Mobile Technology and The Future

There is an exploding movement in smart phone technology and mobile connectiveness that will boggle your mind! Businesses, whether online or offline is in for a wild ride in the next 10 years. We found a great video that chronicles the history of how mobile communication methods have evolved and then gets a little scary and exciting all at once when predicting what could be in this world wide phenomenon. Check out the video below and imagine how you will marketing your business with the emerging mobile techonology!

Blogging and Google For Your Business

Blogging still is one of the most important part of your marketing plans for 2012. But do not overlook Google as your “marketing partner” too!

One trend that is almost overtaking online marketing of your business is Google search and Google Places. With Google search, let’s say you have a printing business in Atlanta. Your website or blog or any other online property you own, should be at the top of the search for local search, “Atlanta Printers” or “Printers in Atlanta.” Google is your best friend to help people find you if you keep your rank high for this search term or phrase.

Another very important part of using Google is Google Places. If you don’t have your Google Places business page set up already, it’s time to claim your business listing there. Google has over 54 million pages, claimed and unclaimed that are already on the internet.

In our next post we are going to give you tips on how to better use Google for your local “main street” business.

Brand Your Business With A Blog

It has never been more important for your business, whether online or brick and mortar location to have a blog website. Branding is the number one priority you should work on for 2012.

You may have hundreds of competing businesses either in your area or around the world, it is going to be even more competitive and the best thing you can do is to build and reinforce your logo and your brand.

Just what is branding? It is repeating the message of your business out to the masses to capture the attention of both people who use and don’t use your service or products. Yes, conventional marketing wisdom says to place your message in front of your “target” audience only. “Shoot fish in a barrel” approach. But in today’s marketing world, it is just as important to get your message out to every potential customer that you can. You see, you have the ability to capture new customers very cheaply through the internet.

Marketing costs have really gone down dramatically because you can spend a low set cost to put up a website or set up a business fan page on Facebook for free. There is no medium that allows a very small business to appear larger than life than through the internet.

Make it a point in 2012 to print out flyers, imprint coffee mugs, set up lead generation internet pages, start an email list, and anything else you can imagine to get the word out on your business.

Get More Blog Readers – Expand Your Personality

Want the “secret sauce” on how to get more blog readers for 2012? Show more of how “human” you are, share your experiences and be more interesting as a personality.

You are probably familiar with the “reality” shows on TV right now. It is not surprising that they command the highest viewer ratings today. More and more reality format TV shows are in the works because the TV industry figured out that world markets for products and services want to see everyday people in various situations, whether is good or bad! Of course we watch some pretty bad reality shows, but if you look a listing of recent reality show topics, you will see there are literally hundreds of shows in various versions already out or in reruns.

You can capitalize on this “reality show” popularity by becoming your own reality show of sorts with your own business blog. You see, people are a curious bunch! They want to see not only what you provide as a service but also how you run your business, the adventures you have, even family situations of how your business is run.

Expand on your personality to get the attention of your audience. I guarantee you that people will become “fans” of your business simply because you have a little “quirk” to your business or your business being unique over any other business because of your personality.

There is no denying that we all are unique in some way. Bring out this uniqueness for all to see.

TV shows like Oprah, Dr. Oz, Rachel Ray, and Martha Stewart all are unique personalities. Why can’t you bring out the personality within yourself and your business and make your business blog more popular than ever?

Make it your number one goal in 2012 that you will make it the year of “expanding your personality” on your blog!

Blogging for 2012

As we end 2011, which came and is going very fast, start your plan for 2012. Ask yourself, what do you want to accomplish over the next year?

Start off your planning with all the events and promotions you are going to have in the new year. Mix it up and start blogging! In the face of computer tablets and smart phones, blogging is still very relevant in your marketing efforts. Actually, blogs will probably stay relevant for very long time because of the ease of use and principal way of communicating online.

There has not been much in new developments of business blogs other than more security enhancements and more connection with social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin so far.

We do recommend that you update your blog with the latest security plugins and new features that will help to get higher search engine rankings.

When planning your future promotions for your business, make sure you release these announcements early on your blog. You want to make sure you get as much visibility as possible prior to your promotions. Give incentives to early visitors to your announcements such as deep discounts for coming into your store by a certain date. This will make your in store visit of customers increase and you can reap the benefits of new customers and returning loyal customers.

Customer Service Will Boost Profits For Your Business

If you practice excellent customer service to everyone you do business with, you will drive more profits after the sale than during the sale. A satisfied customer will tell others about your products and great service and may also blog about it, text it to others, even putting in Facebook.

This can be the cheapest form of marketing your business, simply provide the best customer service that you can and you will rise above your competition in no time.

Remember that in order to give excellent customer service, you need to have excellent training of all your employees at every level of your company and be consistent on how you provide this service. It does no good if you have great service one day and not on another day. It must be part of your everyday way of doing business.

Business Blogging Best Practices

To make your business blog more effective with your visitors and your customers, make it a point to use “best practices” when posting.

When making a post, don’t be salesy. Make your blog post informative and show benefits to your readers. Don’t mention your promotions right off the bat. Sprinkle your blog posts with some mention of promotions but emphasize useful information that helps your readers solve a problem which your business helps them with.

Low key is the best approach when blogging. You want to develop yourself as the “trusted advisor,” so that when a reader thinks of the niche that your business addresses, they will only think of you because of your position of authority.

If you make your blog informative and relevant to your readers, you will win more visitors and likely in person visits to your brick and mortar location. After all, isn’t that the reason to have an online presence?

You must continue to think of yourself as a real life “publisher.” In other words, take the responsibility to publish information that your readers can look forward to and often not found anywhere else. The more you provide one of a kind information, the better your chances of attracting a larger following.

Give your readers what they want regarding your content. If video is what your visitors request, make it easier for them by making and inserting your own videos in the blog. Video is a powerful medium that “speaks” way beyond words can say.

Lastly, make sure your business blog is solidly linked to your main website if you have one. A blog is a powerful “feeder site” to drive online traffic to your main site. As you may already know, a conventional HTML or flash website lacks the powerful function of search engine optimization but with a blog attached to it, makes it effortless to attract a large amount of traffic and therefore will make your main website more relevant.

Your Business Needs Video To Market With Right Now

Right now, in 2011, the best online marketing technique is video marketing. If you haven’t got a video online now for your brick and mortar business, you are already losing out to the competition.

With video, the most important advantage that you gain is website rankings. Especially if you put your video on Youtube you will gain a very high ranking and therefore, get found from the people who are searching you out.

Social Media Impact

Social media in all forms and channels are literally taking over how we live. We found a very interesting video that pretty much summarizes the current state of where social media is right now and how it affects just about all parts of our lives.

Remember that your business blog is a big part of the social media movement. Keep up with your blog and make it relevant to your visitors all the time.

One Way To Monetize Your Blog

You set up your business blog and filled in the specifics of your business hours, location, phone number, email subscription, etc., and now what?

Of course your blog is set up so you can get a good online presence and search engine optimization and you will get visitors. But what now? How much business through your front door is it really going to produce? Is there other ways besides attracting people in your store with coupon discounts on your blog or other incentives to bring in customers with cash?

Yes there is! The most obvious marketing strategy you should implement is making your own product and sell it on your blog. This can be a “how to” book, a tangible product that you can touch, or even a service that solves an immediate problem that your customers are suffering with right now. It could be a digital product such as a series of videos or even a ticket to a live seminar or workshop that gives your customers a solution.

It may be easier than you think to create a product or service you can sell from your blog, but if you are not doing this, you are leaving mucho dollars on the table when visitors come and go from your blog.

Even if you grab people to join your email newsletter, you then have the opportunity to sell to them at a later date.

The point is here is to get creative and start planning on something you can make from scratch that you can sell to your customers. I’m not talking about representing a product from someone else as an affiliate, rather a product or service that is authored and branded with your company name on it….something that only is available from your company.

Your blog is a direct connection between your business and the thousands of visitors that come by your blog every single day of the year. Take advantage of the opportunity!

What Would Richard Branson Do?

Is it ok to fail in business?

There is a very inspiring video from marketing guru, Seth Godin interviewing billionaire Richard Branson that you should definitely see. Richard Branson is the founder of the Virgin Group, which includes Virgin Cola and Virgin Airlines brands to name a few.

Check out what Richard Branson has to say about failure, even in the worst of economic times.

Blogging For Online Presence

If you have a business and don’t have a website or business blog, you are not using the most current way to get new customers and keeping your current customers. It is now necessary to have an online presence to do business in 2011.

Businesses are on Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Review Sites, Directories, Videos, Google Places pages, Podcasts and so many other online properties. The most successful businesses are now using a combination of these sites just to keep up with their competition.

Search engines are now requiring your business to be on several social network sites in order to rank high. Ranking high in the search engines makes it possible for your business to get found by someone who needs the product or  service you provide.

What is the best combination of online properties to be on for the best rankings? Having a blog, a Facebook Fan Page, a Twitter Feed, and Video on Youtube.

The above combination can, and will change with the advances in social network site technology. Remember that Facebook and Twitter were not even in existence yet several short years ago. It won’t take long for the current popular social network sites to become passe’ and replaced with the newest thing.

You have to be on top of the current trends online to use the internet to your advantage.

Blogs Are Conversation

One thing that most people don’t realize is that blogs are meant to be a conversation between the visitor and the blogger. In past blog posts here, I mentioned that you should hire someone to write blog posts related to your product or service with the object of getting feedback or bouncing ideas off from your blog visitors.

By getting in the mindset that blogging is really a two way conversation between your business and your customers and prospects, the more you will be successful at business blogging.

Get Video On Your Blog

If you are not familiar with how important video is to rank you blog site, you are probably hiding behind a rock! If you have a worthwhile static website or business blog, get video on it as soon as possible. You can embed videos from other people such as the one below, or even better, make your own video and post it on your blog. Once you get the hang of making and posting videos, you will be a master at getting your website noticed!

Google Gives High Relevance to Blogs

When starting up a blog for your brick and mortar business it is very important to know that you have two distinct advantages going for you in the online world from the start.

1) You get the benefit of having your site on a blogging platform that has built in mechanisms to get high rankings with the search engines.  This is because with every blog post you make, you get the attention of the search engines from the “ping” feature within the blog platform. If your site is on either WordPress or Blogger platform, you have an instant search engine boost from this pinging function.

Pinging is an action from one computer sending a test signal like  “sonar” from one computer to another. It was originally used to test diagnostics to make sure a computer is working properly.

2) The second benefit having your business site on a blog platform is that the world’s largest search engine, Google, loves blogs. Blogs make up part of the social media mix currently online. Google, when ranking a website will look for how many social media and social network sites are connected to the blog. The more incoming links and outgoing links your business blog has within it, the better it is for Google to give you a higher ranking.

So, when thinking of your marketing strategy when using your blog, know that the content you put in it will have a more than likely chance of being seen by more people than businesses that have just a static HTML site.