Category: Marketing

How to Use LinkedIn Groups to Boost Your Business

November 16, 2016

After LinkedIn went public, its importance as a social networking platform for professionals has crystallized to the point of it becoming mandatory for whoever wants to grow in life. LinkedIn provides a great platform for professionals and businesses to interact with each other, network, and engage in useful conversations that might lead to hiring or a business contract signed. Back in 2014, there were more than 300 million members. Now, the figure has rose to 467 million. With LinkedIn serving as the only platform for professionals to interact, it is certainly the right place to look for opportunities to boost your business. For this, LinkedIn makes things even simpler. It offers LinkedIn Groups, a great way to share your knowledge and prove that you are a thought leader in your area. A LinkedIn Group can be categorized under any industry you want, and it fetches people who are looking for communities where they can learn, share and discuss. A LinkedIn Group can be described as an active platform where knowledge is shared, and relationships are built. In this article, let us take a look at how LinkedIn Groups boost your business. Spruce up your profile One of the first things you must do in order to get business is to spruce up your profile. Most of the profiles on LinkedIn are still carrying information from years ago, and they have not been updated. Profiles are also not written in a way that they can optimize your information. Hire a professional writer and get your profile rewritten and spruced up. This is worth paying money for because this is the most important section on LinkedIn. Once you spruce up your profile, get people to write testimonials for you which are focused on your business. This will help you to land some new contracts. Communicate with your network Do not make the mistake of keeping quiet on LinkedIn. If you are like a regular LinkedIn user, you will certainly have at least 500 people in your network. Contact every single one of them and make a list of people who might be useful. Ensure that you invite all of these people to your own LinkedIn Group, about which we shall discuss below. Asking people in your connections to visit your group will help you to boost credibility and visibility. It takes a while for you to meet that sweet spot between getting people on your network and getting unknown people to join your group. Though it takes time, it is better to start with your own connections first. Create a group You can create your own LinkedIn Group. All you need to do is choose the category where your group should be listed, choose a topic, fill out some profile details and then begin sharing useful information and engaging people in discussions. Use the group to provide useful information and ask people to join if you think the discussions will help them. By creating a group, you also tend to increase your visibility. Not only for yourself, but also for your company. This helps to boost sales and leads begin to come through. Become a thought leader Once you create a group, the next step is to start sharing information that is related to your niche. Help others to solve their problems, direct them to resources and tell them what to do if they ask you for solutions. All this will crystallize your position as a thought leader or expert. Do not beat around the bush or talk about things that are irrelevant to your experience. Be honest and share from your personal and professional experience, so that it helps people to make the right choices. Involve your employees Once you establish yourself as a thought leader, and once your group is popular enough, ask your own employees to start sharing information and engaging in discussions. This brings a more human and public face to your company, which is always important if you want business. Involving employees is a great idea, because they tend to have their own connections too, who will probably join the group your employees are commenting in. This way, you can enhance traffic not only to the group, but to your own website, which certainly will lead to more conversions. Join other groups Once your own group is doing well, begin to join other similar groups too. This will help you to interact with even more people and get them to join your group. Most importantly, do not go to other groups and spam them continuously with comments in order to gain visibility. Instead, respond to queries that match with your experience, and when there is conversation happening, you can invite the other person to join your own group./ This way, you will not annoy people and you will still be able to get quality leads from others groups. Last but not the least, you will learn a lot from conversations in other groups. Take home thoughts As we can see, LinkedIn is a great place to network with other professionals. Networking on LinkedIn may lead to possible job or business opportunities. Make sure that your personal profile is up to date and communicate with your network regularly and create a group based on your expertise. Ensure that you post regularly in the group and help others. LinkedIn is a wonderful platform that can be used by professionals and businesses alike. LinkedIn Groups help to boost your identity as a thought leader and that indirectly boosts your business.

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Is Facebook Live For You?

November 10, 2016

There is a lot of content out there, that simply is not relevant to people. One of the reasons for this is that content is time dependent. Some kinds of content fare better when they are as close to the real thing as possible. For example, we would not want to watch re-runs of football matches. Instead, we would like to watch them live. Similarly, we would not want to watch an interview much late. If our favorite celebrity is online, we would like to watch it as it is happening. If you have a company or a brand, and you would like to reach your Facebook followers in a more intimate and immediate manner, Facebook Live may be the best answer. Facebook Live brings video live streaming to your followers, with the help of which you can stream videos live. Each time you stream a video, your audience will be sent notifications. This helps you to connect with them on a real time basis. Certainly, you would not want to keep posting same text messages and miss out on live streaming advantages. Facebook Live may be great for you if you already have a large audience. In this article, let us take a look at the features of Facebook Live and then discuss for whom it is a good option. What is Facebook Live? What Are Its Features? Facebook Live helps you to broadcast live to a large audience, across the world. All you need is a cellphone with a camera, and a cellular or Wi-Fi network. Facebook Live helps you to have engaging conversations with your followers. You can answer their questions, interact with them face to face, and then you can monitor live reactions. Live reactions help you to know what they are thinking and what you should be doing. It is a well known fact that people love watching videos. Facebook Live is a great place for people to watch videos they like. All your current followers will receive the videos in their news feed. Newer followers can be discovered too, when you livestream an event or a video. The best feature of Facebook Live is that you will be able to connect immediately. You can instantly talk to people who care about your brand and you can soak in their feedback, without wasting any time. Facebook Live is one of the best options to narrate your story. And you can do this the way you want. Facebook Live offers great filters that can be used to create special effects in your video live streaming. With all these great features, Facebook Live is certainly a force to reckon with. However, is it really for you? In this section, let us take a look at whether Facebook Live is for you or not. Do you have a social presence? The first question you need to ask yourself is, if you have a social presence. If you do not have a Facebook page set up, or any social followers, it may not be the right time to go ahead and spend time on Facebook Live. The first thing you should be doing is to set up your brand’s Facebook page with the help of which you can build an audience. First, concentrate on setting up your Facebook Page. Once you are done with that, you can start looking at building a good follower base. Do you already have a lot of followers? If you do not have a lot of followers, Facebook Live may not help you a lot. Facebook Live is an intimate video live streaming service that helps you to connect with your audience better. Of course, it can help you find new followers, but you first need a good Facebook presence in order to find newer followers. So, it is a good idea to focus on building your page, interacting with your audience, blogging regularly, and basically, engaging in social media campaigns that will help you gain followers traditionally. What do you plan to achieve through Facebook Live? You need to know what you plan to achieve with Facebook Live. It is a live streaming service that works the best when you have something to show, say or tell. For example, you can live stream an event such as a product launch, or you can talk to your audience directly. This means, you can engage with them at a personal level and this helps you to connect with them personally. You may also set up Q & A sessions to help answer questions and get to know what is in people’s minds. Take home message Facebook Live is a great video live streaming service that works well when one already has enough followers. It comes with a number of useful features that helps you to retain and gain new followers. You can use Facebook Live to answer people’s questions, use live reactions to understand their thought process, and also ensure that your videos reach new followers. You can easily connect with your audience and narrate your story the way you want to say it. However, you need to make sure that Facebook Live is really for you. It works well for those who already have a social media strategy in place. It also works well when one has a lot of followers or when they know what they want to achieve through Facebook Live. If this is not the case, then you might want to start with a social media strategy instead, working through social profiles and then getting into niche services such as Facebook Live. At the end of the day, all social platforms come with their own features that make it easy for you to reach your target audience. However, you need to know what you are looking for and how you plan to do it. With a proper plan in place, you can make use of Facebook Live and other many interesting features that Facebook and other social platforms provide.

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Was Changing Instagram’s Logo a Bad Idea?

October 17, 2016

A few months ago, Instagram changed its logo. The familiar icon was replaced by something less defined and more minimalist. There was a lot of hue and cry initially but all that seems to have settled down. Instagram is still being used, and people are still sharing pictures. Most people have also forgotten what Instagram’s older logo looked like. Well, not really, but nobody seems to be paying attention to Instagram’s new design anymore. This is a luxury that very popular brands enjoy. If Nike redesigned its logo today, it will still be the same popular that it is today. Of course, people are going to get mad and investors may start selling their shares en masse. Yet, Nike will continue to make the great shoes it already makes, and will continue to appeal to a newer generation. Similarly, Instagram is now releasing Snapchat-like features, with 24-hour validity for some pictures. It is also enabling its users to disable hateful comments. And life goes on. Nothing really has changed for Instagram in the last few months, after it changed its logo. [php snippet=1] There are a few things that we can learn from Instagram’s logo change and what it teaches us about rebranding. Changing logo is not a catastrophe A lot of companies believe that a logo must never be changed and that if it is, the unthinkable might happen. This is not true. Changing logo does not lead to a catastrophe. It does not alienate your users or customers, though they may not receive it well initially. Changing a logo is also not a threat to your company that should always be avoided unless necessary. On the other hand, a logo change could be an opportunity in the right direction. If your current logo is kind of boring you already, there is no reason why you should not get a new one designed, or at least make changes in the existing one. Changing a logo may bring a lot of benefits, such as new followers, new customers and the ability to appeal to a different demographic. For example, Instagram’s new logo is very youthful, and is likely targeted at Generation Z, the upcoming generation. People’s memory is often short-lived People may complain and dislike the logo change initially. Yet, after a while, they tend to forget how the first logo looked. A survey that was recently conducted revealed that most people were unable to describe what a logo looked like, after it was changed 2-3 months previously. This indicates that people’s memory is short lived. They do not remember design very well, and they get used to the changes. It is similar to people complaining when furniture is moved in the drawing room. Yet, after a while, they forget where the chair was initially kept or the couch was previously placed. They begin to accept and even start liking the new position. Similarly, people may dislike changes made to an existing logo. However, after a while, they will embrace it and forget the previous one. Adding new features will compensate for unpleasant changes If your new logo is not accepted by a large section of your target audience, there is no need to worry about it. This very large section will soon forget what they were angry about. However, you should ensure that while they are displeased about the logo change, they do not jump ship and go toward your competitor. For that, you will need to compensate the changes made to your brand with some new features that are appealing. This is easy to do, as evidenced by Instagram. Soon after making changes to its logo, Instagram added several new features, with the most memorable one being a Snapchat-like feature, where photos can be set to vanish after 24 hours. Rebranding may sometimes be necessary The very reason we change logo is because the current one may not be representative of your brands. The current logo may also not be fetching you the results you need. This means, you will need to rebrand your products and services and use a new logo. Studies show that a logo change usually brings in new customers. If you are truly looking for new customers to approach you, a rebranding strategy may work very well in your favor. All you need to do is to make changes to the existing logo or get a completely different one. As stated before, it is not going to matter whether your new logo is liked initially or not. Sooner or later, people will embrace the new version and forget the older one. This is just how the human mind works. Just to be sure, get your logo designed by professionals and do not make attempts to change them yourself. Take home message As you can see, changing one’s logo is not a big deal. If you do not like your existing logo, you can always change it. It does not matter how long it has been used, and how popular the logo is with your fans. In other words, changing one’s logo is not such a big deal. Moreover, with time, people forget what the previous logo looked like. They will begin to relate to the newer logo the same way they embraced the previous one. This has got something to do with people’s memory patterns. If your new logo is not well received, you still have a right to go ahead with it. After all, you probably have a wonderful mission behind the logo change. Nevertheless, adding new features may help to compensate negative feelings about logo change. People are more likely to ignore what they don’t like, and embrace what they like. Finally, rebranding in the way of changing a logo or design is important. Sometimes it is eve necessary. This means, your company may not do well if the current logo isn’t doing what it should. Get expert opinions and decide if you want to change the logo or stick with

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How to Reach New Customers amidst Online Noise

September 19, 2016

There is a lot of noise out there, with blogs becoming the norm for every company to reach their target audience, and also to boost traffic to the website. There is also a lot of noise originating on social media, with every company making claims and with people talking about these companies too, without much basis or evidence. Some rate certain products and services highly and some, poorly. Yet, one can never tell if these reviews, blogs, or social conversations are unbiased or if they come with certain shady intentions. Nevertheless, if you are selling genuine products and services, there is a way to reach new customers amidst all this online noise. The main modus operandi is to persist. Persistence pays off very well, especially when it comes to remaining online, and remaining relevant. Companies that are looking at making a quick buck will usually lose interest in blogging or in social media campaigns, which need to be ongoing and relevant throughout. These companies often tend to be erratic and sometimes even dramatic, when it comes to posting online. Much of online noise is from companies like this. On the other hand, genuine companies that really want to inform their target audience and still reach new customers tend to be persistent with their content marketing efforts. This is because; they truly have something lasting to contribute. To reach new customers online despite the noise, here is what you should be doing: [php snippet=1] Slow and steady wins the race When it comes to content marketing, you need to be slow and steady. What does this mean? Should you post 4 blogs a month or 8? Or should you post 20 blogs a week? The answer really depends on your ability and also, what you can provide to the community. If you run out of topics or information related to your product or service, you will not have much useful content to write after a while. So, probably, it is a good idea to remain slow and steady, and publish as much content is required. This could be anywhere between 4 and whatever number you would like to publish. Just ensure that you can blog for years, and not weeks or months. Be patient and persistent Rome wasn’t built in a day. Likewise, your content marketing strategy cannot be solidified within a month or two. It takes time to get the strategy going, and it takes even longer to see the results. However, when you start seeing organic traffic coming your way, you will realize that your efforts are well worth it. However, you need to be patient and persistent in your approach. With patience, you will research better, publish more often without feeling pressurized and you will be able to publish regularly, instead of going on an overdrive and then not publishing at all. Do your research Before publishing any blog or post, you need to research your topic well. Most blogs published today are not well researched, and they are simply published to generate traffic. You should not publish anything with traffic in mind. You should consider every content piece of yours to be a sales document, which will last for a long time. This requires a lot of research. Put together resources, studies, numbers etc before you publish a post. Develop a content niche You cannot possibly publish blogs on all topics related to your field. You should not be doing that anyway, as that will likely seem like noise to your readers. The more general your topics are, the more chances of your message getting diluted. You need to find that sweet spot where you do not come across as a person with an obsession for topic specificity, and at the same time, you do not become so vague that your message is lost. Be genuine in your communication There is nothing worse than inauthentic messages and blogs. You need to develop your own voice and provide content that is engaging. Engage with your readers in a manner that is authentic and honest. Do not communicate in a manner that does not come across as genuine. Being genuine helps you to connect with readers, and they will be more amenable to receiving your sales message. After all, you need to be making those sales happen at the end of a content marketing campaign. And, content marketing campaigns do not end. They go on. The take home message As you can see, online noise can be a very annoying problem to handle. There are a number of companies out there, all trying to create a buzz about their own products and services. With so much of noise online, it becomes difficult for you to stand out, yet, all is not lost. Most of the companies tend to be either creating noise for the sake of attention or for the sake of grabbing as many customers as possible. The good news is, content marketing is not something that will pay off dividends overnight. It needs a slow and steady approach. If you have a genuine product or service, you can be persistent with your content marketing strategy and remain relevant for a long time. The take home message is that you should be slow and steady with content marketing efforts and that you should not look for quick results. You must be patient and persistent, and always look towards creating content assets that will last for years and that which will remain relevant even after a long time. Before publishing anything online, do your research. Ensure that all your content is backed or supported by research. Do not create content that is only remotely connected with your actual product or service. Find your niche and develop content that is relevant. In other words, develop a niche. Most importantly, be as honest and genuine as you can be, when you communicate with readers and followers. This will help you to stand out from the rest of the noise online.

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Why You Must Get Rid Of Pop-up Ads Immediately

April 22, 2016

A number of websites are very well designed and they also have great information. yet, people choose to immediately close them and move on to the next website. The main reason is, this amazing website disappointed the user with a pop-up ad. Pop-up ads are one of those annoying Internet cliches that never seem to go. These intrusive marketing communications are lauded by industry pundits as something that drives traffic, conversions and a whole lot of other clichéd business-related babble. Yet, there is no denying that the very pop-up ad that these people tout is also harming the clients more than anything else. It is also known that websites that are clean, well designed and that which make use of right sidebar and other widgets gain more views and people stay longer on the websites than on a website where pop-ups always appear. In order to understand why pop-ups are bad and why you should finally get rid of them, please do read the reasons stated below. If these reasons do not convince you to get rid of pop-up ads, we just insist, that you must. 1. Pop-ups create a bad impression Most of the times when people visit a website, they are looking for interruption-free viewing and information processing. Websites may contain useful information ad may even be well designed. However, when someone is reading about something interesting, and a pop-up advertisement pops on the website, they will be tempted to close it right away. They will neither process the marketing communication nor will they continue to visit your website. They may already have developed a bad impression about your website. First appearances are important and if one is not able to make a good impression, it is better not to make a bad one at least. 2. They make people want to leave Most people who browse dislike pop-up ads. There are no exceptions. Pop-up ads go against the human nature of being engrossed in something interesting. Getting distracted by something that is clearly commercial in nature is a huge turn-off. Almost immediately, people will want to leave the website, no matter how engrossed they were just before the ad popped up. In order to avoid people from leaving websites, it may be necessary to avoid pop-ups altogether. Certainly, no one wants to drive away visitors who may end up becoming leads or converts. It is important to grab their attention in an unobtrusive manner. 3. Pop-ups result in slower web pages This may come across as a controversial statement but pop-ups do slow down pages. Slower loading pages are known to cause SEO problems as Google and other search engines take the speed of a website into account when they rank them. Moreover, it is also important to have faster loading pages to keep visitors from changing the tab or closing it altogether out of frustration. Anything that removes the unnecessary from websites is a good idea to keep. With that in mind, keeping the plan of removing pop-ups is a very good strategy. 4. Pop-ups have a messy with user interface Of all the things that matter, nothing is more important than a good user interface. People should be able to browse through a website without having to look around where they need to click. A pop-up makes this very difficult as they sometimes block navigation bars. They may even cause the interface of the website to lose its integrity, causing visitors to get tired. If you are going to focus on user friendliness, it is important to get rid of those pop-ups. Pop-up ads also look too spammy and no one wants to click on them anyway. 5. Pop-ups are not mobile friendly When it comes to browsing on mobile devices, we need to remember that most websites are responsive today. While designing a responsive website, it is important to make sure that they are viewed easily on mobile devices. If they are not being viewed properly, that means they are not mobile friendly. With this in mind, if pop-ups always interfere with the responsive design, they obviously are doing more harm than use. In other words, pop-ups are not mobile friendly. Choosing a more mobile friendly option may be required in order attracting visitors. 6. Pop-ups make you look less credible While the design and technical aspects have already been explained, nothing says “we are not credible” than a pop-up ad. In this century, no one believes in pop-ups. They are associated with tawdry websites a questionable entity. People may even think you are going to infect their computers with Trojans and adwares. With this in mind, it is not an exaggeration if we said that pop-ups reduce your credibility and make you look questionable. Certainly, in order to attract newer clients and customers, you need to build trustworthiness. Pop-ups will not help you do that. 7. Pop-ups are outdated Pop-ups are a 1990s hangover that many companies still have not gotten over. Just like some people still tie-dye their t-shirts and look out of place in 2016, many still use pop-up ads. With MySpace and Netscape, pop-ups too should have been relegated to the murky depths of the 1990s or early 2000s. Unfortunately, they still persist. It is our responsibility to make sure that we are not part of the group that still practice outdated ad design strategies. If you still have those pop-ups, please get rid of them. Follow ad strategy best practices It is important to get rid of pop-ups, verbose and lengthy advertisements and other strategies that are known to drive people away. By adopting ad strategies that are tried and tested, you will be able to generate more traffic and revenue. Nobody wants to be mistaken for being someone with questionable intentions. By avoiding pop-ups and maintaining a clean image, you will be able to boost your trustworthiness. After all, all of us want visitors to stay longer and take home a marketing message or even better, take action

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The Importance of Offline Networking Events in Growing Your Business

November 16, 2015

When we speak about growing our businesses, we usually speak in terms of marketing and social networking. This includes both offline and digital marketing. Digital marketing has taken a very important place in marketing strategies while traditional media houses are slowly losing out on their market shares. This had to happen. Yet, a curious trend is growing. A lot of CEOs today know that much of online marketing is done by the marketing departments. If they want to get in touch with another CEO, they look for either LinkedIn or actual good old fashioned networking events. There are a number of these events happening these days. A quick look at your Twitter or LinkedIn feed will reveal that more CEOs are venturing out into these events to meet other CEOs and thus build valuable social connections. These connections help CEOs to improve their business more than their marketing teams might be able to do. When a business owner himself is present at an event, it adds to credibility and there are chances of meeting other important people who will be able to sign contracts. In this article, let us take a look at why it is important to start going to these offline networking events: 1.      Your presence provides a human touch A networking event is a great place to meet people of your kind. If you go to any networking event, you are bound to meet other entrepreneurs who invariably will be looking for some sort of business service or product. Depending on your area of specialization, visit events that are bound to have leads that you desire. 2.      You are the face of the company Potential leads prefer to meet with their business prospects in person. Though we have come a long way in using Twitter, Skype and LinkedIn, face-to-face meetings are gradually making their way back into business events. While webinars provide a great platform to share your knowledge, going to an actual networking event will help you to reveal your brand identity without spending on advertising. 3.      You know your products and services the best When it comes to showcasing your products and services, who will know them better than you? While digital and offline marketing campaigns are crucial to getting leads, going to networking events help you to sell your products and services to a highly niche crowd. This will ensure that you are there where your products and services need to be explained the most. 4.      Networking events are filled with potential leads What could be better than being in a room full of individuals who all have their own businesses? These potential leads can be met in person, cards can be exchanged, glasses can be clanked together, and jokes can be shared without having to request for connects or friendships. A networking event is one where you will get to meet everyone you possibly need to meet under one roof. Start showing up Finally, all you need to do is start showing up at events, whether you like them or not. Initially, you may find it boring or even daunting to meet with a room full of other business owners. However, over time, you will begin to make valuable contacts that will help you to grow your business and scale up. Moreover, you can learn from others and educate yourself where you may be lacking. Networking events will only grow in size and stature. Once you have a good number of contacts, you can start hosting your own networking events and that will help you to establish yourself as an important individual who helps others to make connections.  

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Why Every Company Must Sell Something, Even If There Are No Products

November 9, 2015

Every business exists for the purpose of generating profits. A business either sells a product or a service. In both cases, money is generated when the product/service is delivered to the customer. Thus, it is important to understand that selling is crucial for the success of business. Looking at it from a different perspective, most businesses don’t want to associate with the word “selling” as it portrays an image of a self-centered business entity whose only interest is to sell and not customer welfare. For the same reason, most businesses have a strong affinity towards the word “marketing”. It is obvious that marketing and selling are entirely different concepts. In selling, you are earning money while in marketing you are spending money and resources to reach the selling stage. Now as we know that service is not a tangible industry unlike products.  The service experience can vary from customer to customer, while it is easier to find homogenous experience across product users. What should a service business do? The following article will discuss the importance of selling a product even if you are only a service provider. Importance of selling a product for a service provider From customers’ point of view, it is easier to associate with a brand if there is some symbolism attached to it. There is no doubt that providing a good service contributes towards building a brand for your company. But with growing competition in the market, marketers are trying to woo their customers in unique ways. There are a number of ways in which service companies can sell a product not with the core agenda of making money, but doing something extra to build personal relationship with the customers. It is used to attract new customers to the company. Even if a customer is not utilizing your services currently, he is still associated with your brand mascots. The money thus generated by selling these products or merchandises can be utilized to fund a cause or an awareness program. Product companies offer service too If we look the other way round, product companies are already engaged in providing some or the other kind of service. It is just that customers don’t realize it. For instance, pharmaceutical giant Merck in its French subsidiary has been including delivery in its product price for customers. Since specialty chemicals are high in value and low in volume, Merck always made sure that they assume transportation and insurance costs. While there were no shipping costs included in the bill, customers were unaware of the extra value provided by Merck. Those services are provided to win over the customers, and retain customers. Though services provided by product sellers are not intended to earn money directly but indirectly they are increasing their probability by fetching a bigger order from the customer. Thus, such services do help in earning more money and adding value to product sellers. Similarly, following an unusual way will definitely help your company to grow further and establish your image as a welfare-oriented and customer-friendly organization. It will add scores to your corporate social responsibility initiatives. Options, choices and deliberations Creating a product does not happen randomly. The key to selecting and providing the right product for the customers starts with understanding how to create an excellent customer experience. In order to conquer that, you can move backwards to deliver great experience and also earn money. This is not just about making the product available to them but involves knowledge and expertise application to useful purposes that addresses needs of your customers. For instance, a software development company often approaches their client highlighting about their previous software development projects and how they helped their previous clients. Even if your first meeting with the client is just the beginning of conversation, care to leave a product or two with them. Such products in case of software companies can be small, creative and utility software that can be given for free. You can also gift them company merchandise on your first meeting. Such encounters go a long way. The client may not be using your services till now but he will certainly remember you in future as you have given them a reason to remind them of you. Gifting company merchandise is a good way of starting this practice. Thus, providing company merchandise like a pen, key ring, wall clock, cap, calendar, diary, writing pad or any other branded souvenir or customer outfit is a common way utilized by most service/product companies for a number of years. Such products though are a good reminder of your company name; they do not somehow add value to the customer and obviously you are not earning any money out of it. Today, customers look for valuable products that enable them to learn something new. They are ready to pay for it if they are served valuable, high-quality, and relevant content. It is interesting to note that service-oriented companies have a very good chance of utilizing content marketing to their benefit. Taking the example of the software company forward, the company can provide its customers with paid eBooks, paid training courses, research papers, industry reports and any other downloadable content suitable to your customers. If your customers feel enlightened by your content, they will demand for more. You must remember whatever initiative you take; you should pursue it with a lot of perseverance keeping the customers’ needs in mind. It will assist you in content designing. Some of the options are: 1.    EBooks Ebooks provide a great medium for creating interesting content. For instance, if you are a cloud service provider, you can create an eBook emphasizing upon the need for acceleration towards cloud computing. If you are a mobile application developer, you can create an eBook on best practices in mobile application testing. If you are an outsourcing service provider, you can create an eBook around a topic say 50 ways to make the most of your virtual team. Similarly, if you are an

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How to Turn Your Blog Followers into Your Clients

September 4, 2015

cis also to disseminate information and educate the reader. Blogs have come a long way and now they are more professional and stage-managed. Unfortunately, they are so stage-managed that they are no longer considered as blogs, which brings us to another part of the story. Professional corporate blogs that are slick and well written usually have a good audience. However, if they look too salesy and persuasive, they will not have the kind of impact you probably want to have. Readers will remain readers or they may even stop being readers. In order to ensure that blogs are helping you to turn readers into customers, you need to understand how a blog works. Moreover, it is also important for you to understand how to capture the imagination of your readers and engage them so well that they will never think of other options when it comes to buying a service or a product. With that in mind, let us take a look at how we can convert readers into clients and customers. However, we will first try to understand how readers become customers. Do readers always turn into customers after reading your blog? Readers do not become customers in a linear fashion. We usually have this idea that people visit blogs, read content and then when they are impressed, they enter their email address and subscribe to your email newsletter. After doing so, they will hit on the call to action button within a newsletter and purchase a product or service. This really does not happen in real world and nothing is so linear. It is sometimes an old customer who comes back to read what is happening with the company that he patronized earlier. It could be possible that someone else is a promoter of your product because he or she has heard many great things. Then, they begin to dig deeper into what you do and sell. They may later buy something on a whim from your website and then subscribe to your newsletter. Or else, someone else could be a subscriber to your newsletter and then, they may move forward to being an advocate of your product. At that point, they may decide that they should become your customer and later, come back to your blog to leave comments about how they felt about your products and services. What we actually are trying to say here is that the process of becoming a customer or the reader of a blog does not take place in a linear fashion as believed earlier. Content marketing is more complex than you might imagine it to be One could be a reader, promoter, subscriber, advocate and customer at any point in time. With this insight, how do we go about traditional way of blogging and for what must we blog? This is where we need to understand the importance of content marketing. Content marketing does not happen overnight. Its sole aim is not to convert readers into customers. Its aim is to slowly but surely build your brand and create an authoritative identity which will work well for you, whether the reader is already a customer or has just accidentally arrived on your website. Thus, understanding how content marketing works and how one can use blogs to enhance the marketing experience are a few tricks that we need to know and understand well. Blog can be a powerful tool to retain existing customers, build interest among prospects, to collect email addresses of potential leads and also to inform and educate our audiences’. In this section, let us specifically take a look at how we can convert readers of blogs into customers. 1.      Focus on the blog Whether you want to retain existing customers or turn readers into customers, you must focus on the blog. The blog must be attractive, informative and useful to the reader. The blog is not a marketing piece of content and should not be treated as such. It is an intimate way to connect with those who are interested in what you do. They may never buy your products or services but they still are your readers. With that in mind, update your blog section regularly and consistently. Write on topics that are specifically related to your business and ensure that you are genuinely authoritative when it comes to your topics. Readers always know them who know their subject well. That authority will build your credibility and if the reader doesn’t buy your product, he will advocate your company to his friends or family and they will end up becoming your customers. To cut a long story short, write excellent articles and blog posts and hold your reader’s attention and build your credibility. This alone will fetch you a lot more leads than you might expect. 2.      Webinars If you have a product or a service, you could try and conduct weekly webinars. You should not focus just on your products and services but you must focus on your areas of expertise. This will help you to build an audience and that audience should specifically be people who may be interested in what you do. For example, if you sell biscuits, you could hold a webinar on the different kinds of biscuits that can be cooked with rye flour. At the end of the webinar, you could ask people to subscribe to your email newsletter as well as follow your blog. You may also ask people to sign up for a free trial of your product at the end of the webinar. This will help you to retain more prospects and convert them into customers. What has this got to do with a blog? It is always a good practice to write a blog post before a webinar and also after a webinar, which will help people who missed it when it had happened. This way, the same content can be showcased in a webinar and a blog format, with each asking people for their email

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Why You Must Stop Writing Pretentiously

August 10, 2015

It is a well-accepted theory that if you need a dictionary to understand what a writer is trying to communicate, he or she is a bad writer. There is a tendency among writers to use complex and convoluted words in order to come across as educated, advanced or even sophisticated. This sort of bloated and pretentious writing neither works well in literature nor in content marketing. Oscar Wilde, James Joyce and others often spoke derisively about other writers who wrote in an indulgent manner. They believed, writers who write pretentiously do a disservice to the art and craft of writing. They believed that it was unimportant how complex a particular word is. What is important is, if it is well-understood by the intended target audience. They wrote literature and were not aware of either the Internet or content marketing as we know it today. Those were the times when writing was still an elitist skill that had a sense of awe built around it. Pretentious writing and content marketing Today, we are discussing pretentious writing in the context of content marketing. Content marketing only works when your target audience understands what you are trying to say. Use one wrong word or one difficult word, your audience will get irritated and will move away. If you use a word like “ameliorate” instead of “improve” in your tweet, a lot of people will simply get annoyed. It is not a matter of your target audience’s intelligence but it is a matter of cognitive processing. No one really has the time to process the word “ameliorate” even though most of us know it means the same as “improve”. On the other hand, “ameliorate” sounds pretentious as well. As this particular word is not used as often as “improve”, a number of writers fall into the elitist trap that it should be somehow better to use it because not many people use it. This sort of elitism is only going to harm your content marketing strategies. If you know a content writer that consistently uses bloated, indulgent and pretentious words or phrases, a request to use simpler & more democratic words might be in order. Pretentious writing is about social class and economics All of pretentious writing is really about social class and economics. Some writers often want to align themselves with obvious signs of elitism, which in the case of writing, happens to be complex words. These words are, usually, derived from Latin or one of the other classical languages. Sometimes, writers also have a tendency to use French or German words to sound educated and cultured. Some of the obvious choices are “rendezvous” in place of a meeting, “gateau” in place of “plain old cake” and many others. This tendency goes back to the days of Middle Ages, when it was considered mandatory for every cultured English citizen to know Latin or French. Latin was previously the language of the educated and was replaced by French during the reformation age. French was later replaced by English after the Treaty of Paris, when France ceded its colonial territories in India to England. Yet, the fascination for using foreign language words is quite obvious. The writer takes a superior approach and uses words that a large percentage of his readers would find artificial. Pretentious writing irritates and alienates people While writing pretentiously or indulgently might boost a writer’s morale, it alienates the reader. The reader often feels he or she probably does not understand what is being written and will simply move on to a less complex writer. Or, if the reader is educated and cultured in a less benign sense, he or she will immediately recognize the writing as pretentious & thus, not credible enough. In content marketing, we are trying to build credibility. We are trying to reach out to a target audience. If we are pretentious and self-indulgent, the purpose of content marketing is defeated. People will neither be impressed by content nor will they proceed to follow you on social media and finally, your sales & profits will not improve. If you write pretentiously, you risk alienating ad irritating your target audience, which is the worst thing that any writer can do. Writing is about communication and presenting ideas in a manner that is coherent, cohesive & within content. If these three criteria are not met, it is not good writing. If you write pretentiously, you will come under negative scrutiny Most writers who write pretentiously do not realize that they are asking for negative criticism and unwanted scrutiny. It attracts scrutiny and distracts people from the actual message, no matter how useful & important it is. If we have to write about SEO and begin a sentence like “For the purpose of elevating the current status of search engine results, one could engage in professional entities that assist in these matters”, the message is lost. You could just say “To enhance your SEO, you could hire a professional agency”. This might sound simple but only experienced writers can understand the difference between using simple words to communicate and avoiding complex words when they are not required. Novice writers often use a lot of jargon, complex words and even lengthy sentences to look professional, intellectual and elite. Unfortunately, this attracts negative attention and scrutiny & dilutes the initial message. This is one of the reasons why we need not ever engage in pretentious writing, no matter how tempting it is. Writing pretentiously affects your content marketing strategy Nothing is worse than a piece of pretentious copy to ruin your entire content marketing strategy. If you do not understand what your content writer writes, do not use that piece of content. If you yourself do not understand, why would your audience? Unless you have reasons to believe that the writer has used complex sentences and foreign words to make a valid point, you could ask for a re-edit. If your writer is a novice, he or she will use this

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How to Leverage Social Media for eCommerce Marketing

August 5, 2015

There is a lot of noise about using social media for eCommerce marketing. If you don’t have a digital marketing strategy, you can consider yourself a little outdated, to say the least. You might have a website and a blog but that doesn’t mean that just your online presence is enough. You will need to start spending time on social media and discover how you can optimize your digital marketing plan with the help of social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. However, do not forget that social media is just a platform and not something that will sell your products magically. Everyone is eager to monetize social media but the important thing to evaluate is to see how it is going to benefit you. Statistics show that only 12% of the companies feel that their social media strategy is working out for them. As Cyriac Roeding, CEO of ShopKick, a social commerce app, said, “Don’t mistake social as the core of the shopping experience. Social is a means to make shopping better, not vice-versa.” You can connect to a large audience and market your product to them. Social media also helps in finding out whether your customers are satisfied with you or not. It also acts as a monitor to show you who is talking about your product, whether they like your product and what are they talking about it. All these provide you with a heads up about where you stand in the market. You need to understand that your objective is to sell. So, use the media to attain that. Also, social media can add to your business other than direct sales. You can use Twitter, Facebook and Instagram as an extension of customer service or to build brand awareness, this can be a place where you can improve customer engagement & gain insight into your customers’ interests. All these contribute in increasing overall sales. Finally, making your social media strategy a success requires time and unwavering commitment. Follow the given instructions to leverage social media for e-commerce marketing. 1. Involve your audience Your website needs to be designed in such a way that it aims at enhancing customer friendliness. Add social media into all aspects of your e-commerce website. Give your customers the option of using an existing profile to log in. By doing so, you can avoid unnecessary steps that require a user to create an account or register. Make sure your home page, product pages and other pages also have easy sharing buttons. The power that a simple share button has can’t be undervalued. New customer would want opinions of the veterans in the business, rather than the companies blowing their own trumpet. Involving your audience can give you an edge over others. 2. Don’t oversell Many businesses who fail to engage their audience on social media commit to self-serving. Talking about new products or sales is great but you need to know where to draw the line.  Try to engage your audience with the company itself and not just buying or selling. You can do this in multiple ways by resorting to contests, quizzes and tips. Make the questions interesting enough to generate discussions. Try to keep promotional posts only up to 20% and the rest needs to be what the audience connects to. It could range from current news to popular TV shows that have link to business. However, make sure that all your conversations are related to the kind of products that you sell on your e-commerce website. 3. Visual creativity Visuals attract crowd better than words and there is absolutely no doubt about it. You can use this for your gain. A collective of all social media platforms, photographs are the most shared. Photo sites such as Instagram and Pinterest can be the perfect platform to showcase your company with a creative streak. You can choose a wide range of things to post like photos, cartoons, caricatures and even a small text message in a quirky font and an attractive background to catch the eyes of your audience. Philosophical quotes and motivational messages never grow out of fashion. Build a relationship with your customer that is interesting and fun. Last but not the least, use visual creativity to showcase all your products from their most flattering angle. 4. Scope for improvement Social media is the best place to know where you went wrong or what else you could have done due to the immense information available about your performance. You can measure your activity and learn about social media marketing & the important nuances like the best time to post, the trending topics, which products are popular, who is doing what to promote their brand. Combine all of this knowledge and monitor your own performance to create a power-packed e-commerce publicity campaign. The trick is to never stop experimenting or never stick to one particular strategy. Experiment with your strategies to keep your audience engaged to your company. 5. The third wheel content Like mentioned earlier, you don’t have to limit your posts to e-commerce topics. You can use other interesting matters relating to your business. Likewise, you can share content from other websites that are related to your business but with due credits to them. Even if you curate content from other sites by sharing, try to add a creative description along with the shared content to captivate your audience. For example, if you are a telecommunication brand, and you come across some interesting things related to telecom sector, share it on your web page. But don’t forget to mention and give credits to the source, you got the information from. 6. Crack a sweet deal The secret code to successful e-commerce marketing is to make your audience feel special. Focus on showing what you can offer rather than making them purchase. Talk about attractive deals and exclusive offers to show how special they are. You don’t have to make grand utopian gestures; a simple “thank you” for their purchase will work wonders.

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