How To Create Google Plus Business Pages. Everybody’s been arguing over the value of Google Plus lately. Some say it’s only for geeks and others say it’s a waste of time. Well, Google just changed the conversation in a big way and just in time. The announcement of Google pages for business came just in time to turn the whole argument on it’s head. Why? Because this is clearly a direct assault on Facebook pages. For example: Friend Mike Elgin created a page where he and his wife plan to share their new diet called The Spartan Diet and he says he’ll be sharing on this page instead of to the circles of foodies he had created.CJ Brasiel created a page for questions about San Jose real estate and she plans to use it as a Q&A channel as well as a place to post news and information about real estate in the south bay.Save the Children UK launched their nonprofit page and did a great job setting off their profile with moving photos (hmm, just like Facebook pages eh?)
How do I create a page? How do I find my pages again after I build them? The Top 10 Marketing Infographics of 2011. It's almost impossible to believe that 2011 is so close to being over. Tons of great things happened in the world of marketing this year, one of which has been the creation of some awesome infographics that help provide valuable education and insight into the world of inbound marketing. While the web is full of some really great marketing infographics, we decided to limit our list to just 10. Check these out for a visual look at inbound marking in 2011. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 100 Million Professionals 8. 9. 10. What are some of your favorite inbound marketing infographics from the past year? 4 Simple Steps to an Optimized Twitter Presence. Many of you probably joined Twitter to market a business. While marketing may be your primary focus, the Twitter also emphasizes an element of personal branding you shouldn't neglect.
Have you optimized both your business and personal Twitter presence to enable people to learn more about you and your business? If you haven’t, keep reading. David Meerman Scott shares a set of elements you should optimize within your Twitter profile. Let’s look at the four major components of a Twitter profile for better optimization: 1. The first component you can optimize is your Twitter background. A customized Twitter background is great for conveying something about you or your brand's personality. 2. The second element of a Twitter profile that you will need to optimize is your avatar. Many people use photos that don’t help Twitter users recognize their identity. 3.
Your bio is the third thing you should optimize on your Twitter profile. 4. Don't forget to also optimize each of your tweets. GRYP - Grand Rapids Young Professionals Group News. How to Master the Art of Exceptional Blog Titles. Writing exceptional blog titles is something of an art form. In fact, a great title is often the difference between a business blogging article that generates a few views and an article that generates tons of views. While the title isn't the only important element of a blog post, it is usually a potential reader's first impression of your content. Think about it: a link to a blog post shared in social media is usually only accompanied by a title, so you better make sure that title is darn good if you want people to click on it.
Luckily, you too can learn the art of writing exceptional blog titles. All you need is to understand and emulate the following 6 characteristics ... and a little practice. 1. Example: "How to Create a Google+ Business Page in 5 Simple Steps" 2. Example: "101 Signs You're an Inbound Marketer" 3. Example: "10 Things We Hate About Marketing Automation" 4. Example: "6 Creative Ways to Make Content More Visual" 5. Example: "The 15 Best Facebook Pages You've Ever Seen" 6. 6 Steps to Implementing an Effective Lead Management Process.
This is a guest post written by Pam Sahota . Pam is a marketing communications/social media manager and freelance blogger who loves Boston, photography, charity events, sushi, wine, and the Red Sox. Lead management bridges the gap between marketing and sales. It’s a customer acquisition process which identifies potential buyers (leads), educates them, engages with them, and when the leads are considered qualified, get passed from marketing to sales. Is your business following an organized and effective lead management process? Doing so can improve the results of your lead generation efforts and ultimately contribute to more sales.
Step 1: Identify and Understand Your Leads This initial step is crucial to the success of each of the others. First, your marketing team should identify buyer types and what their personas are . Demographics: Where do your ideal customers live? You should also dig deeper by trying to understand the mindset of your ideal customer. Blog.hubspot.com/Portals/249/docs/ebooks/101marketingquotesjune2011.pdf. Blog.hubspot.com/Portals/249/docs/ebooks/99 social media tools hubspot 8.8.11.pdf. The LinkedIn Diaries: Success in 15 Minutes a Day. In a recent LinkedIn Diaries entry, I identified how LinkedIn “super users” leverage the popular social media tool to achieve their goals. Not surprisingly, success with LinkedIn comes with commitment and that translates into time — time learning the tool, time aligning your goals to the tool’s capabilities, time to build and maintain a profile and time to find new ways of using the tool effectively. But, executives often have very demanding schedules which are highly unpredictable.
In this entry of the LinkedIn Diaries, I identify those LinkedIn best practices used by busy leaders whose schedules limit them to devoting only 15 minutes per day to their LinkedIn activities. Martin Perelmuter is President of Canada’s most successful speaker bureau, Speakers’ Spotlight. Given that he is connected to many of the Nation’s high-profile professionals, it’s little surprise that his 15 minutes on LinkedIn is devoted to creating and reinforcing his network. Connect: Authored by: Andrew Brown. 8 Great Twitter Tools That Will Get You Tweeting Like A Pro.
The reasons to join Twitter are plentiful. In fact, Jeff recently wrote a wonderful post on why it is often misunderstood and people aren’t jumping onto it earlier. The experiences I have had with Twitter were amazing and it was by far the most valuable Social Network for me to use. What I like best about Twitter is it’s open structure, not only for users, but also for developers. It has grown to an ecosystem of over 1.5 million Apps and continues to register a new Tool every second. With this massive amount of Apps it can often be quite overwhelming to know which Tools to use. Here are the tools I use daily to make me more efficient and get you Tweeting like a Pro: 1. Whenever I am reading an article, I wasn’t quite sure, whether Tweeting it right now was a good idea. Pro Tip: What helps me a great deal is that Buffer provides me with analytics for each Tweet that I post. 2.
As a matter of fact, a Tweet’s life is only very limited. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Over to you now. More Reading: 6 Guaranteed Tactics to Turn Facebook Likes Into Leads. All inbound marketers will agree: more 'Likes' for your Facebook business page are quite nice. But when has 'nice' ever been enough? In and of itself, Likes are ultimately useless unless you're successfully converting them into leads for your business. At the end of the day, the effectiveness of your marketing team is likely evaluated by metrics like traffic and leads. If your Facebook page has 500 fans but is generating no traffic or leads for your website, you really don't have much to brag about. And if all that "engagement" you're creating on your page isn't contributing to your team's goals, it's essentially worthless.
The good news is, Facebook fans offer a great opportunity for lead generation if you know how to leverage them. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Ways to Build Online Traffic and Boost SEO. "If you build it, they will come. " It worked in the movies, but just putting up a website is no guarantee that it will draw traffic. You could buy ads, but if you're unable or unwilling to "pay to play," you're likely facing the increasingly daunting challenge of attracting customers to your website on your own. Millions of sites are competing for users' shrinking time and attention.
The hard truth is that the top three unpaid positions on the first page of Google search results receive about 58% of all clicks, according to online-marketing service Optify. Your best bet for attracting potential customers without spending money on advertising is creating content of such value that audiences can't help but feel compelled to seek it out or pass it along -- on a site that makes sharing it easy. But how? Original Articles -- Time investment aside, online articles cost little, can be easy to generate, and provide a way to brand company representatives as experts. How to Build a Social Business.
10 Things You Should Include in a Social Media Plan. While the 4 Ps of marketing are still relevant, it’s the 7 Ps that are most applicable to modern day marketing. Proper Planning and Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance. This is especially true for social media planning, where all too often the plan revolves around a murky set of objectives and a band of interns. When done right though, a social media plan for marketing, recruiting, or customer service is a thing of beauty. Having completed a handful of these plans on behalf of clients in the past few months, here are the 10 components that belong in your social media plan, regardless of organization type, size, and structure. 1. Even if no one is interacting with your Facebook fan page and only your employees are sharing your content on Twitter, it’s important to establish a baseline. 2.
Don’t do this to be a copycat. Whatever you do, don’t assume that because a competitor seems to have their act together that they actually do. 3. 4. 5. 6. No content, no social media. 7. 8. 9. Untitled. Social media marketing is changing the marketing landscape so fast that companies are struggling to adapt their strategies and tactics. What worked in 2001 or even last year is becoming less and less effective. Planning to publish a PR article in six months with traditional print media could mean completely missing the marketing window of opportunity. Booking bus or outdoor advertising takes time you might not have and not be able to measure.
So what are some key elements you need to keep in mind to market on a social web? 1. Share Think sharing. 2. Social media marketing involves publishing in real time, not next week or next month and topical posts and tweets will help you catch the trend and viral wave. 3. People no longer want to be “sold to”. 4. We live in an information age that discards the bland and embraces the “WOW”. 5.
Mono channel is not enough these days, whether that be email marketing or niche magazine advertiseming. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. Image by toprankonlinemarketing. Twitter Etiquette: 24 Guidelines to Tweet By. 7 Ways to Improve Your Marketing in 60 Seconds or Less. We all know it’s not always easy being an inbound marketer – especially a good inbound marketer. The things we do to optimize our landing pages, create killer content, keep track of all our analytics – they take time!
Therefore, to be both a successful inbound marketer, we must be able to use our time efficiently to drive the best results in the fastest way possible. The good news is, even when you don’t have a lot of time on your hands, there are lots of little things you can do to dramatically improve your marketing. Here are 7 things you can do in 60 seconds or less to drive more traffic to your site, convert visitors into leads at a higher rate, and increase your ROI: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
So there you have it – 7 simple ways to improve your inbound marketing in only 60 seconds. The New Facebook Rules — 360PR Blog. There’s a lot of confusion about the new rules governing how brands can run contests and sweepstakes on Facebook. We dug into the rules with help from 360PR friend Susan Getgood, and we’re happy to share our learnings in this post. Get Your Contest Approved. The most important thing to know is that all promotions administered on Facebook must be approved in writing by Facebook at least seven days before the start of the contest (advice: try to give two weeks notice to Facebook.)
If you are just promoting your contest, and all the action (entries) take place elswhere, you do NOT need approval from Facebook, but you should also not mention Facebook at all. Our advice is to put a notice on the Tab page announcing the contest that says “this promotion is solely sponsored by (insert your brand or company name here).” What you CAN’T do What you CAN do Even with the new rules, we’re seeing many fun and engaging brand contests and sweepstakes on Facebook. LinkedUp Grand Rapids Group News. How much time are you spending on social media? Can you tell if it’s helping sales?
Wouldn’t it be nice to have a framework for measuring the impact of your social media efforts? That’s where Susan Etlinger’s new research for the Altimeter Group comes into play. Susan did qualitative research with 60 social media marketers and vendors to understand how businesses currently measure their social media performance. Her goal: to develop a framework for tying social media performance to business goals. NOTE: Because Susan’s original research targeted enterprise-level companies, I interviewed her to add some small business insights. The following comments combine results of the research and that interview.
Start with your strategic goals Business owners who see great social media success tie their technology choices to their strategic goals. Make sure to start with your business goals when choosing your tools and measures. The Six Points of the Compass #1: Brand Health #2: Marketing Optimization.