Category: Internet Marketing

Social media and blog posts are a boon to marketers and business owners. Just a decade ago when we paid thousands of dollars for advertising and marketing (which we still do), it has suddenly become possible to get listed in social sites where people interested in your services can try your business and leave a great review. And of course, great reviews attract more customers and clients and help you become richer. It is not all that easy as I am making it sound, is it? Certainly not. How to Handle Bad Reviews and Negative Feedback The downside of social media, blogging and Web 2.0 is that people leave scathing and critical feedback and reviews. Negative feedback certainly hurts companies and individuals more than a lot of positive reviews bring business. This is mostly because those who want to do business with you will want to look for complaints about your service or products, so that they know what the worst case scenario is like. They do not want to read positive feedback but are desperately looking for negative ones. And they will certainly find them. Once a potential customer or client comes across negative reviews or feedback, it is easy to assume that it is the end of the story. Thankfully, it is only an opportunity to prove to not only the infuriated customer who left bad reviews on social sites about you, but also a great public relations exercise to attract those picky but serious clients and customers who want to know how you deal with irate customers (just in case they eventually get angry as well). Thus, it is important for marketers, PR executives and small business owners to understand that negative feedback or reviews are not necessarily evil. They are an opportunity to fix your mess and build newer relationships that actually turn the tables in your favor. Let us take a look at a few things that you should be doing whether or not you have received negative reviews and feedback. How to Fix Bad Reviews and Negative Feedback The most important public relations rule is to ensure that no contact is wasted and that relationships are built with anyone who can be helpful someday. This rule includes irate customers and those who leave negative feedback. Negative reviews provide an opportunity to tell the world how you deal with criticism and how best you can compensate someone who is genuinely angry with what they got from your business. The key then is to emphasize you empathy towards your customers and clients. If someone leaves negative feedback saying they do not like the product they bought or the way they were treated by your staff, be empathic. Tell them they could visit your store or office so that you can find ways to help them again. Do not offer freebies or declare lazily that you will do better next time. Offer to undo the damages. Talk to them as you would talk to a friend who is mad at you for not being treated well, or for not attending their birthday party. The answer lies in staying classy, humble, kind and genuine. It is difficult to do all this when you are running a business but as I said, negative feedbacks are a great way to build public relations. Importance of Humility and Empathy in Handling Bad Reviews Once you have interacted with the person and are sure that the customer or client is happy with the damage control, leave a comment on the same website where you found the negative review by saying you are glad that the person stopped by and gave you another chance to undo. Humility and empathy with a touch of class are qualities that will take PR professionals and marketers a long way. It is important to know where you are usually reviewed and target those sites almost every day so that you do not miss any negative feedback. By being proactive, you can turn negative reviews and offensive feedbacks into public relations opportunities. It is certainly hard work but it will pay off in the long run. Clients and customers who specifically look for negative feedback are many. And they will be glad to know that they are in safe hands even when things go wrong.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a set of techniques, methods and/or studies that are aimed at improving the positioning of pages in a search engine. This means, when a user types a query into the search engine, the search engine looks for the keyword and brings back results that it thinks are the most important, in an order. The purpose of SEO is to make one (or several) of your website pages, to appear in the top organic search results. What Is Search Engine Optimization? The term Search Engine Optimization was first used by John Audette of the Multimedia Marketing Group (MMG). The goal thence was to encourage practices that would help a website to perform better than its competitors with respect to keyword. Also, the idea was to initiate methods that help a website to secure top places in search results. It is very important not to confuse organic results with sponsored results (advertisements). Off-Page and On-Page Factors Influencing Search Engine Optimization Among these techniques and methods, we can divide SEO into two distinct fronts: The On-Page and Off-Page methods. On-Page methods are characterized by techniques that alter or improve internal aspects of the site. Off-page methods are characterized by external aspects such as the age of the domain, inbound and outbound links, etc. On-Page factors that affect search engine optimization are page titles, meta tags, heading tags, alt attribute on images, domain, URL File and most importantly, content. Off-Page factors include number of outbound links, quality of external links, anchor text of external links and the age of a domain. The factors mentioned above are just like scratching the surface as there are more than 200 factors that we need to consider and all of those factors may be necessary and important for us to ensure SEO success. Sometimes, it is easier to understand that an SEO professional performs ‘reverse engineering’ in search engines, by testing modifications in the pages of a website in order to detect possible signs of a new factor. SEO Does Not Have Short Cuts With all this in mind, we must also remember that SEO is not a short cut method to ensure great placement in search results. It is never easy to ensure that your website appears in the first couple of pages of search results. We can always try but we can’t assume that by following a certain method, we can be assured of the top place in search results. Organic results can’t be bought and the reason why certain websites are placed at the top depend on certain rules and matrices decided by search engines, also known as algorithms. Google’s Panda algorithm is one such example. What Businesses and Companies Must Bear in Mind, When It Comes to SEO Search engines have their own criteria to define which web page is more important among a set of pages. The off page and on page factors that I described above are simply the tip of the ice berg and are not to be taken as the end all of SEO. It is always better to consult and SEO professional who understand the business of ensuring that a certain page is above all the results. By hiring a great SEO professional and a content writer, you may be able to get more than what you bargained for. Many of our clients have often requested us to tell them how SEO really works. While we always attempt to explain the process of search engine optimization, it is difficult to generalize rules to everyone, because there are hardly any. When we are repeatedly approached by our clients to tell them how we successfully managed to get them on top of the search results when they tried for years without such success, we often tell them what everyone knows, that is, to create great content that can be shared across networks. And as a company, we have always believed in creating original content that is viral. At the end of the day, it is again important to remember both on page and off page factors that influence search engine rankings. Other than those factors, only great content and social sharing will help companies to reach the top spot in search results.

It is easier to start an e-commerce store but to ensure that tour store is popular is a big task. In fact, no matter how much we spend on advertising, it is always difficult to get people to talk about your store. This word-of-mouth popularity is what we often seek. For this to happen, we must often resort to viral marketing. Viral Marketing Is a Great Way to Promote E-Stores Viral marketing is one of the best techniques to promote your ecommerce business. It allows you to advertise your products throughout the world and thankfully, it’s not as complicated as it seems. Viral marketing is based on the analysis of human behavior and using the technique of social marketing. When I talk about social marketing, I mean using Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook and other networking sites in order to ensure that people are talking about your store. Simply put, for your e-commerce store to go viral, you will need to get down there and begin to engage as much as possible. Principle Behind Viral Marketing The principle of viral marketing is to entice your customers, your resellers and all your other contacts to voluntarily promote your business. Your ecommerce store will quickly develop if one of your customers is talking about your store in front of 6 people around him, and if in turn these 6 people speak to 6 other people each. To succeed in your viral marketing campaign, the first thing to do is to define the message you want to convey. This message should be short and easy to remember. Then, you will need to choose your target audience and take action. Internet promotion is a great thing and it allows you to choose several solutions for creating and animating networks. Among these tools we find blogs, discussion forums, campaigns, e-mailing, offers of discounts or gifts, and affiliate programs. Referrals, Recommendations and Letters of Gratitude The integration of ‘send to friend’ button is an interesting technique that allows you to increase the visibility of your website. This button allows a person reading an article on your ecommerce website to send a link to friends or colleagues. You can also encourage them to promote your site in exchange for a gift, but this may sound too intrusive unless done the right way. You can also ask your visitors to earn money by publishing a link to your store on their site and engage in an through an affiliate program. Such a strategy allows creating external links to improve your SEO passage from search engines. The idea is to reward the efforts of your customer, and encourage them to continue promoting your ecommerce store. Another effective technique, but less used, is to send a thank you letter to each person who is related to you. All that you would need to do is send a single sentence email that expresses gratitude for their initiative and reward them with a discount, perhaps. This kind of reward drives customers to recommend your web store to more people. Viral Marketing Is Possible with a Little Effort and Hard Work At the end of the day, we need to remember that the web has changed a lot in the last couple of years. It is more social and personalized than ever. In order to succeed online, we need to be as honest, transparent and social as possible. We will need to ensure that no stones are left unturned in our efforts towards viral marketing. Using all the social networks effectively, rewarding loyal customers, surprising new customers with discounts when they do not expect it, requesting for feedback and recommendations from clients and customers and asking them to refer their friends to you are all ways to increase your success at viral marketing. Personalized searches on Google highlight the importance of web reviews and recommendations. This is yet another reasons why you should consider negative feedback and reviews as opportunities for public relation efforts. It may take a little effort on your side, but viral marketing is certainly not out of reach. If a little effort is going to pay huge dividends, then a little extra effort will take us a long way ahead.

Psychological theories have had a profound effect on the way we understand human behavior. It does not come to us as a surprise that Internet behavior can be judged, assessed and predicted with the help of the very same psychological theories. Of particular interest are the learning theories, which fall under the school of behavior theories. What Is Operant Conditioning? Operant conditioning is a term that was coined by B.F. Skinner in 1937. He stated that people do not merely learn and unlearn without understanding the environment. People participate and learn based on environmental rewards and punishments. In other words, when an individual visitor to a website experiences something positive (a reward), he will be motivated to visit that website again. When this reward continues to be given repeatedly, the visitor learns to visit that website regularly, now that he is conditioned to that in an operant manner. Operant conditioning is a very important concept when it comes to digital marketing. Operant Conditioning in the Field of Digital Marketing Behavior school of psychology insists that all our behavior is learned and that there isn’t much that is innate apart from instincts and drives. This thought is very important in the field of digital marketing as most people learn to view particular information either negatively or positively only because they have learned to do so. For instance, emotional appeals in digital marketing have been successful in times of disasters and threats. During peace and relative prosperity, emotional appeal is not very successful and people learn to avoid it, finding it overbearing and unnecessary. This act of learning that emotional appeal is unrewarding can be traced to operant conditioning principles. Rewarding Your Target Audience If you are a company that sells products or services and want people to visit your website often, you need to reward them for doing so. This reward does not have to be tangible and can be subliminal. A well-designed website that is pleasing to the eyes, when compared to your competitors can be a reward to your visitors. They will learn to make repeated visits to your websites solely because it is a rewarding experience. Likewise, the products and services that you sell need to be rewarding. In other words, what you offer has to be valuable and the customer or client must feel rewarded when he makes a purchase. This continued experience of being rewarded with great products and services will ensure that your visitors are loyal and faithful and that they keep returning back to your site. How to Condition Your Target Audience to Keep Coming Back In order to make operant conditioning successful on your website, you need to list down all the things that can be rewarding and punishing to your visitors. A deep insight into the competition, trends and tastes of your visitors, user experience of using the website, actual worth of your products and services and deep knowledge about a changing world are all very important in ensuring that your visitors, clients and customers feel rewarded. This sense of being rewarded is what will make them learn to come back to you. This rewarding experience will ensure that your business stays afloat and makes a profit. Thus, it is a very important strategy to learn how operant conditioning works, and how one must ensure that clients, visitors and customers are rewarded not tangibly but subliminally through great products and services. You do not need to bribe your customers and clients by giving discounts, offers and gifts. That is nothing but a bribe and will never be a sustained source of operant conditioning. You need to condition your target audience by being genuine, and by rewarding your target audience with quality, care, appeal and by building trust. Bribing with Discounts Will Not Help, but a Rewarding Business Experience Does Digital marketing will then have to be as genuine and rewarding as it can be. There should be no room for distractions or doubts, and companies and businesses must ensure that at the end of the day, whoever makes business with them feels rewarded. This sense of being rewarded is what will help people to learn that doing business with you is important and worthy. It requires deep psychological insight but is not difficult to practice as long as you know that your target audience likes to be pampered not with gifts and discounts, but with great quality of services and products.

Floating a business website is not only exciting but a mandatory thing to do in an Internet-driven world. That being said, many people encounter a number of doubts and incertitudes which need to be answered and clarified before plunging into the act of going live with a website. One of the most common questions that business owners and entrepreneurs have is about price listings. Business owners and entrepreneurs often wonder if they should post their prices on their websites or should act smooth and elegant, and state that they should be contacted for a price quote. The answer is certainly, “it depends”. To decide whether one should post their prices on their website or not, one must evaluate the kind of business they are running. Who Should List Prices and Who Should Not Small businesses, entrepreneurs and people who work from their homes stand to gain if they list their prices on their websites. This is because, the kind of people who buy their products or services are price conscious. Similarly, professionals and consultants who typically work for corporations and wealthy individuals should not state their prices, as they would sound cheap. Publishing one’s prices on their website may come across as a very down-market and unprofessional thing to do, if the target audience is affluent, professional and corporate. It always helps to assess the kind of target audience that a business wants to attract. Pricing Also Depends On the Kind of Services Offered The question of publishing prices does not only depend upon the target audience. It also depends on the kind of products and services one offers. Commodities, goods and products that are manufactured are better off when their prices are listed on the website. Services that require a lot of research, analysis and background work come with a lot of variables. It is difficult to state a price and abide by it. You may feel you are being taken for a ride when you have to accept a price that you have stated on your website, but the actual work is back breaking. In such a circumstance, quoting an hourly rate or offering to send a quote after having an initial discussion is a better approach than listing a price menu. Disadvantages of Listing Prices on Websites There is also another school of thought which believes that nobody who sells services should list their prices on their websites. By listing prices, we are essentially pigeonholing our services into a price category leading to prejudiced judgments about our work. It is of course convenient and a lot of people may choose you because you have your prices listed. However, entrepreneurs and professionals who are good at what they do, and those who seek to grow professionally should not list their prices. Price listings can cut short business dialogues during which a lot of networking can take place. Even if your client cannot afford you, he or she will have an opportunity to understand your working style and eventually come back to you, when they can afford your prices. Not stating your prices explicitly will give you the freedom to work harder and be motivated. It will allow you to charge an amount of money that reflects your experience, talent and knack. The Pros and Cons of Listing and Not Listing Prices There is no clear solution for this dilemma and it all depends on business practices that we choose to follow. Listing prices is very easy on the surface but may lead to discontent, lack of motivation and a poor quality of work eventually. You may also risk being treated with prejudice when you state your price. On the other hand, not stating your prices on the website may lead to a lot of potential clients feeling intimidated about your mysterious pricing strategy. It may also lead to a sense of lack of transparency, which many people in an Internet age respect. To conclude, it is a good idea to list your prices if you offer products. It is also a good idea to list your prices if you offer services to small businesses, individuals and if your services do not entail a lot of variables. However, if you handle corporations, affluent individuals, and if your services require a lot of forethought and research, you shouldn’t be listing your prices on your website.

With Internet dramatically changing to suit the needs of a new millennium, people have begun to wonder what the future of optimizing their content with respect to search engines is going to be. The answer seems to be pretty clear. Older SEO Practices vs. New SEO Older practices of black hat SEO is not going to work anymore and Google and other search engines know how to figure out when content has been optimized against good practices. In fact, SEO professionals have long realized the need for hard work that is consistent and authentic but clients have often pressed for quicker results, leading to shoddy practices of link buying and selling. With the advent of social media and its popularity, one thing is for certain. Social Media is the new SEO as much as content is. Why Great Content and Social Signals Are Important Great content and social media will ensure SEO optimization like no other technique will because these are not related to various algorithms that search engines like Google usually enforce. Algorithms change often in order to make sure that useless and spammy content are weeded out, and only quality and relevant content appear in search results. Again, the underlining aspect is that of great and quality content. One cannot escape creating quality content and one cannot escape marketing such content over social media. These two aspects will remain the most important feature of SEO in the years to come. The Rationale Behind New SEO Strategies Companies and individuals must realize that when they choose to optimize content for search engines, they must first ensure that their content is worthy enough to be shared. The purpose of content is not to drive traffic back to your site. The purpose of your content is to educate, inform and help your readers. This eventually ensures that the website where such great content is published (your own website) gets all the love from search engines, because readers love great content. Importance of SERP and Content Marketing Social Media Results Pages need to be given more importance and the crux of SEO will depend upon who shares your content with whom. With that in mind, social signals like the number of likes, retweets, endorsements and pins become more important than getting backlinks from shady individuals. In order to get positive social signals, you will need to ensure that your content is great. This content can come in the form of great blog posts, whitepapers, eBooks and interviews. There is never a hard and fast rule about how much content must be published. Content that is timely, relevant and useful to readers will win over content that is transient and shallow. By hiring great content writers, researchers and editors, you will ensure that your website provides value to its visitors and not trick them into clicking on links while you hope for more business. Such practices are shady, not respected and totally not professional. In fact, buying backlinks, purchasing traffic and manipulating with your website script will worsen your reputation and will negatively affect your business. The solution then is to ensure that everything is real, authentic and of great quality. Of course, this is not easy and it is not cheap either. New SEO Is Cheaper and More Effective Neil Patel wrote in a blog post titled Why Content Marketing Is the New SEO and stated that he spent $25,200 on creating great infographics and generated 2,512,596 visitors, 41,142 backlinks from 3741 unique domains and lots of business. If he had chosen to buy those 2,512,596 visitors, 41,142 links and 41,359 tweets, he would have totally spent $1,072,905. Obviously, spending $25k on great infographics proved to be cheaper and more effective. All that you need to do to ensure that you are sticking to the protocols of new SEO is to make sure that your content is detailed. You must also create great infographics update your social profiles regularly and write posts with great titles. Of course, you will also need to be consistent with what you do. New SEO is not only cheaper than traditional SEO practices, but also more effective and authentic. Sometimes, the solution is easier than we think it is.

Digital marketing strategies for senior citizens can be a tricky subject. Senior citizens in North America and Europe are wealthy, active and tend to spend more than other age groups in the society. This makes it extremely crucial for marketers to target this segment in an intelligent and effective manner. Avoid Ageism There are many myths and misconceptions related to senior citizens and a digital marketing campaign’s success depends upon how well we break those myths and misconceptions. Most people profess ageist attitudes which invariably seep into marketing campaigns. Well meaning, harmless assumptions about ‘senior citizens’ can have a devastating effect on marketing results as they smack of ageism and prejudices related to age. People of no age group wants to be treated with bias and prejudice, especially concerning their age. Most marketing campaigns tend to assume that senior citizens belong to a singular demographic, and they don’t. Marketing professionals usually group senior citizens under 3 categories. Digital Marketing for the GI Generation The first group ranges above 74 years, knows as the GI generation. They do not use smartphones and tablets as much as younger senior citizens do. They prefer to use either desktops or laptops and use emails as their preferred means of online communication. They also prefer to find information through search engines rather than on social media. A marketing campaign that is targeted at this group needs to take into account certain cultural attitudes that were prevalent during the time of GI generation. They prefer stability, trust and brands that are well known. If you are a company that is new and are not familiar to the GI generation, you might want to utilize strategic placement of banner ads. The toe of the language needs to be consistent, directive and almost imperative to take action. “Click here for more information”, “Find out if you are eligible”, “What’s in it for me?”, etc are some of the ways you can get the attraction of this age group. Digital Marketing for the Silent Generation The second group among senior citizens is that of those who are currently aged between 65 and 74. They are often referred to as the silent generation. This demographic usually is very affluent, and tries to live a very active and independent life. They are also the ones who spend a lot of money on luxury travel. They use the Internet more avidly than the GI generation and tend to be well versed with important social media sites like Facebook and LinkedIn. They may however not use social media consistently enough to be targeted through social media ads. Instead, email marketing and strategic placement of banner ads seem to do the trick. Digital Marketing for Baby Boomers The third group consists of people who will achieve senior citizen status within the next 10 years. They are aged between 55 and 65 and typically belong to the Baby Boomer generation. Most of them are at the throes of their careers and hold very responsible posts, and tend to have a lot of disposable income. They also use smartphones and tablets similar to younger adults and are the easiest of the older demographics to reach.  Digital marketing strategies can include email marketing, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter marketing and banner ad placements. Guidelines to Follow with Respect to Marketing When it comes to senior citizens, marketing copywriters should never make in ageist remarks. Most importantly, you should not make seniors feel old. The key to marketing success is to have an effective search engine marketing campaign in place. As this group utilizes email more frequently than the rest of us, an effective email marketing campaign is important as well. Security certificates, trusted logos and licenses will help you to gain the trust of this skeptical demographic group, which means you must also be clear and concise with your communication style. It is good to use black text against white background and vibrant imagery. Using a direct and businesslike tone will appeal to them. Following these guidelines will help marketing professionals to create a successful digital marketing campaign targeted at senior citizens. At the end of the day, clarity, truthfulness and business acumen will help in reaching out to this increasingly important demographic.

Using Twitter is undoubtedly the first step a company or enterprise would make towards digital marketing. Twitter is undeniably the most important social media tool out there and probably the most efficient of them all. An often neglected aspect about Twitter is the profile picture, which shows up each time you tweet or engage in a conversation. Why Is a Twitter Profile Picture Important? Psychological research has consistently proved that profile pictures can elicit subliminal responses among users which can make or break initial opinions. With this in mind, Twitter users must ensure that they put their best foot forward. The profile picture helps you and your brand to be recognized by even those who do not follow you but read your tweets when someone else tweets you often. Thus, a Twitter profile picture is crucial to brand identity and personal identity of the Twitter user. Should You Use Your Real Photo? Most people tend to wonder what the Twitter profile must be, and if it should be a real picture. The answer is, yes. A Twitter profile picture has to be your real picture and must clearly be the photo that you would choose to best identify with. Twitter Profile Pictures of Companies and Organizations If we are talking about an official Twitter account of a company, one can either use the logo as the profile picture or the picture of the company’s headquarters, especially if the building is classy enough. However, if the office space is rented and if you plan to move your headquarters soon, it may not be a great idea to upload the picture of the actual location. In such a circumstance, it is best practice to use the logo of your company or enterprise. Twitter Profile Pictures of Individuals If you are an employee or have a Twitter account that is professional/personal but is not the official Twitter account of a company, you must your clear face picture as your Twitter profile image. This is extremely crucial in ensuring trust, confidence and reliability among your followers. A person who uses graphically designed images as a Twitter profile picture will have less credibility and may even be mistaken for spam. For this reason alone, it is important to use an image that clearly shows your picture in a professional and stylish manner. How to Choose the Best Twitter Profile Picture? You do not have to hire a fashion photographer to set up your Twitter profile picture. You could just ask one of your friends or colleagues to take your picture on a Smartphone against a professional looking background. You need to make sure that you are dressed in formal attire and not a T-shirt, as that can send a message of you being sloppy or laidback. No one who wants to project an image of professionalism should wear a t-shirt and take pictures for their social media profiles. This doesn’t mean you need to wear an expensive suit for your picture, but that you should wear collared shirts and be clean shaven (if you are a man). The key is to appear as trustworthy and professional as you can. Twitter users do judge you by the way you look, and it is crucial for you to ensure that your followers think you are professional. No matter how much we try to deceive ourselves, the way we dress and carry ourselves leave lasting images. Creating a Professional Twitter Persona Carl Jung spoke about persona, which is an image that we use to hide our real identity. This persona need not be a fake one and must in fact be the best image you can portray to your followers. Your Twitter persona should thus elicit positive responses and should encourage people to follow you. Whether we like it or not, many people follow or unfollow us based on how our profile pictures look. We cannot afford to lose even those biased followers who may one day turn out to be prospective customers. The key is to appear as professional, pleasant, and appealing as possible and avoid images that hide the person you are. It is one of the simplest actions that could catapult your Twitter account to success and all it takes is a professional looking profile picture.

Companies and businesses usually encounter a lot of difficulties while trying to promote their products and services on Facebook. While it is easier and more effective to engage customers and clients on Twitter, Facebook isn’t without merit. However, most companies tend to use it wrongly and not optimize their content correctly. Facebook Is Different from Other Social Networks Facebook requires a different kind of engagement and is inherently a very different platform when compared with LinkedIn or Twitter. Facebook is more personal, and requires a certain sense of affection towards those who are fans of your business page. The page administrator needs to understand that Facebook optimization depends upon many factors including the kind of post that is shared, the time when it shared and the language that is used. Facebook is a very visual platform. IT may not be as visual as Pinterest or Instagram but it certainly started as a place where people shared each other’s photographs and left comments or liked each others photographs. That tradition still continues to this day and it holds good for business pages as well. Sharing Photos Is the Most Important Way to Optimize Facebook Engagement Morgan J. Arnold wrote in a post titled “Optimizing Facebook Engagement – Text, Links, Photos or Videos?” that photos are the single most form of media that received the highest number of likes. Strangely, most companies tend to share links and let Facebook extract a thumbnail and an excerpt to do the rest of the work. According to his article, links received the least number of likes though this is the most preferred method of sharing content on Facebook. Obviously, you will need to change your paradigm and begin to share images more than anything else. The second most popular form of content was questions followed by status updates. Videos did not fare well and stood almost next to links in terms of being unpopular. Thus, companies and business may want to share photos of employees, of events and parties, of conferences, of any other situation that can creatively substitute a link. While sharing a photo, a link can be attached alongside, and a direct request can be made to fans to click on that link and visit that page for more information on that photograph. You might even want to ask questions about your fans preferences, likes and attitudes, as questions receive a lot of engagement from fans. When to Share Facebook Updates While sharing photographs and questions is a great idea, the time when it is shared is also very important. Most fans tend to be online on weekends and posts that were shared during weekends received 16% higher engagement. Also, sharing contents during evenings is better than sharing them during business hours. In order to share content at the best time possible, you might want to use a service such as Buffer or Hootsuite, which allow you to schedule your social media messages. Moreover, Hootsuite and Buffer App allow you to understand your audience and track social media engagement. Last but not the least; direct communication with your fans is very important. It is not wrong to directly ask your fans to like your status or photograph. In fact, research shows that when you directly request for likes, people actually like your photograph or status message. Using Instagram to Optimize Facebook Engagement One of the better strategies is to employ Instagram while sharing images. Though Instagram is not used often by companies to share images and worthy photographs, it is a powerful social image editing tool that can be sued for your benefit and cross posted to Facebook. Any image that you plan to share on Facebook can be shared on Instagram first and set up auto-sharing so that it appears on your Facebook page as well. This allows your photographs to be given a touch of vintage effects, while utilizing the powerful social medium that Instagram already is. Of course, you can always customize your captions and messages to suit your Facebook fans. The bottom-line is, you should share content that is interesting and make sure that is more often in the form of images. Links do not fetch as many likes as photos do, and it matters at what time you post your updates on Facebook. Weekends and evenings are the best times to share images on Facebook. One can utilize social media tools like Hootsuite and Buffer App to automate updates. It is also advisable to directly ask fans to like statuses and photos.

No matter how many phone calls and text messages we send, as business owners we tend to send and respond to emails more frequently than ever. Even in 2012, email continues to be the most preferred way of communication. Unlike social media, an email is not transient and teh recipient will certainly open it and read it. This alone makes customizing your email to promote yourself or your business more important. This brings us to the topic of optimizing email signatures, which most business owners, entrepreneurs and even employees find difficult to do so. Why Is An Email Signature Important? An email signature allows the recipient to know what your brand is, where you can be reached and how important you possible are. Before we discuss how best we can customize our email signatures and optimize them, we must understand what should be included in an email signature. What an Email Signature Should Consist of An email signature must contain the sender’s complete name, contact details, social media details and business information. Most importantly, an email signature should not have a lengthy tail and must contain as little information as possible. The lengthier the email signature is, the more likely you will not be taken seriously. It is just not professional to provide 3 telephone numbers and confuse the email reader when only one can do the job. Likewise, there is no point in including unnecessary details that serve the purpose of boosting your ego and vanity but will likely turn off the email recipient. When it comes to the content of email signatures, the most basic information is what is required. Email Signature Styles Apart from the actual content, the way that content is presented, the unique style in which it is presented is also very important. For instance, if you run a start-up that is design oriented, you would want your email signature to be customized accordingly. If you run startup that handles accounts, audits or programming, you will need to use an email signature that reflects trust and reliability than creativity. The key is to identify where your business or organization belongs in a spectrum and design your email signature accordingly. Optimizing Email Signatures at Creative Organizations Creative organizations that handle web designing, typography, fashion, art or performance should make sure that their email signatures are optimized to express their uniqueness, style and non-conformity. In fact, a creative startup’s design ethos should be reflected in the email signature. You could get a typographic professional to design a custom font that looks very professional or you can choose to include a quote that expresses your company’s ethics. You might want to include a link to your Behance, Pinterest or Tumblr account along with your usual social media links. Optimizing Email Signatures at Professional Organizations Business and professional organizations that offer confidential services like auditing, legal services and counseling must make sure that there is no distraction allowed in the email signature. The font must be Calibri, Helvetica, Ariel or Times New Roman so that a sense of comfort and trust is created. Fonts can have subliminal effect on the reader and it is very important to choose the one that they can identify with. Bottom-line is, keep the information as short as possible and present it in a non-intrusive manner. Optimizing Email Signatures at Social Organizations Social organizations and startups can give themselves more freedom and choose to present information in their email signatures the way they want to. They can be more personal and present information in a less stiff upper-lipped manner. Nonetheless, the information must be as little as possible, and must be presented in a manner that is not only professional but also useful to your business and to the recipient. Things to Remember It is important to make sure that your email signature is not more than 3 lines, At most, you can have a 4th line if you think that it is impossible to avoid. It is also important not to use strange fonts, colors and symbols. Even if you are a creative organization and want to use a unique font, ask the typography designer to create a very professional and classic font. Logos can be avoided and complete URLs can be written instead of hyper linking. Hyperlinks are sometimes thought of as spam. Mailing address is not very relevant in an email and thus sticking to digital contact information would suffice. A Few Email Signature Optimization Tools Some of the tools that help in optimizing emails are Wise Stamp, which helps to being your online personality to life. It allows you to include your social media activity within your email but we recommend not doing so. Email Signature Pro is an iPhone app that lets you add a photo, text, footnote and social media information. Sig Buzz is a free service that offers several templates to choose from. There are no hard and fast rules but the best approach is to be minimalist, simple and professional.