3 Ways to Use Social Media for Your Business

Whether your business is big or small, social media can play a variety of roles and yield benefits as you go along. Social media is like your digital word-of-mouth provided that you use it well and not for black propaganda and other libelous intentions.

In the matters of business, social media can be used for different purposes. Below are 3 ways you can use social media for the enterprisers and enterprisers-at-heart:

Upcoming and current promos or sales!

Time-bound events require a medium that works wonders like word-of-mouth, and as mentioned earlier, social media functions like word-of-mouth, but in a digital version. Make an ad copy or a banner image of the sale or promotion that you are about to hold or currently having. Make it attractive, inviting and compelling, so no attention and time goes to waste.

If you are directing your target consumers to a registration page, check the validity of the link. Is it working? Does it lead to the right page? A glitch, no matter how minor, can turn people away and you do not want that to happen.

Spreading an advocacy

To make a sale, it is not always about doing the obvious – to sell a product outright and point the audience to the checkout page to make a purchase. However, one of the best and effective ways to make a business successful profit-wise is to campaign for an advocacy, which is in line with the products or services that your business offers.

For instance, you are selling anti-bacterial soaps and you are campaigning for healthy hygiene starting with responsible hand washing. This advocacy is undoubtedly shared by a lot of people, and you can use social media in letting people know that your business shares this point of view as well. One action will lead to another. Who knows, along with your effort to spread an advocacy comes a steady increase in your sales in no time.

Establishing yourself as a thought leader

What’s great with social media is you can communicate your thoughts and opinion as often as you can. Since the amount (and not the frequency) of content you can share is limited (for instance, Twitter only allows 140 characters and less per tweet), there is that need to condense what you want to share in such a way that people who get to read it will understand completely. 

Aside from these platforms, including a blog as part of your social media strategy is also the best way to truly establish yourself as a thought leader. Blogs, while casual looking, can be a very helpful tool where you can share your thoughts and engage with your readers in the process. 

More than sharing information, using social media allows you to engage even more personal with your target market or audience. Making replies is easy.

Landing Pages 101: What is It and Why You Need It as Part of Your Marketing Endeavours

Simply put, a landing page is a web page that lets you gather your visitor's information by means of a conversion form. Not all landing pages are built the same, and it is essential that you always create the best version you can make when crafting for your marketing endeavours.

A good landing page should:

·         Target a particular audience. A landing page is not effective if it is not tailored to a particular audience. Ask yourself  who  is your target audience. Is it small business owners? Solo tradesmen? Cafe owners? Medium-sized entrepreneurs? You need to be very specific about the demographics of your target audience to get the best results out of your landing page. 

·         Have engaging content. The headline must be strong and the sales copy must be able to put your product or service at a very good light. It is suggested that when writing a sales copy, it should be able to identify the concerns of the target audience and it should be able to explain why the product or service at hand is the ultimate solution to these concerns.

·         Contain compelling product or service info. A landing page is just one page, hence it should be able to contain all product or service info that will be compelling enough to convert into a sale. It should have product photos, testimonials, guarantees, take aways (a free gift like a free downloadable e-book, coupons, promos, etc.) an offer and a call to action.

Even without any form of convincing, a landing page is an essential ingredient in any online marketing endeavour. It completes the whole marketing package. 

·         A landing page is an easy way to generate leads. Instead of sending your potential leads to your homepage, your social media or email, capture them using landing pages instead. A landing page has the capacity to capture leads at a higher rate. You decrease the chances of sending them away by means of a landing page. 

·         A landing page lets you know your audience better. It is a great and straight forward tool to get the demographic details of your leads. It can be used or referenced by your sales team. The demographic information that will be generated can be used in understanding what kinds of visitors your website receives and will likely convert. It will also help you understand which among your prospective leads are more engaged than the rest.

·         A landing page tells you if your marketing endeavour is successful or not. By analysing the metrics that are associated with your landing page, you will identify whether your landing page undertaking has been successful or not. Is throwing a free e-book an effective bait to generate leads? Is a 7-day free trial promo an effective means to introduce your new virtual receptionist service? The results will readily provide you insight on your marketing performance, such that the next time you engage in other online marketing endeavors, you will know what to do and what not to do, what to adjust and so on.

Complete your online marketing strategy by coming up with a great landing page. If it does not go well, revise and devise and new one until you get the results you require.

The Benefits of a Responsive Web Design in Mobile Strategy

As the use of smart phones and tablet computers become popular, along with it comes the rise of making websites compatible not only for desktops but also for these handheld devices. Back in the day when smart phones and tablet computers were not as popular as it is today, it was largely acceptable if businesses choose not to have a mobile-friendly version of their website. Today, it’s not optional. It’s a requirement.

The benefits of having a responsive web design in terms of your mobile strategy are plenty.

The first benefit involves Google. Since your website, regardless of where it is viewed, only has one URL address, a responsive web design makes it easy for Google to crawl and index in their data base. It would be such a waste of energy both on your part and Google’s to create a mobile website with a URL different from its desktop version. If Google detects the same content, that can cause a red flag. A URL that is the same across different devices is easier to share.

The second benefit is consistency. A website that looks good and functions well on all devices regardless of its screen size lets you make your brand look more consistent. A consistent website creates an equally consistent positive user-experience.

The third benefit is it is easier to manage. For an SEO’s point of view, managing different campaigns for the same business is obviously redundant. You can optimise your content using keywords both on your website’s desktop version and mobile version.   

“Shrinking” your desktop website to a small mobile version may seem like a daunting task. Especially if you have a lot of functionalities set in your website’s desktop version, it’s a matter of tricky development and strategy when coming up with your website’s smaller, mobile version. Provided that the user experience is not compromised, opting for a mobile version of a website is worthy to be pushed through.

The fourth benefit is you can reach both your mobile and tablet audiences. From a business owner’s standpoint, it is important to be where your customers are. A responsive web design allows you to fulfil that goal of omniscience. As you ensure that your website is consistent and viewed perfectly across different devices, you have a steady hope of waiting for your website views to convert into sales. 

Ensuring that your web design is responsive allows you to stay along with the trend. It logically follows that as people change they way they use search and the devices they use for it, websites must be able to ride these changes.