose for your blog are a very important factor in the success of your blog. Also your blog, in a way, is the face of your company online, so you want it to represent your business in the best possible way. You want to make sure your business blog is taken as seriously as any other aspect of your business. It is the experts’ job to develop the topics and make sure to present all the information. If you don’t have time to spend on writing, your posts will be too short, or not well constructed. Experts will feed you blog with a strong content.

The importance of being consistent is another good reason to outsource your business blog.

- More than the number of articles on your blog, the consistency is even more important. You must be able to really commit to filling it with posts on a regular basis. And if you don’t have time, outsourcing is your best option. Even if you think you have time, you should not just put your business blog on hold when something comes up; it will affect your image and your readership. People want to know what to expect, how often a blog is updated and how long your blog posts are. Humans are creatures of habit and this is also true for reading blogs. Many readers develop a routine about the blogs they read: Monday before work they read blog A, Tuesday for lunch blog B and so on. If you cannot “deliver” your content on a regular basis, you will not meet their expectations. By outsourcing your business blog, you assure a constant stream of fresh content. You make sure that your readers keep getting the information they ask for without you worrying out how to do it. Experts also know how to research for good topics and good content to match your business blog needs. So the content will be consistent and the posts regular. This allows you to show your readers a stable and organized process, and create a strong impact with your business blog.
- But with only writing your blog post, you are not done yet. What about promotion and marketing of your blog? Do you know your way around Digg, Yigg, Stumble, Reddit, Technorati, monitor Twitter and all the other promotion tools that can get your blog spikes in traffic? When outsourcing, you let an expert take care of all of that. You keep the communication flow going and growing. You show you are active and involved, which is what the customers, readers want. Remember that finding readers for your blog and keeping them is an important process in the success of your blog. Communicating and keeping an active involvement really effects your business blog. Outsourcing your business blog helps you to create a growing reader base, have their questions answered and shows that you are present on the Social Media Networks in a consistent manner.

Thinks about outsourcing your business blog, to promote your business online with the greatest tools without taking away from your business what it needs: your time and knowledge. Let trained professionals take care of your blog and be successful in every single aspect of your business.

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Your Business Blog Content

Keywords let your readers find your business blog

Before you start searching readers, make sure you started your blog the right way. If you know how to start you blog it will be easier to target readers.

The first thing to do when you start a blog, is to find keywords for every blog post topic that you want to write about. Keyword Optimization will tell you which words or phrases people are looking for. Google Keyword Tool is a great tool to help you find the most efficient words to use in your post. Dedicate time to your keyword research, it’s a strong tool to bring you more readers for your business blog in the long term. If you want to learn more about keywords, read our blog post on keyword optimization tips for your business blog. Also make sure you use appropriate tags search engines love them and so will your readers.

Great Content keeps your readers coming back to your blog

Good content is essential that a reader that finds your blog will come back regularly and talk about it to others. If you give useful information, are helpful and present your industry and company’s news, and on top have a great way of presenting and writing this information, readers will keep on visiting your blog for updates. Solve a problem that they have or answer their question through your blog posts. This will also establish a trust relationship between your company and your reader. And a regular reader that comes back is also more likely to convert into a customer, talk about your blog or company or tweet about it. As you might already know, word of mouth advertising is the most efficient form of advertisement. Good content is based on interesting topics. Remember to use a catchy headline that includes your keywords. Think about your topics carefully. If you have problems finding topics to write about on your business blog, check out this blog post that gives you ideas how to find blog post topics for your business blog.

Promote your Business Blog

Find and remind readers to visit your business blog

Once you have set up your business blog you must let people know about it. How do you do that? Well you can start by including the link to your blog on you business card, so that your potential customers, clients, partners receiving your card can also become potential readers. You can also include it in your email signature, your letterhead, and company’s invoice forms. Any print version with you company’s information is a good place to start.

Have a link to your business blog on your company’s website, if it is not included on your company’s website so that people visiting your company’s website can find out about it.
Inform the readers you already have about your blog. First: Who are they? Your first readers are your current customers, your employees, vendors, companies you have relationships with… anyone linked some way or another to your company. Second: How do you inform them? A great effective way is a press release introducing your blog, the link to your blog and what you blog about. If you have a mailing list, here is a good time to use it. If you already have a Social Media page add the link there and present the information to your current followers. If you send out monthly or quarterly newsletters, have a special section about your blog. Make it easy for people to find your blog.

Use Social Media Tools to promote your business blog

You can bring more traffic and therefore find more readers for you business blog by submitting your blog posts to good Social Media and bookmarking sites such as Google, Technorati, Twitter, Forums, Social Media Networking sites, Facebook and other industry specific platforms.

Participate on other business blogs

Another great tool to find readers are Guest Blog posts. It allows you to show your presence and make people aware of your writing style and content and give them an insight on what you write about. You can catch their attention and make them interested  to come check out your blog. See if your vendors or customers have blogs that are related to your blog and would be interested in a guest blog post. What is important to remember in the use of Social Media in general is that you must give something to get something (such as readers) in return. You must participate on other people’s blogs first to get people to participate on your and have their readers and followers be aware of you and become your readers as well. It is a long process, but you can do it! Just remember that you have to start small, because you focus  on quality rather that quantity. It is much more efficient on the long run to find quality readers of for your business blog, rather than have a lot of readers who don’t give you any feedback or that were not well targeted.

Catch your readers on Facebook, Twitter and Co.

Another important point is to be active on your Social Media Networking sites: answer tweets and questions, be consistent in your posts and comments, use all the resources available to you to show you are involved and spend time using and developing you Social Media Marketing campaign. Participate in forums and answer questions. Market Your Startup gets most of its traffic from forums, guest blog posts and Social Media Networks like Facebook or Twitter. Show that you are an expert in your field and that you are there to help, not to promote. Remember that Social Media relies mostly on the relationship you develop with your readers. Gaining their trust will bring you more readers. Remember, it’s all about making connections.

Understand Your Readers to keep them coming back

Once you have finally reach a certain numbers of readers it is important to understand what they look for and what keeps them coming back to your blog, so that you can feed them with the right content, keep their attention and reach out to other readers with similar interests. When you study your readers, you can see where else they read, or post. You can follow their example and participate where they do and find readers for your blog there. Ask them, communicate with them. This is the great advantage about Social Media, you can ask questions, there always will be people to answer you.
Remember it is important to target your readers well, and to focus on your niche. If you are using twitter already, it will help you find targeted readers for your business blog, since you already found targeted twitters followers.

Follow those tips and be committed to your blog. Remember to be patient. Social Media takes time, but is a very powerful tool over time. If you follow the advices you find here, you should have no problems having  good  traffic on your business blog. The more you participate in Social Media, the more readers you will find for your business blog.

What do you think? What is the most effective way to drive traffic to your business blog?

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Why do you have a website for your business? You have it to draw attention to your company, introduce your products or service, inform your current and potential customers about your company, right? In short, it is made for people. NOT for Search engines. Read on and learn, how customer experience optimization (CEO) will make search engines happy as well as your visitors. I will explain why it is important to write for the people, not for search engines. Well, you might ask yourself: But how can it be any good, if I have a great website, but nobody finds it? or Why is everybody talking about SEO, then?

To answer these questions, you have to understand the goals of search engines. Google, Bing and all the other search engines have created a complex algorithm to find the most suitable and relevant content for the particular search query that was typed in the search field. This algorithm includes functionality of the website (how user friendly is your website), keywords, authority of the site (through back links t), recentness (regularly updated content) and some other ingredients that the search engines do not want to share.

In short: Search engines try to read the mind of the searchers and what information is most useful to them taking relevancy, authority and recentness into account!

While in the past some so-called “black-hat” SEO experts tried to cheat the search engines, for example by adding hundreds of irrelevant keywords to sites to draw traffic to the websites (they hid them by giving the keywords the same color as the background; Result: People searching for family vacations ended up on Viagra-selling sites etc.), and other shady techniques were successful for a short period of time. But guess what, Google and the other search engines figured that out pretty quickly and punished these sites by banning them from their search results. Why? Because it did not make the searchers happy! They did not get the results they wanted. And this made the search engines unhappy.

In short: Irrelevant search results will make searchers unhappy and the customer experience is negative. Search Engines want to make searchers happy by providing useful results!

So how do you make searchers and search engines happy? The first thing you should keep in mind is that not the quantity, but the quality of your traffic is important. Unless your website only makes money from selling banner ads based on impressions, you do not have to care about the volume of your website traffic. The important thing is what your visitors do when they are on your website. If you get large amounts of visitors that are not looking for what you have to offer, all you gain is a high bounce rate (visitors that only visit one page of your site and leave instantly), but in most cases, you will not convert them. Guess what, these visitors will not  have a great customer experience on your website, because you could not fulfill their expectations they had when they clicked on your result.

In short: Don’t worry about traffic volume, care about traffic quality! Focus on driving visitors to your website, that are actually interested in your company, product or service!

Customer experience optimization means that you focus on reaching people that already have an interest in your services, products or companies. Converting these visitors into customers and buyers will be much easier than somebody that was actually looking for something else and accidentally ended up on your website. Instead of trying to increase traffic, focus on increasing your conversion rates. REMEMBER: There are enough people out there that are ready to buy your product! It makes much more sense to invest in finding them, than to mass-market to everybody! Learn how to do keyword research and use it efficiently, on every single text you publish!

In short: Provide a positive customer experience to your website visitors by offering relevant content to them.Therefore, using keywords is important, but use the right ones to drive the right people to your website.

I still did not answer the questions from the top, so bare with me just a little longer, ok? As I mentioned before, search results are based on many different factors. The search engines give some limited insights on what they take into consideration, but there is no definite information on the details. They don’t want to share this information, as this would make it easier for “cheaters” to manipulate the results in their favor. So what do SEO experts do? They provide educated guesses on what works and what doesn’t. Nobody really knows, what the search engines take into account, so how can you optimize your website when you don’t know what is important? In addition to that, search engines constantly work on their algorithms and it changes all the time. This means, what your SEO expert found out the day before through an experiment, could be outdated today. Providing great customer experience to your website visitors on the other hand is the goal of search engines. Great customer experience is what Google, Bing and other search engines are striving for. When you write for people, search engines will find you. So why do you run after the search engines by doing SEO when you can lead search engines the way?

In short: Search engine optimization follows search engines, search engines follow great customer experience! Who do you think will win this race – SEO or CEO?

What are your thoughts on this? Do you focus on SEO or customer experience?

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How to find Interesting Blog Posts Topics for Your Business Blog

Interesting content is your key to success, which in plain English means: To get targeted readers to keep coming back to your business blog and reading what you write about, you have to write what is interesting to your readers. It is important to find interesting blog posts topics for your business blog on a constant basis. Your posts must be thought through, well written and relevant to your business and your audience. But this is easier said than done! So we will give you some ideas where you can get some inspiration for your business blog!

Brainstorming for blog post topics

The most important step to find interesting blog posts topics for your business blog is to brainstorm. Finding a subject that is interesting, but that you can also write a post about is not always easy. You must really think about what you want your readers to know about, but you also must find something that you know they want to read about. Don’t hesitate to use tools to help you brainstorm. Here are a few ideas to help you in this process:
- You can use forums in your niche to get ideas, and see what are the most popular topics in the industry. Just because other people already wrote about a topic doesn’t mean you can’t. Your writing style, your experience and your knowledge can bring something different to the table, and complete the information given by other writers. It is really important that you chose your topics carefully.
- You can also use the Google Keyword tool to search for related keywords. This might spark an idea in you and you can also see what people are looking for.
- Check out comments posted on your previous posts, or on other posts. It can give you an idea about what your readers want to know, what questions they want answered, and what recurrent topics come out, and need to be developed.
- When you already covered a broad topic, it is also a good idea to try to find other blog post topics that explain certain aspects in more detail. For this you can use a Mind Mapping software to help you broaden your ideas. A few different software are available, for free, online; or you can use the old paper and pen version. One is not better than the other, it just depends of your preferences.
- If you run out of ideas, don’t be afraid to ask your readers what they want to learn about, what topics they would like you to cover. It can help you get a list of ideas started and direct you toward a new topics.

Company news are great blog post topics

Company news are always a good topic. As your blog is an informative tool to enable your readers to be updated on the industry and your business ->use it! Possible blog posts topics for your business blog can be :
- Your company’s participation at a social event. You can talk about event in general and why your company chose to participate. Show some pictures and make it engaging.

- Your employee of the month. This is a great way to give a human aspect to your blog. Don’t forget to refer to people and not only write about abstract topics, like sales and numbers. Present your employee’s background and what he or she represents for your company.

- Did one of your employees accomplish something great outside of the office, like run a marathon, finish his or her degree or published a book? Write about it! This will not only give your employee a feeling of recognition, but also shows that you care about the people that work for you from a different aspect. Show them, that they are more than just a payroll number for you.

- Social effort and engagement. It is important to let your readers know what you do for the community and how you do it. You show them your involvement and a caring side that nowadays every readers is looking for…. Plus you might also teach something to your readers and inspire them to get socially more engaged.

- Training methods. A blog post about your training methods lets your readers know more about your business. It allows them to understand the business in general better and how it functions.

- You can also find inspiration in the daily news. Use Google Alerts to keep you up to date with what people are writing about your keywords. If you find a topic that relates to your business you can develop a certain point of that information to explain your readers more specifically how this affects your industry and your business.

And if you are not sure if your company news is relevant or how to present it to make it interesting, check out other niches and other industry blogs and read how they present themselves. It might direct you on a topic or help you get an feel for what kind of information to share and how to present this information.

Share your Experience in your business blog

Your readers are interested in you. Don’t be afraid to share your experience. You can give your opinion on a certain product supporting it by evidence and your personal experience using it. You can also write about yourself to give a human touch to your blog. It solidifies that trust relationship you try to develop with your readers. It helps them feel more important knowing you are comfortable sharing a little about yourself. Use this once in a while to show a little about the person behind the blog, but remember to keep your business and what it represents the center of interest. Sharing your experience can also mean sharing what problems your company faced and how you resolved them (such as customers complaints, or a not so successful service or product, or today’s effects of the economic situation on your company).

Blog readers also like to read about the development of new products, so this should be included in your list of ideas! Keep them updated on what you are working on and share your progress, ask them for ideas and what features you should concentrate on! It will not only give you something to write about, but also helps you to make a winning product! It is important to show your personal growth as well as your business growth to underline the strong points of your business and let your readers know you can handle challenges.

Point of Focus

It is also important when searching for interesting blog posts topics for your business blog to follow a pattern. Write about topics that are related. For example, you can chose a broad topic and then get into more details in following posts. For example, write  one blog post with a broad description the Social Media Sites available to companies, and then write different post explaining which Social Media Site is most appropriate for a more particular type of business. Then you can interlink these blog posts and make your blog “sticky”. You can also pick a topic about the industry and then apply it to your business more specifically…

If you really have a writing block and find no inspiration, read your older posts. It can help you find a topic to expand or update. The importance is to follow a certain logic so that you don’t get off track and lose your readers attention. A good way to do this is to follow a pattern in your writing. Maybe make a list of how to organize your posts: first a post on the industry, then a post on company news, then a post reviewing products, then an answer to customers, then a personal experience, and back to the industry… and so on.

These steps will help you to find interesting blog posts topics for your business blog. Find a way that works for you and that you are comfortable with so that you never run out of ideas. Remember brainstorming is the major step to take, and company news are always good information to present, but don’t forget to ask yourself, if  your audience is interested in this topic, and if you as a reader would want to read it!

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How to Create an Online Corporate Identity for your Company?

Brand Recognition, or what is CI?

An important point about creating an online Corporate Identity for your company, is to make your brand recognizable. You want readers, followers to find and recognize you. But how do you do that? Well, that is why you need a Corporate Identity for. It includes your logo, domain, your company font, company colors and also your tone of voice  By following all the tips below, you do everything for readers, customers, followers to know who you are, what you do, and how you do it. Your online CI defines your company, and let your customers recognize you through different tools.

Your Corporate Identity defines your company. You need to choose it carefully and establish it strongly because it is attached to your company for its life time. It is what represents who and what you are on the web. Whether it is online or on the market your CI must have strong impact on your target market and be appealing. There are a few things to know on how to create an Online Corporate Identity for your Company to make the impact desired.

Avatar

To  create an online CI for your company, you need to create an avatar with your logo, preferably a customized logo for each profile, as the image sizes differ from profile to profile. You want to create a great first impression and not have a fuzzy or distorted profile picture ruin your grand introduction to potential customers. Make sure you create your avatar the way you want it, and take time to do it. Changing it will make your online CI weak and confuse your followers.

User Name and Logo

Select only one user name for different forums or when putting comment. An exeption might be when the Username is limited, so create a “short” version of your company and stick to that one as your alternative. Always write your username exactly the same way. Keep your logo the same. Don’t change the colors, the font nor the style. By keeping a steady image representation of your company, fraud is less likely to be possible, and you underline the cohesion and determination of your business.

Tone of Voice

When writing it is important to be consistent. You also establish an online CI for your company through your writing style and the tone of voice you use. Make sure to pick one that is appropriate with the image of your company you try to depict and adapted to the target market you go after. You can’t write very technical posts and then switch the way you explain things to a ” for dummies” style. If you keep one writing style and one tone of voice, your readers will always know you are the one writing , and you do know what you’re talking about. You want to make sure that every subject seems as important as the other ones.

Backlinks – Domain

Remember that the domain name you choose is the name that will represent your business. It is, after your logo,  the far most important part of your company’s CI  because it states who you are, what you do, and how you will be identified and recognized. When you state  your domain in backlinks, make sure once again to be consistent. Always use www.yourdomainname.com or yourdomainname.com – pick one and stick to it. You want to make it easy for people to remember it and recognize it. Also if you decide to use uppercase letters, make sure to always use them to write your domain the same way every single time. Your online CI will be stronger if you always use the same format and style – choose from www.yourdomainname.com or www.YourDomainName.com, and never change it. Show stability.

Remember in what ever you do, constancy in how you do it is very important to establish an Online CI for your company. Brainstorm, choose, and don’t change the tools you use to create it.

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What should Your Business Tweet about?

So you took the first step and decided to use Social Media for your business. It is a great step, however you do need to know what to do with it. After you found out what Social Media Sites to use, and you personalized your profile it, it is time to use Twitter and get that cycle going. So what should you tweet about?

Tweet about: Industry News

One important topic your business should tweet about is what’s going on in your industry. To inform, update, and keep your followers interested, it is important to regularly post a tweet about the latest industry news. It shows your involvement and that you keep your business up to date and on top of things. Let your readers know what is the latest great innovation in the industry, and how the industry is going. This helps your readers understand more about your business in the broader picture.

Tweet about: Company News

Of course, another very important topic is your own business. You ought to inform your followers constantly about what is going with your business. You need to tweet about your companies news. Tweet about a new product or service, but not only that. Tweet about how your company will be/ was social involved. Let your readers know about your business evolution in the industry and on the market. You want them to be aware of what your company does and how it is done. This is part of building a trust relationship with your readers. You keep them constantly informed so they can follow you. By tweeting about your company news you give your followers a reason to keep following you. Also, Twitter is a good opportunity to inform customers about special offers. But remember to avoid pushy talk when using Social Media: the ultimate goal is to inform, gain attention of readers, and keep your followers!

Tweet about: Customer Complaints

Twitter is a great Social Media tool to communicate with your customers. This means, if your customers have complaints it is a great way for them to communicate any problems to you and for you to answer them. Don’t be scared to receive complaints, no one is perfect, and it is by answering and fixing your customers complaints that you will improve your business. When you tweet a complaint answer to your customers you make them feel important and show them their satisfaction matters. You allow your followers to give you feedback to improve your business on different levels. Give different answers in your tweet, not the same typical complaints answer. Customized your tweet to the customer and the situation. Show them they are one entity and their personal satisfaction is important.

Tweet about: Sharing Ideas/Asking Advice

Your business should also tweet about new ideas. You can then engage your readers, to get their feedback and have them share their ideas as well. One of the goals of social media is to make your followers involved, and allow more communication. Other businesses from the industry following you can also benefit fro your tweets and help you get ideas on different topics. You can tweet about an idea you have, to share it. But you can also tweet about doubts or questions and ask for advice. Social Media allows you to get opinion more directly. So take advantage of it. don’t be afraid to present your ideas and ask questions. Twitter helps you getting the information to your followers, but it also is a great tool for you to get the information you need from your followers. It is a give-and-take virtual relationship between customers and businesses, to enhance communication and take share ideas faster and more efficiently.

Tweet about: Company Blog

When you tweet for your business, you have in your hands a great way to present your blog. Tweet about your latest posts. Let your followers know where to find the information and what new topic you presents. But make sure you do not only tweet about your business. Include tweets about other blog post as well. Use links to blog posts that are relevant to your business (not from your competitors obviously) or posts about your industry, the market, the economy, and so on… It is important to show your readers you care more than just about your little bubble and that you get inform, read other people’s thoughts and share them. It makes you look involved, informed, curious and willing to always improve and bring your readers along. Plus, by tweeting about posts that are not yours you might be able to reach other possible followers that didn’t know about you. The posts writers might tweet about you as well, and allow more people to be aware of your presence in the Social Media community.

Tweet about:Yourself

An important point to remember when you tweet for your business it to be human. Do not just tweet about your company in general, or other companies, tweet about people. Have names behind ideas and topics to show your readers it is real and not just a computerized message that wasn’t thought through. Be clear and tweet about what interest your readers. Have a purpose in your tweets. Don’t just post something to post something. Remember you want to keep your followers interested. So show them that you understand them.

To put it in a nutshell: business should tweet about the company and the industry news, use tweets to share ideas and ask for advice, present interesting blogs – not just their business blog, but also others from the industry, and take advantage of twitter to answer their customers complaints and improve their satisfaction.

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Your Social Media profile is the way to give your business an identity online, to create an image in the heads of your customers and in the long haul, to create a brand. It is therefore important to personalize your Social Media Profile to make sure it is recognizable, to make it attractive for readers and not plain like any other profile. Remember Your Social Media Profile is the representation of your business online. Here is a “How to Guide” to personalize your Social Media Profile.

The Human Touch

Your Social Media Profile will have a better impact on people if there is a face and a name attached to it. Don’t be afraid to associate your name to your business, after all you are the reason why it exist. You deserve the credit! If you even put a picture, readers can get the human feel behind your Social Media Profile. You are then not just a web page, not an entity, but so much more. Edit a biography about your business, and also write about yourself. Your readers want to learn about your business. By personalizing your Social Media profile you allow your reader to learn more about you, to see who you are and what you do. So let your profile show that you are human! You can even give your profile a certain tone in your writing, use humor – but don’t not overboard!

The Caring Touch

Your profile is a great tool to show your reader your involvement in society, the topics that are important to you and so on. You can personalize your Social Media profile by showing how your company cares about its employees and the community. Talk about events in which your company participated: you can put comments about blog post you wrote on the event, or you can create and attach  a photo album of your employees at the events to your profile . Share about events within the company: present your employee of the month, make a comment about your company’s Christmas party. Show that you care! And you can also ask your readers to give you feedback on events they know about and organization that need sponsors, so that they can participate in your profile personalization.

The Visual Touch

Make sure you filled in everything you can to inform your visitors, fans or followers about your business. Don’t leave a blank section. If there is nothing to say in this section fill it with a short video about your business or a specific product; or make a slide show of pictures presenting different aspect of your business. Another very important advice: Customized the profile itself to fit your overall Corporate Identity. Change the colors so that they represent your company’s colors. Add your logo as a background or at the top of the page. Modify the set up to show you put effort into it, to have a profile that makes people interested in your business. You don’t want readers to skip your profile because they can’t read what you wrote, or because it is just another black and white page. Make sure you choose colors, font style and size that allow a good visualization of your profile. You want the information to get to your readers, so make it easy for them to find it and read it!

Answer!

Give your customers feedback an answer as promptly as possible. Don’t be scared of complaints, the way you answer them will show other readers that you care and will give your profile the interactive communication feel that it is supposed to have. Also update your profile regularly. You don’t want to have a presentation on a product/service you don’t offer anymore, or numbers that are not accurate with your current situation. It is important to keep your profile “living” to show your constant presence and evolution. Answer to customer responses, whether positive and negative and show that you listen! Remember that Social Media helps you develop a trust relationship between your customers and your business. This step in personalizing your Social Media Profile help you strengthen this relationship and keep it going.

After you set up, customize, and personalize your business Social Media profile: Ask yourself: Does my profile create an positive and inviting image in the head of my customers and is my brand recognizable? A well personalized Social Media Profile will attract the right followers as they will be able to directly see who you are and if you match what they are looking for. And keep in mind to have a good balance between the social and business aspect of your profile. Oh, and don’t forget to add your business URL!!

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The True ROI of Social Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing is not FREE! You are investing your time and therefore money in Social Media Marketing, and as any business investments you want to know what Return On Investments you can gain from it? Legitimate question! You should wonder, and you should know, because understanding and learning about the ROI of Social Media Marketing allows you to use it efficiently and really promote your business in the most effective way. So what is the ROI of Social Media Marketing? Keep reading to find out!

The quick answer: The ROI of Social Media Marketing is what you want it to be. Do you want to focus on better customer service? Or attract side markets to your business? Or may be you want to develop a loyal and trusting relationship with your customer? Well, then concentrate on those numbers. For some  metric examples and numbers on how to measure your Social Media Marketing check the end of the article!

Useful information

One of the first goal of Social Media Marketing is to inform. Your Social Media tools enable you to provide useful information about your business to educate your customers, and inspire potential customers that they need your product or service. The R.O.I. of Social Media Marketing then, is shown by analyzing how many of your current customers you have been able to keep and turn them into a loyal customer base and how many of new potential clients you have been able to turn into real customers. Another goal of Social Media Marketing is to teach your customers how you differ from your competition, explain what makes your product or service unique and the best solution for their problem or need, and also why there is a advantage for them and the rest of the society to follow you. The ROI of Social Media Marketing here is to see how many of your customers have started following you instead of your competitors.

Branding

Social Media Marketing helps your business gain an identity online. You establish a reputation for your business through Social Media tools, which allows targeted readers, customers and other businesses in your industry to recognize your brand, to recognize who you are and what your business represents. On the long term, the loyalty from your customers gained is the ROI of Social Media Marketing efforts. On shorter term, your ROI is the increasing number of customers and potential customers aware of your business existence on the market, and your presence online.

Customer Support and Product/Service Improvement

With Social Media tools you can reach more customers, but most of all you incite them to engage in improving what your business needs to change. You can make them feel involved, create communication and have them generate new ideas for your business – new ideas, innovation, or improvements or product differentiation, all of them will help you to stay ahead of the competition. This helps you understanding the need of your targeted readers and answer those needs the most efficiently possible. The ROI of Social Media Marketing is the feedback you receive from your customers and see how you are able to provide a better response to your customers.

Trust and a Trusting Network

Social Media Marketing has been proven to help businesses create a whole new relationship with their customers and business partners. The customer support ( as describe previously) enabled through the use of such tools enables you to drive a connection between your business and your customers. The constant attention given to your customers and your ability to keep their attention as well, gives your business the great opportunity to create, develop and strengthen a strong trust relationship with your customers. You, therefore, grow your network, on strong basis, for a long term commitment.

The ROI of Social Media Marketing can’t really be measured as a financial result, at least not initially. But it is measured through an analysis of your business, its online presence, the awareness you were able to develop, and quantity and quality of the followers you were able to gain and keep, and the identity you created for your business.

Social Media Marketing ROI Metrics

Here are a couple of numbers and metrics that you should keep an eye on to measure your Social Media Marketing ROI. But always remember to gather these information before you start with your Social Media Campaign, so you can compare the before and after results !

• Search Engine results and website traffic
• Brand recognition
• Customer complaints
• Customer complaints response rate
• Product returns
• Negative comments/positive comments about your company online
• One-time vs. returning customers
• Backlinks
• Time savings (for example, when you refer your customers to helpful blog articles rather than answering them all over and over again!)

These are just a few metrics that will help you determine the profitability of Social Media Marketing, but there are many more. It depends very much on where you want to focus on. Building a Social Media Marketing campaign is more than just setting up a Facebook page and following random people on Twitter. Focusing on specific aspects of Social Media will bring you more targeted results, so establish a strategy first and monitor the results!

Social Media Marketing is a long term process, where data analysis, and not dollars amount, tells you how successful you are.

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This video answers the question, whether Social Media is a Fad or not! What do you think?

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