How effective is Social Media in your Marketing Campaign?

Social media transforms a social interaction into highly accessible business dialogues – it combines the use of technology and interaction. The tools that are significant to social media are Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and YouTube – these tools are typically internet or mobile based.  

How can social media affect your marketing campaign? Social media give the company a chance to interact with visitors, customers and potential customers. It helps you advertise your business in a subtle and conversational way – a relaxing way to promote your product or service. It needs more of your time and effort so your marketing campaign will be successful. Not only small companies are using social media but also successful companies, think about the Fortune 500 companies. Almost all companies, in any industry, see social media as a vital tool for their marketing campaign.

What can the social media do to promote you in the market? Here’s how:

• Social media provides your products or services an identity.
• It can create relationships to random people who do not know about your products or services.
• It shows the real you. You show your personality when you talk about your products or services to a potential customer.
• You can associate with your peers, clients and potential clients as they serve as the target market for your products and services.
• You can use social media as a tool to communicate and interact with customers and potential customers.

Unfortunately, you cannot depend all your marketing strategy to social media – you have to maximize any other marketing channels to have a successful and effective marketing campaign. Social media can create social awareness but it will not sell millions right away. You have to be yourself that can truly reflect your personality. Be consistent when you decide to invest your time and effort on social media – otherwise it is a waste of everyone’s time. 

The role of social media in marketing depends on what kind of business you are running and how will it fit in the needs and demands of your business. The effort you will be willing to invest will make a difference when it comes to social media. You have to evaluate if how social media will play in the success of your marketing campaign – will it greatly benefit your company? Social media is use as means of communication to make you accessible to those who patronize your products or services – also, it will make you visible enough in the market esp. to those who don’t know about your product or service.  Create relationship and personality for your product or service.  Social media is so diverse that it can always suits all the needs and demands of your business.

How Reliable is that SEO Company?

Do you ever wonder why you are working hard for your business yet you are still at the bottom of the search rankings? You already hired a SEO specialist to remedy your needs but lo and behold – you don’t get the best results you are expecting. You step back – you hired a fraud SEO company! It is not an excuse. There are lots of SEO Companies out there – you just have to carefully look. There will be plenty of options, just enough for you to get back in the game. This article will help you to spot the not – how reliable is that SEO Company?

• Research all the substantial information and background of the SEO Company. Learn their goals, practices and company track record.
• No one can guarantee a number one result in the search engine. If the SEO Company promises you a number one result in a short time, be wary.
•  Always ask for opinions of your peers and colleagues. Hire a SEO Company that has been proven and tested by many.
• Google the SEO Company. If they are a legit company, their own website should be on the top of the search results.
• Ask for their portfolio. Are their former clients happy with the results? Their past performance should equally be good.
• Ask the SEO Company to provide you with evidences of their success. A good SEO Company will show you everything. If they are reluctant, that only means one thing – they are a fraud.
• The SEO Company should get around all SEO tactics to get the desired rankings. SEO Companies should know the link building, content, social bookmarking, forum and blog posting – if they don’t know all of these, your main objective may not be served.
• Consider the price of the service. SEO Companies charge differently, they first consider the current website position of the client.
• Make sure that everything is listed in detail. Know what you will be getting before you invest that money.
• Keep yourself updated about the goings on and monitor the SEO Company. Hire a SEO Company that has an open communication with you. Hiring a remote SEO company is ok as long as you have a reliable way to contact them but it is advisable to hire a SEO Company that you actually see, geographically speaking.
• Check the reputation of the SEO Company in the various forums and blogs. Unhappy customers will leave disgruntled comments about the service provider.

Take time and do a lot of research before hiring a SEO Company. You have to make sure it is a reliable company before investing your time and money. 

How to Create a Website – a Beginner’s Survival Guide

This is a step by step guide for beginners on how to create a website. You may find the process from the beginning a complex one, but as you go through and learn each – you will find it very interesting. 

1.    You need to get your own domain name – the domain name is the name that will identify your website, e.g. “shorecloud.com” – but before you can acquire your domain name, you need to pay the annual fee to register it. A domain name is just a name of your website – it is not already a website (think about registering a business name for your business). Naming your website after its domain name is plain common sense – when people think about your URL, they will automatically type the name of your website in their browser. It is important that the website name and the URL are the same so it will be easier for visitors and clients to find you. Try to obtain the domain name first before naming your business.

2.    You have to choose a web host to sign up for an account – a web host is a company responsible for making a website accessible to the World Wide Web. When you avail the services of a web host, everybody around the world can connect and view your website. Think web hosting as renting an office space in the real world. It is important to sign an account with a web host so your website has a home.

3.    You have to design your page – you can either design your website or hire a web designer to do it for you. If you want to do the web design by yourself, your first step is to acquire commercial or free web editors from the internet. You have to invest so you have a better quality. The highly recommended web editor in the market right now is Adobe Dreamweaver CS5, it allows you to design and develop standard website. If you prefer free software, you can also try KompoZer. Try searching online tutorials for the software.

4.    Get attention for your website – if you think your website is ready; you need to submit your URL to search engines, e.g. Google, Bing, Yahoo. It is much better if your site is link to other websites. After submitting your site to a search engine, you can also advertise your site in various search engines to get it noticed.

This guide may not be as comprehensive as what you have in mind but these are essential steps that will help you jumpstart your website so it will be visible in the internet. 

Is there such a thing as Black Hat SEO?

Black Hat search engine optimization, or spamdexing, is an unethical SEO technique that manipulates page ranking. If your site is caught, you will be blacklisted from Google – it means, no pages in your site will be indexed by the search engines. Black hat SEO basically cheats the rules of the search engine, and it has a poor user experience.

These techniques actually bring immediate visibility to your site but sooner or later you will be banned from various search engines. Black hat SEO is a short-term solution to a long-term problem.

Here are some common black hat SEO approaches.

• Keyword Stuffing – stuffing irrelevant keywords and phrases in your website will get you penalized by the search engines. Usually, black hat SEO practitioners stuff keywords on the meta tags and on the content so many times that it can be picked up by the search engine spiders. Learn the proper ways to put keywords in your site pages. Lack of targeted keywords constitutes lack of traffic.
• Hidden Page Text – this is a sneaky approach. This is putting the keywords in a white text on a white background – invisible to the site visitors but clearly visible to the search engine spiders. The purpose of this technique is to attract more search engine spiders. These keywords are invisible considering that it is irrelevant to the page content leaving the web visitors disappointed with the result page. The Google Guide for Webmasters urges to make pages for users and not for search engines. Do not, in any way, deceive your users. If you don’t want to be blacklisted by Google and other search engines, then don’t even think about doing it.
• Doorway Page – it is a dummy page that the web user will never see. It is just a trick for search engine spiders so it will index the site higher. This doorway page is stuff with keywords and links to attract search visits. When the user land into a doorway page, he will be redirected automatically to another page unrelated to what they are searching for.

Black hat SEO is very tempting especially that these approaches work temporarily – it will do improve your site in the search rankings however, will it be worth it when you get banned by search engines for using such unethical techniques?

Pros and Cons of Online Marketing – Will you join the Bandwagon?

Everyone has been jumping on the online marketing hoopla as of late. Many businesses forget the real essence of how online marketing can make or break their online business. They often neglect the pros and cons due to the race of getting their business up and running on the internet. They forget to evaluate their expectations – what makes it worse, they forget to plan on how to meet those expectations. Online marketing has four important elements: search engine marketing, online advertising, email marketing and campaign micro sites. Execute these elements and you are on your way to success.

Here are some pointers to help you analyze your internet marketing strategy.

Advantages of online marketing:

• Online marketing has a wider target audience. It can give you a valuable opportunity to reach millions for your products or services.  It is evident that advertising on the internet can draw people to what you are selling.
• Internet is a powerful tool. It can spread the good news very quickly.
• Convenience on your potential customers. They can shop anytime they want without physically going to your store.
• You can directly interact with your potential clients to learn about their needs. You can also install customer databases to promote the integrity of your company.
• With online marketing, you can reach many potential clients using different approaches such as email, blogging, social media, search engine, newsletter and banner advertising.
• As the owner of the business, you can easily spot if your marketing campaign is working or not. If it’s effective, you can invest more otherwise end it right away.

Disadvantages of online marketing:

• You should know that online marketing is not free. You will invest in software, hardware, website design, SEO for the maintenance of your site, online costs and time.
• Not everybody is motivated to do business or shop online. Many people prefer to interact with a live person when they buy or do business.
• Updates for your website are very critical. Watch out for outdated information on your website.
• Majority of websites have poor navigation which makes it difficult for your potential customers to find what they are looking for thus it is regarded as a poor service. Remember, there is a lot of competition for your products or services.
• There is a clamor on internet security that is why many of your visitors will be skeptical on using their credit cards to make a purchase or transaction. With identity thefts lurking around, they are afraid to divulge any personal information.

There are many pros and cons of online marketing. You should consider each when you are creating your marketing strategy. These disadvantages can be overcome if you put yourself in the shoes of your customers.

The Beauty of Online Marketing as oppose to Offline Marketing

There is a clamor today if whether online marketing is more effective compare to offline marketing. Whether we like it or not, online marketing uses offline channels.

It is a known fact that offline advertising has generated sales and revenues for years. Newspapers, magazines, television, radio and billboard are among the common platforms for mainstream advertising – these offline advertising are considered to be successful and profitable campaign as it leads customers to patronize a brand. 

Offline marketing, at times, can be extremely difficult for it needs to measure the precise results of the brand campaign. Unfortunately, it is hard to have a precise measure the impact of the advertising campaign. With offline advertising, every result is regarded as broad.

The immediate feedback on your marketing campaign shows the real beauty of online marketing. With this, you can immediately change your marketing strategies to be more effective and efficient. You can enhance tracking on your online campaigns by using online analytics such as Google Analytics, CoreMetrics and Omniture. The ability to track results in real time can benefit your campaign if it’s not working well.

The downside of offline marketing is it often takes weeks or months to clearly know if your marketing campaign is going to be successful. Unlike with the help of web analytics, you can instantly know if your marketing campaign is working or not. With this, you increase your flexibility by making the needed changes as soon as possible. You can either invest more if the campaign is successful or put the campaign into an end if it’s unsuccessful. You have choices before it’s too late.

Since offline marketing uses the medium of magazines, newspapers, television and radio, in their campaigns, it is fairly to say that the targets are too broad and imprecise – usually these targets have no interest with their products and services. Online marketing will help you go beyond your target audience. You have means to deliver your advertising campaign to a handful of targets that it may bring an effective approach.

Online marketing can give you an instant gratification considering that you don’t have to be patient in waiting for your end results unlike offline marketing. Also, there are countless of online marketing platforms that can help you when it comes to your campaign. These medium are proven to be effective as you can adjust your focus in maintaining your online marketing.

While there are still some companies who remains to be at peace with offline marketing and advertising, many companies now prefer on investing their significant efforts in marketing their campaigns online.