Category Archives: Reputation Management

How to Make Your Video Go Viral

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How to Make Your Video Go Viral

YouTube is one of the most popular websites these days due to the millions of online users who log in and spend hours watching cool and funny videos. There is always a video posted on YouTube about anything you can imagine, and more people are drawn in every day.

With the success of YouTube comes the need for more effective video marketing. Since many online users are becoming more attracted to watching how-to videos, advertisements, and  other interesting visuals, online marketers need to be sure they are taking advantage of that opportunity.

The most important part of video marketing is that your video be attractive. If your video is interesting enough, users will share it with others, and a cumulative increase in traffic toward your business will ensue. In other words, if you create a viral video, you can enjoy a surge of interested traffic to your website, more back links to your website, and the attention of search engines.

So, how do you make your video go viral?  Here are some tips:

  • Work on your targeted keywords. Basically, this allows your video to capture more of your targeted audience. Identify the keywords that you want to link to your video and then work from them when creating your video. Lastly, optimize your video to make sure that YouTube will be able to show your video in targeted keyword searches.
  • Include the latest cool trends. YouTube videos with the highest search rates each day are considered to be trending. Incorporating the latest trending music into your video will attract more audiences to it. Plus, new trends will give your video an impression of being fresh, which is also ideal for search engines.
  • Don’t forget the essentials. Even though you want to create an attractive video for our audience, you must not forget the main reason you created the video in the first place. Keep your video informational and helpful. Make sure that the important facts that you want to share with your audience are highlighted and that they offer a solution to your targeted market.
  • Share it. Making your video viral starts from you. If you want more people to share your video, share it with them first. Post it on social media sites and your blog, so more people will become aware of it.
  • Let your audience express themselves. Enable comments, likes, and shares on your video so your audience can freely express what they think about it. Many online users enjoy interacting and taking part in the conversation online, so making it easier for them to do so will encourage faster sharing.
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How Mobile Apps Help Businesses Increase Their Revenue

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How Mobile Apps Help Businesses Increase Their Revenue

Go outside your home and walk around a few blocks. One thing you will notice is that everyone is using their mobile phones. These days, mobile phones are not limited to simple texting and calling. With the advent of mobile internet, many users log into their social media profiles, search for restaurant recommendations when they’re hungry, and search for new trends via their mobile phones.

Small and large businesses alike can take advantage of the growing mobile usage and increase their revenue though mobile apps. If they incorporate hassle-free, helpful and interesting mobile applications, more and more potential customers will be willing to try their convenient offers.  Here are a few ways you can do that:

  • Create more sales opportunities. With mobile applications, your businesses can reach more potential customers anytime, anywhere, regardless of what they are doing. Whether they’re waiting for someone in a coffee shop or simply killing some time, users can be browsing on their mobile phones and see a sale from your company pop up.  They can then immediately buy your product and become an instant sale for you.
  • Efficient payment system. Many mobile apps offer auto-fill system that allow for a faster payment process. Users who have logged into their accounts and have transacted with you before can simply auto-fill their names and address upon checkout, so transactions will be faster and more convenient.
  • More targeted advertising. Advertising food to someone at home will result in a delayed sale because it may be hours or days before they physically come to the restaurant and buy food. But, advertising to a person on the street who is searching for a good lunch will compel him or her to search for that place and buy food right away.
  • Convenient purchasing decisions. Mobile applications offer price comparison tools, budgeting tools, and the like that help customers evaluate their purchase. It makes any purchasing decision faster when compared to a person deliberating on their own and setting their phone down.

A mobile website becomes more effective if integrated with the right mobile SEO. To enhance your mobile marketing strategy and leverage revenue, you may want to look into working with a mobile SEO company, so they can help you incorporate new trends in the market and satisfy your customers.

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Best Practices for Social Media Reputation Management

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Best Practices for Social Media Reputation Management

Social media is a great way to build your brand presence online. But, what if you fail to answer comments on your blog? What if you don’t update your Twitter and re-tweet interesting tweets from your followers? What if you don’t attend to queries on Facebook?

The answer is a bad reputation. Social media networks can provide a great avenue for building brand awareness and establishing a stable customer base. But, if you have a bad social media reputation, all your efforts may amount to nothing.

Social media reputation management is a vital tool in making sure that your brand’s reputation in the different networks stays positive. It is a good way to monitor the activities of your brand online, how your market is talking about you, and how you engage with your market. It gives you a clear idea of which red flags to avoid and what to do to strengthen your reputation.

Below are some best practices on how you can manage your reputation on social media:

  • Listen well and talk – Social media networks are excellent places to learn about the sentiments and needs of your target market, as well as to talk to them about what you can offer. If you listen well to what they are saying, you will know how to properly respond and give them what they want. Whatever they post on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media networks, make sure that you are there to listen.
  • Avoid deleting bad comments and address them positively instead – There will always be negative comments about your brand. But, it doesn’t mean that you have to remove them instantly to keep everything positive. The key is to be discreet, apologize for their inconvenience, and do what you can to make things less negative for them. Deleting these comments can actually heighten your market’s anger if they feel like they are simply being ignored, and they will find other ways to express their anger. It’s better to face the situation and diffuse it as quickly as possible before it spreads further.
  • Always respond – If you find a positive review about your brand, share it and give credit to its source. If you receive a comment, respond to it immediately. If someone follows you, follow them back. Social media is all about engaging. If your market base knows that you are also interested in them, they will feel appreciated and maintain their loyalty to you.
  • Monitor activities of your brand – It helps to know if there is a positive review about your brand or a negative one. This will allow you to create the necessary responses and learn where to improve when necessary. Monitoring them will allow you to know everything that your brand is involved in. You can use different tools like Google Alerts or Social Mention to help you monitor effectively.
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Learn Online Branding Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

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Learn Online Branding Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

It is important for your online business to be visible to the right kind of people. If you want to generate more sales through your target market and establish awareness with your potential leads, proper branding is important. What does that mean? It means that you want your target market to get to know your business and what you can offer them.

Proper branding results in significant benefits. Knowing how to position your business, how to interact with your target market in a faster and more convincing way, and how to encourage them to remain loyal to your business are the ways to properly brand yourself. Unfortunately, not all online businesses this and therefore have a more difficult time driving traffic and increasing sales conversion rates.

Below are some examples of online branding mistakes and how you can avoid them:

  • Weak presence in social media. If your business has no social media connections or inactive accounts on social media that are never updated, then understand that you have weaker branding online than you could. Social media provides strong connection between businesses and their consumers. Through social media, you become more recognized by your market, so start managing your social media as soon as possible to creating a branding presence for yourself in those mediums.
  • Inconsistent. A brand with no consistent positioning is like a lost person in space. People don’t trust a brand that doesn’t have a stable personality or clear message of what it offers the market. If your brand is inconsistent, think about what you want your brand to be and what you want it to represent and then stick to it.
  • No creativity. If there is one thing that consumers don’t want from a brand, it is a lack of creativity. Sure, your brand will establish a following for a period of time, but if you don’t continue to offer something new to your consumers, your competitors will move in. Take the time to enhance your brand with new features and special offers. Be creative in marketing your brand.
  • Not knowing your target market. If you do not know your target market and simply try to blindly please everyone, your business will have a hard time competing. Keep in mind that your consumers are the most important people in your business. It is crucial that you know your target market and what they want.

To help you identify these mistakes and avoid them, consider working with a good reputation management company. Branding management can be established more effectively with skilled people alongside you, and by bringing their expertise to the table, they can provide you with creative ideas that you might not have thought of on your own.

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What Every Email Marketing Piece Should Have to Be Effective

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What Every sEmail Marketing Piece Should Have to Be Effective

Creating a good email marketing campaign will allow your business to drive more traffic to your website. Through proper email marketing, you can lead more potential customers to your website, establish a better relationship with them, and eventually generate more sales.

Including email marketing in your collection of online marketing strategies is one way to ensure the success of your business. But, sending a simple email to your list may not always be enough to guarantee a higher return rate. In order to achieve maximum success, here are some excellent features that an email marketing piece should have:

  • An attractive title – Seeing a catchy title on your email will encourage your recipients to open your mail and read. However, if you include a title that speaks of selling to them, then expect your e-mails to be ignored. Be creative with your title and examine your response rates to determine if it is something that causes your customers to want to open your e-mail.
  • Get them glued in the first paragraph – If the introduction of your e-mail doesn’t captivate your audience from the beginning, they will be more likely to ignore your emails in the future. You should always start with a follow up on your catchy title and ignite their curiosity more. Remember, your title is what made them open your email, so keep it consistent.
  • Provide an easy landing page – Make it easy for them to go directly to the page you are talking about it. People hate having to do that type of thing manually, i.e. opening another browser, going to your site, and searching for the page you indicated on your email.
  • Make it easy for them to contact you – Some of your consumers may like to contact you on the phone, while others prefer e-mail. Always include this valuable information in your email.
  • Offer something valuable – The moment your recipient opens your mail, he or she expects something useful from it. Offer them something, such as a product offer, a freebie, or a helpful tip.
  • Add a link to your social media – Most of your recipients would like to know more about you through your social media. Make it easier for them to reach your profiles by adding a slink on your email.

Different SEO services offer good email marketing management for your business. You can work with reliable SEO companies to help you manage your email marketing and drive more traffic to your website.

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Avoiding Social Media Disasters: Tips on How to Effectively Manage Your Social Media

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Avoiding Social Media Disasters Tips on How to Effectively Manage Your Social Media

With the growing number of social media users, it would be a lost opportunity for a business not to have a presence on these online platforms. The moment a business starts to create social media profiles and update them regularly, the more potential customers become aware of the brand’s existence.

However, it’s not enough for a business simply to create a profile on a social media site and then leave it stagnant. Nor is it a good idea to overuse the platform to push personal ideologies and beliefs.  Either of those scenarios would instantly lead to a social media disaster, and instead of enjoying the benefits of increased market potential, customers would just be driven away.

How do you avert social media disaster? Here are some tips:

  • Establish a policy for social media. Just like setting a routine for each workday, set a policy that you and the people in your office follow whenever you post on your business social media pages. The policy needs to include instructions on how to create posts on your blogs, Facebook, Linked In, Twitter, and Pinterest. It also needs to specifically state the do’s and don’ts of what is allowed.
  • Secure your password and other important information. You don’t want people hacking into your social media accounts and making negative changes that could jeopardize your business. So,nstore important information like your social media password in a secure place.
  • Have self-control. Your patience may sometimes be tested on social media, particularly if someone says something negative about you or your business. But, if you push back, you will find yourself on the losing end. Try to keep your cool and never post anything you might regret later. The trick is to read comments, take a deep breath, and calm yourself for a few minutes, so you can then response with composure.
  • Always proofread what you want to post. Remember that what you post online is what your business is saying to its market. If you post something with a grammatical error or that is unintelligible, customers may look down on you and be less likely to buy your product.
  • Respond quickly to comments. Whether they are full of praise, contain questions, or are negative feedback, always respond quickly to let your customers know that you are attentive and there for them.

Social media marketing companies work to help businesses establish a more professional profile on top social media networks. These agencies see to it that business profiles are updated constantly and can attract more potential leads to the company’s website. This consequently results in an increase in brand awareness and sales.

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Understanding Twitter’s New Copyright and DMCA Policy

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Understanding Twitter’s New Copyright and DMCA Policy

Copyright issues can sometimes be a gray area in the online world. These days, many users, both individuals and organizations, have complained about copyright infringement on their social media posts and updates. Although other users can share other user’s updates, it is, needless to say, important to acknowledge the source of information.

To address the issue of copyright infringement, Twitter had updated its copyright policy for better transparency. The new policy indicates that tweets that are reported will be withheld instead of removed. This will provide users and followers more information on the violation.

Previously, tweets that were requested for removal due to copyright issues were removed after approval. This offered followers a dead link when they tried to access the tweet. The policy has been changed so that, now, when a complaint on a tweet has been approved, Twitter will replace the tweet with this message: “Tweet Withheld. This Tweet from @Username has been withheld in response to a report from the copyright holder.”

What does this mean for businesses? First of all, if a business discovers a violation of its brand, website, or images, it can file a complaint to Twitter. This creates added protection from unwarranted use of a business’s name and intellectual property. Secondly, it serves to legitimize content that is posted by encouraging people to cite their sources…for a business, this could mean indirect brand recognition.

Based on the DMCA or Digital Millennium Copyright Act, complaints that Twitter will respond to are: unauthorized use of copyrighted images, unauthorized use of copyrighted images uploaded through Twitter’s photo hosting service, and tweets that contain links to infringing materials. Businesses that want to report a copyright violation can file a complaint at Twitter’s Help Center.

Online businesses that want to strengthen their copyrights can look to a social media marketing company to help them ensure that their copyrighted images, brand name, and logos are not used by other users without proper authorization. Social media companies understand the ins and outs of these sites’ policies and can therefore help a business protect their name and resources properly.

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Benefits to Small Businesses of Using Google+ Local

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Benefits to Small Businesses of Using Google+ Local

Social media networks have become influential when it comes to customers’ buying decisions and tendencies to buy. Many potential customers consult social media reviews, recommendations, and blogs prior to purchasing a particular product. With this in mind, small businesses must also take advantage of social media networks in order to gain leverage in increasing leads and converting customers.

One example of a powerful social media network these days is Google+. Essentially, Google+ enables businesses and individual users to connect their multiple Google accounts, such as Gmail, YouTube, and Google Calendar, to create a more convenient and wider platform for socializing and connecting. Another feature that makes it helpful for small businesses is that they can connect to local customers in Google+ Local.

How beneficial is Google+ Local for small businesses?

First of all, Google+ Local offers customer reviews and recommendations that enhance brand popularity. Users can write a review on any business page on Google+ Local and can also rate pages with a score of 0-3.

The good thing about user reviews is their credibility to other users. Reviews, whether good or bad, can easily influence the buying decisions of other customers and their opinions of your products and services. The idea is for small businesses to encourage good reviews from their customers on their Google+ Local pages.

In addition, Google+ Local also highlights places and brands recommended by Google+ connections. If a potential customer searches for burger joints in your area, and a number of their connections on Google+ recommend your burger joint, then it will definitely appear at the top of their search results.  Higher recommendations would mean an increase in search rankings on both Google’s universal searches, as well as local searches on Google+.

Finally, Google+ Local offers a Zagat system, where Zagat scores and summaries appear on search results derived from users’ reviews. Summaries include points from users as well as ratings from poor to perfection on different dimensions like customer service and product offers. If your business carries a high Zagat score, that will easily influence potential customers’ buying decisions.

There are a number of benefits Google+ Local can offer to any small business. To help you maximize the advantages of Google+ Local, contact a reliable social media agency that can assist you with creating your profile, optimizing your website and Google+ page, and interacting and connecting with customers.

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Leveraging Your Lead Generation with LinkedIn Engagement

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Leveraging Your Lead Generation with LinkedIn Engagement

LinkedIn continues to be one of the top social media networks today. Given its company-friendly interface, LinkedIn is widely used by professionals to market themselves and their companies.

Integrating expertise and knowledge is one way for professionals to promote themselves on LinkedIn. Not only can you showcase your skills, experiences, and strengths for potential job or business opportunities, but you can also do more to further position yourself as an expert in your field. Many professionals generate leads from other companies as well as end consumers through their skills and expertise within their niche.

It is therefore important for professionals to personally brand themselves to bolster lead generation and help achieve their goals. Below are tips to help professionals become more successful in marketing themselves on LinkedIn:

  • Create a professional profile. This starts with a professional photo of yourself.  Keep in mind that first impressions last, and if your potential leads see you in a more respectable way, they will be more likely to trust your expertise. In addition, fill out all of the necessary information about yourself as a professional. Include all of your past employment and experience, as well as your strengths and skills.
  • Optimize your profile using targeted keywords. This will help you reach more of your potential leads and not just passersby. Targeted keywords are researched keywords that strongly relates to your niche or brand. Use keywords that are frequently used by your target leads for research.
  • Establish a plan for engagement. Mix different content and media to keep your potential leads engaged and interested.

LinkedIn engagement is also effective for company marketing. Online companies can improve their lead generation if they continually engage with their LinkedIn followers. There are actually different tools that can help companies enhance their market reach and increase their lead generation rate.  Here are a few:

  • Establish yourself as an expert in your niche by consistently answering and attending to other users’ queries. Make sure that your answers are brief, but that they directly address a solution to their needs.
  • Connect your Twitter account to LinkedIn for wider market reach. There are free tools available that allow you to link your Twitter account to your LinkedIn account, so your Twitter followers will be able to follow you on LinkedIn as well.
  • Allow followers to share your information by incorporating a LinkedIn share button on your website. Sharing is powerful for generating more leads because when one follower shares your information, it reaches all of their connections as well.

LinkedIn is a useful tool in online marketing and lead generation as long as it is utilized in a proper way. By working with a social media company, you can maximize the full marketing potential of LinkedIn and see your lead generation increase faster.

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Website Content Marketing

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Website Content Marketing

Yes, you have written a good article, but is it enough to simply post your article on your website and move on? Content marketing is about more than just creating unique and original content for your website. Sure, Google loves to see fresh content, but the primary goal of creating new content is to let your market know what you’re doing.

Content marketing is about promoting your website content to your targeted market. If your market reads your content and realizes the value of what you are saying to them, they will become followers. And, the longer they remain followers, the more likely they will be to convert into customers, as long as they are nurtured with the right kind of information and service.

In addition, if more people come to realize your content and the value of your shared information, they will also be interested to link back to your website. Building these relevant links naturally will also be plus point for Google and other search engines.

So, how do you promote your website content?

  • Share your link on social media. There is no better way to let a lot of people know about your new article than posting it in a venue filled with millions of people every minute. Social media has become an avenue for promotion, so post your content at the optimal time, where people from your target niche will be online to read your content.
  • Read and comment on other blogs. Search through related blogs and try to comment on their posts with your name and link to your website. Make it sound professional and authoritative, so people who are also interested in the subject will find you to be helpful and will be directed to your website.
  • Allow social sharing on your blog. If one reader stumbles upon your blog and likes what you have posted, the tendency is for him or her to share it with friends. Now, imagine having hundreds of online users realizing the existence of your content in a matter of minutes through that single share on social media. Enable your share, like and retweet features for better social sharing of your content.
  • Send an email blast. Send a message to your e-mail database with a link to your new content. You may also want to enable e-newsletters, so followers can be updated when you post new content.

To help you promote your new content online, it is advisable to work with a social media agency. These experts know the right time and media to use to better market your site’s content for traffic and lead generation.

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