If you are on the fence about utilizing social media for your business…this video should help you decide. Statistics are a wonderful thing :).
Convinced? Okay, fantastic. Now what to do? There are unlimited resources all over the web to help you get started. You can even find some here:
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Dustin Smith
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This is both a small success story for a cross country burger joint and a personal experience.
Here’s the story:
My wife and I visited Elevation Burger because it was close to home and looked like an interesting place to eat, so we wanted to check it out on a beautiful day while we were just relaxing. We walked up to the door and found out we could get a free drink by texting a certain phrase to a certain number, so of course we jumped on that. We got our free drink and enjoyed a very good meal including organic burgers, fresh fries, and two great milkshakes. By the way, they have the neatest soda machine…but that is just a side note >.>. Then a few days later we received a text message saying we would get a free burger with the purchase of another burger…we also jumped on that haha, we love deals and free food. We had no intentions of visiting Elevation Burger any time soon simply because we can’t afford to eat out all that often, but the coupon that they sent us gave us the incentive to go back in less than a week. That was a win for Elevation Burger, a win for us, and a win for mobile marketing.
Mobile Marketing is no joke, it works. I do not just preach mobile marketing, but also benefit from it :).
Mobile Marketing Through Ventown:
If you own a small or large business or know of one that needs this, I happen to know of the perfect solution. Ventown.com offers unlimited mobile marketing services as well as a ton of other great services. Not only does Ventown have amazing services, but they are the most affordable service you will find. I have written many post about Ventown and I can guide you through getting involved with Ventown and personally walk you towards better marketing for your business. Right now you can get your first 3 months of service with Ventown for free if you sign up with me.
If you are at all interested or have questions, let me know :). I would love to help.
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Dustin Smith
Account Executive
281-657-5238
DSmith@Ventown.com
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The never-ending search for the most affordable and most effective marketing techniques continues now as it always has. The market changes, the consumer changes, and so the approach to marketing a business will inevitably change as well.
My question for all the small business owners out there that are on the front lines of marketing today is:
“What form of marketing has been most successful for your small business?”
Please comment with your experience so all the other small business readers can learn from you. 🙂
Thanks for participating!
Dustin Smith
iMarketingDS@gmail.com
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Alright take a second and study this chart. Hubspot is very good at creating charts such as this one, they make them very self-explanatory.
Basically, the more you post, the more customers/subscribers you will acquire.
The main thing to consider and remembers that, it will absolutely take time before you see results…so be patient.
Hubspot explains a case study of a company called PrimePay and their struggle and success with persistent blogging.
The chart above is proof that bloggers shouldn’t lose faith – in fact they should have a little patience and be persistent in their blogging effort. More evidence is the progress that the team at PrimePay, a national provider of payroll, tax and HR services, has made over the last year using HubSpot to blog consistently. Because they appeal to a very specific target market, Nancy and her team didn’t set out with a goal of extensive readership – rather, they wanted to share valuable content that would enable them to become thought leaders in the payroll services space. Starting with a blank slate, PrimePay’s blog hit 550 subscribers after about 6 months. Since then PrimePay has continued to blog gaining steam along the way. Recently, they topped 1,300 subscribers, driving increased traffic and leads to their business.
Patience wasn’t the only tactic Nancy applied at PrimePay to increase blog readership. Here are a two specific tactics that PrimePay executed to drive their success:
Create Remarkable Content with Cross Departmental Bloggers
Nancy learned early that blogging doesn’t have to be a solitary enterprise. In fact, by polling other departments, including her sales team, Nancy’s editorial calendar got filled with a variety of topics of interest to PrimePay’s target market. A quick scan of the PrimePay blog reveals that the top ten most popular posts run the gamut from employment law analysis to payroll and benefits that can impact employee morale. By leveraging content ideas and rough draft posts from other members of the PrimePay team, Nancy’s overall coverage can be broad enough to attract visitors seeking expert advice from across all the markets her team serves.
Promote the Blog with Small but Consistent Messages
In the early days of the PrimePay blog it didn’t make sense to do large scale promotion. Nancy created email signatures for the whole company to include a very low-cost and easy to execute promotional tactic. Only once the blog had started to gain readers and had a great base of content did Nancy decide to incorporate her blog into specific email marketing campaigns. The goal of these campaigns was to increase readership, and in turn, get those readers to pass the blog along.
To date, PrimePay’s persistence and simple but powerful promotional tactics have paid off. Readership and lead generation have seen great results and Nancy has more buy in for the blog than ever.
Here is the source of this article: Hubspot Blog
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Dustin Smith
iMarketingDS@gmail.com
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I received an interesting article this morning on blog SEO. I thought this might be an interesting read for those small business bloggers out there that don’t have a whole lot of time to study blogging as much as you would like.
First, keep at it! You are forging a path and that requires endless amounts on work…but it’ll get easier once the ball is rolling. Do your best to keep writing about your niche. Blogging is a proven practice that will increase traffic to your site or your business and create relationships with potential business partners.
Here are some tips from the article I read that I wanted to share, some you might already know, some you might not. I hope they are helpful :).
1. Choose the right domain name: The first thing that you should do for seo is research and brainstorm the top five phrases or words that relate to your company. You may find that Google Adwords, and other similar programs available online, provide free key word searches that can help you to narrow the field down to the most key-word rich domain names for websites advertising your industry. Once you have a few options to choose from, be sure that your final choice of domain name is one that is brief and will be easy to type and to remember.
2. Include smart title tags: Only slightly less important for seo than your domain name are the titles that you give to each indexed page of your website. As a website owner, the titles on your web page are one of the most valuable tools you have to control search rankings. Make sure that the key words you use in your headings are carefully chosen for relevance as well as sense. Your title needs to be a well-constructed sentence as well as incorporating key words – it can’t simply be a list of them.
3. Use headings to get ahead: The headings and subheadings you include in your content are also important for seo because they are used by search engines to determine the content and context of your website. As with the page titles, you should include key words in your headings, while being careful not to over ‘stuff’ them with the result that they appear to be spam and could have your site penalised.
4. Include keyword rich content: Seo can be achieved by placing keywords and keyword phrases throughout the content of your website – but not too often. One method of achieving the right key word density is to include them approximately once in each paragraph. There are many free keyword density tools available online, however, as a general rule, keyword density should be around three to six percent as higher than seven percent can be considered ‘spamming’ or ‘stuffing’ and may earn penalties.
5. Visually emphasise keywords. As well as including key words throughout your website wherever is reasonably possible, making them stand out in your content will boost seo. Search engines automatically give more weight to key words if they are visually emphasised using bold text. It is important to remember to only make bold your key words, however, not supporting words, otherwise the impact will be lost.
6. Provide clear and functional navigation. Including a clear sitemap or text link navigation in your website will ensure that it is maximally search engine friendly. A website with well-structured navigation and correct internal navigation is more likely to be indexed by search engines in its entirety which is a great way to increase seo.
7. Include key word rich links. If your website includes links to other pages on your website, or links to other websites, make sure that relevant key words are included in the anchor text. Providing key word rich links will mean that visitors to your site know what the link contains, and also performs the same function for search engines thus powering seo.
8. Sidestep flash features. Unless your website necessarily includes complex design elements, including flash in your web development plan can cause problems for seo. Flash does not show up in search results and does not run on most smart phones and personal wireless devices. When it comes to redeveloping your website, video, rather than flash, is a feature that is successful in capturing the attention of your customers and is also very search-friendly for your seo purposes.
Thanks for reading!
Dustin Smith
iMarketingDS@gmail.com
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