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Blog posts tagged social networking
11 cheap (or free) advertising methods to grow your business
March 02, 2011
The internet is a virtual bonanza of potential customers and clients if you know how to advertise your business. There are a lot of companies online trying to get into your pocket by offering services that will promote your business.
Fortunately, you can do most of these promotional services for cheap, or even free.
Owning a website
It may seem like common sense, but it needs to be said. Your business needs a website to be competitive online. Without a website you will be facing a constant uphill battle. It will only cost you a few dollars per year for hosting and a domain name, and with that you can generate customers and sales.
Online classifieds
Any business can get a massive amount of exposure by using online classifieds such as Craigslist. You can place free ads for your business online everyday and targeted people will stumble upon them. These ads can be anything from a one-day event like a garage sale to a service like photography.
Search engine optimisation
Free search engine traffic is tantamount to winning the lottery. If you are able to convince the search engines that your website is the most relevant site for your targeted keywords, you will experience a consistent flood of search engine traffic. This traffic will naturally convert into revenue. You can either do the optimisation yourself for free, or you can pay someone to do it.
Article marketing
A successful article marketing strategy will drive traffic to your website as well as help with search engine optimisation, and it’s completely free. It can be a labour-intensive method though, writing many different articles for many different sites. All that labour will bring reward. A well-crafted article marketing campaign may significantly raise your rank in the search engines
Social networks
Some businesses are perfect for social networking traffic and some are not. If you believe that your business will be buzz-worthy, you might want to consider creating a Twitter profile as well as a Facebook fan page. These accounts will allow you to interact directly with your online customers. You can let them know of promotions or events, and they can give ideas and suggestions to improve your business. It will also allow your business to grow virally through word of mouth.
Online video sharing sites
If you are able to produce a few interesting videos that are related to your business, posting them on sites like YouTube and Vimeo.com could send you a steady flow of website traffic. These sites are free to submit to, and the potential traffic gain from them is astronomical. Make sure that you submit more than one video to maximize your exposure.
Online photo sharing sites
Online photo sharing is like online video sharing. If you have some photos that are relevant to your business, don’t be afraid to share them on Flickr. This will increase your website visibility and send more targeted visitors to your site.
Pay per click advertising
Pay per click (PPC) advertising is rarely thought of as cheap, but it can drive a massive amount of high converting traffic to your site. You will have to find a balance between cost and revenue to make the best use of PPC advertising. While it can be very helpful for your business, it could also be a major drain on your budget if you aren’t careful. It might seem like a good idea at the time to pay for the top spot on Google, but if you aren’t converting enough sales it’s not worth it. You can purchase PPC advertising on almost all of the major search engines, as well as some sites like Facebook.
Email marketing
Email marketing has been stigmatised as spam. While much of the email marketing you receive is indeed spam, your campaign doesn’t have to be. The difference between a legitimate marketing campaign and spam is that people will actually request emails that are legitimate. So how can you make your email marketing campaign legit? All you need to do is create a massive email list of interested parties to send weekly emails to. Creating that list is a little more difficult. You will to give something away for free in order to entice people to provide their email addresses to you. This can be something as simple as a small report or document that is related to your business. After you have created your list, you can begin email marketing without the stigma of a spammer. It is important to allow your recipients to remove themselves from your list if they want to.
Local business listings
If you are promoting a bricks and mortar company, you should be taking advantage of the search engines’ local business listings. This will place your website on the front page with similar local services when someone does a search within your operating area. This can be a great way to get a fledgling business in front of the eyes of thousands of potential customers.
Online directories
It’s true that most online directories are losing their usefulness when it comes to search engine optimisation, but you can still make use of local directories that target your specific area. You will get a small boost to your page rank and some traffic from the directory itself. You shouldn’t waste any of your time or money with a paid directory. They won’t provide enough traffic to make their service valuable.
There are many different ways to get your business’ name out there on the internet, and you should use all of them. For cheap, or free, you can drastically increase your customer base by tapping into the internet. There are new advertising methods popping up every day, so be sure to keep an eye out for them.
Daniel Offer is a partner in the Facebook chat programme Chit Chat for Facebook
The Seven Deadly Sins of Social Media
November 17, 2010
There seems to be a lot of noise about social media just now but let’s not forget that it is just a tool to help you market your business.
It is your window to the world – a much bigger world than was available before. But caution. With increasing use of social media comes the increased risk of committing one of the seven deadly social media sins.
Wrath
Too often I see posts on Twitter, blogs or forums that are antagonistic, overly opinionated, inaccurate and just plain rude! Many of these are from business owners who are using social media to attract new clients or customers and who seem to have forgotten that professional ethics still apply in the social media world. What these posters seem to forget is that most people will view such social media content with the contempt that it deserves!
Gluttony
Social media can be over-consumed. Whilst it is easy to get carried away and get drawn into a social media conversation or debate — don’t over indulge in it. You still have a job to do! Manage your time using the age-old time management techniques.
Pride
Having a high opinion of one's own importance via your social media streams is not recommended. However having pride in your social media content, behaviour and professionalism should be actively encouraged. Pride can be a double-edged sword — make sure that you pick the right side of that sword!
Greed
Over-promoting yourself or your services on social media can be very off-putting. In fact it could have the opposite effect of leading to a loss of interest rather than the desired effect of generating marketing interest. Keep your social media content relevant, topical, interesting, helpful and not self-promoting.
Sloth
Being lazy with your social media content just will not do. New ideas are required all of the time. Keep up to date with the latest news items, forthcoming events or deadlines and write content that incorporates these. Never copy anyone else’s content unless as a reference and with their agreement.
Envy
Professional envy is often evident via social media. Expressing your envy of others via your social media stream is something to be avoided. Why not learn from what is making them successful and apply it to your business — a much better and more fulfilling use of your time.
Lust
Needless to say, as in any workplace conversations, your social media behaviour should be above reproach. However to show a healthy lust or hunger for your subject matter, by demonstrating your enthusiasm, is to be encouraged. Being positive and motivated will draw people to your content and help to get your marketing messages across via your social media content.
Hopefully you will manage to avoid these sins but if not, you will need to visit the Social Media Confessional!
Elaine Clark is an expert contributor to Start Up Donut and is the managing director of CheapAccounting.co.uk, an online accountancy practice aimed at small businesses with big ambitions.
Why being a business celebrity is the best way to stand out in your market
October 13, 2010
Being a Business Celebrity is all about using YOU as the point of difference in your business. Instead of thinking up a USP (Unique Selling Proposition) I’m saying you use what you already have — a PSP (Personality Selling Proposition).
A successful business needs personality and visibility. Having a clear business personality means you will always stand out in a crowd.
The world is changing – people are buying from people and social media has blurred the boundaries of business and personal.
You need to tell and share your story. You need to BE your story. You are your business, and if your business is big enough you need to bring out ALL the personalities in your business and use them.
Once you understand and accept that you are what makes your business, you’re able to be bolder, less afraid to stand out in a crowd and you can create loyal fans.
I’ve set out six steps to being a business celebrity. You can follow these in order (and repeat four and five over and over!) and you’ll have a personality-led marketing plan.
- Know your personality, and realise it’s all you need to succeed. Know what is authentic to you and what sets you apart — and believe it!
- Find out exactly what makes you unique, what is going to set you apart from the competition. Look at your experience, approach, ideas, hobbies and loves. Find out who you are and define the unique detail.
- Define what your business personality looks and feels like. What does your business personality look and feel like in words, colours, pictures, clothes and media.
- Tell everyone about you. Share your story. Convey and communicate your personality – whether you film it, blog it, write it, or present it — make it your way, authentic to who you are.
- Plug your personality into your business. This is the heart of the marketing plan. Use your website, online marketing, social media, networking, speaking, PR and more — to turn personality into business results.
- Use the power of celebrity to draw people to you. When you’re a celebrity it means you’re not a commodity any more. You aren’t the same as everyone else. YOU bring something different. So you can charge what you choose, work in the way you want to, and with the people you want to. You are known and sought after – that’s the “pull” of a celebrity, not the “push” of a promotional campaign.
If you want to know more about how to use the six steps to being a business celebrity – get the free download with more detail, examples and actions to take for each step here.
Lucy Whittington is an expert contributor to Marketing Donut.
Using social media to target your customers
September 20, 2010
Targeting customers through social media has become more and more prolific over recent years. Household brands through to much smaller start-up companies are using tools such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube.
However, it is vital that when selecting the social media tools you intend to use to target your audience, you are selected the correct ones. For example, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn users all have very different demographic profiles, so there is no point using a tool like Facebook to reach a target audience of professionals aged 40+, when statistics show that around over 80 per cent of UK Facebook users are under 40.
Once you’ve decided which social media tool or tools you are going to use, decide how you’re going to approach it carefully. What are you saying and to whom?
There have been numerous examples of major brands attempting to conduct social media campaigns or stunts, which have badly backfired and resulted in a consumer backlash, and ridicule aplenty.
No brand can afford that kind of damage, no matter how large or small.
Always have the consumer at the centre of any social media activity, and think as they would. Add value for your consumer, and always think of how they will gain from your activity. For example, a Facebook page that offers discounts and information about your product or service is innovative and is likely to increase brand awareness virally.
Be different and try to make sure that your social media campaign is one that will get people talking and one they will remember. No matter how simple.
And last, but by no means least, encourage your consumers to engage with you through social media activity. Simply talking at them by posting regular updates sends out the wrong message entirely.
Social media is all about engagement and interaction, and is not a passive process.
If you can actively encourage consumers to get involved in these campaigns, for example by posting suggestions for new products ideas as part of a competition, they will feel that they have some ownership of the brand, and this is vital.
Consumers engaging with each other through social media and sharing brand opinion has a favourable reaction, not only because these consumers feel they have ownership of the process, but also because they are more likely to relate to others’ opinions about the brand as they seem more ‘real’ than direct marketing messages.
Finally, don’t forget that many mobile phones today have powerful interactivity and will be linked to platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. You can take advantage of this by developing a downloadable application, which can be done on a relatively low budget and connects you directly with your consumer. Just remember that an app needs to add value for your consumer. That way it will make their life easier and cement their relationship with your brand.
Howard Scott is digital marketing director at Sequence Digital. The digital marketing agency’s clients include the BBC, S4C, The Welsh Assembly Government, Storm Model Management and Rachel's Organic.
Everyone is doing business on social networks. But are they?
September 24, 2009
There's a lot of talk about the power of social networking for business. Take a look at some of the most eye-watering stats in this video. What's clear is that social networking is no longer becoming mainstream, it is mainstream.
But are people getting the results they want and need? Well, research we've just conducted would suggest a resounding NO. This is not necessarily bad news. In fact, it means that there is plenty of opportunity to resolve problems and stop making mistakes.
Clearly, social media is still in its infancy. But with 50M+ people registered on Twitter and five times that number on Facebook, it's a force which should be reckoned with today (not tomorrow).
How are you finding it? What do you think?
Feel free to grab this video off YouTube and embed it. Let's get more businesses interacting and getting results on social platforms. Ultimately, that will be better for all of us.
Twitter downtime highlights need for a traditional and modern marketing mix
August 07, 2009
My digital footprint is sizeable and I can twit, stumble, blog and flickr like there is no tomorrow. I am even writing this blog post on my phone on the train in to work. Yesterday, for one brief moment, it looked like there would be no tomorrow in social networking terms.
Yesterday, when Twitter, Facebook and other social networking resources went down, thanks to a coordinated and malicious Distributed Denial of Service attack (the name of a seemingly brilliant unmade Will Smith blockbuster), I was bereft and pondering a question. What did small businesses do to market themselves before the Internet?
At the Marketing Donut, as a web based resource, we do focus a lot on the modern marketing mix of online complementing the traditional. So while there may have been people out on the streets walking aimlessly like zombies, many carried on regardless.
Anecdotal evidence from fully fledged professional marketers came through on Twitter after the down time. Twitter for Business expert, Mark Shaw and one of our very own Donut experts both reported their ignorance of any Twitter downtime and relief they were away from their computers as they were at actual face to face meetings with clients.
If yesterday highlighted anything to me and the small business owner, it is that all the new online get up is brilliant when it works but should not be relied upon as a sole means of marketing activity. Of course, there are a whole variety of simple and effective ways in which small business interact with their customers in the 'real world'. Despite the rise of social networking, businesses still push for coverage in their local media, they still distribute promotional leaflets to target customers, they still concentrate on friendly and professional customer service as a way of generating word-of-mouth recommendation. These - and many other marketing techniques - are practices that have stood the test of time and will always be immune to the impact of malicious denial of service attacks like the one that took Twitter down yesterday.
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