Your Online Reputation: What Are Customers Saying About Your Small Business?

Online ReputationIt’s been four years, but few people have forgotten the Dominos debacle of 2009, in which a prank video about unsanitary food preparation in a Dominos kitchen went viral. Despite significant resources to deal with the situation immediately, the company took 48 hours to respond, and they still haven’t completely lived down the bad press. Hopefully they have learned from the experience, and if there is a next time, they will maintain a stronger online presence and provide a quicker response time.

A positive online presence is crucial to any business, but especially to small businesses. Customers talk about their experiences, and in this instant-gratification world of online review sites and live feeds, they take their praise—and complaints—to the Web. Here are four ways to ensure a positive reputation for your small business:

Make It Personal

The first thing a business should do is put a face to the company, and the best face you can put on your company is yours. Make your website both professional and inviting, so customers can feel like they can email, tweet, or message you on Facebook for a speedy, personal response.

Keep Up

Once your face is on the company social media sites, monitor those sites. Make sure your social media and website is managed by someone who is both professional and informed on the latest technology news and happenings. Have accounts monitored regularly and quickly address any mentions of your brand, both negative and positive. Retweet or share any positive news out there about the company, and post original, positive content regularly.

Respond Quickly

Whether feedback is good or bad, response time is key. Dominos waited 48 hours before they publicly reacted to the YouTube video fiasco, which would have been perfectly acceptable in the days before social media, but today 48 hours is about 47 hours too long.

Manage What’s Posted

Besides watching for your brand being tagged or mentioned on social media, there are other ways to manage the information about your business on the Internet. One way is to use a reputation monitoring service like Reputation.com. This helps minimize any inaccurate information about your business coming up in search engine results.

The last thing you want is to spend time and money repairing a reputation that didn’t have to go south in the first place. Dominos is still working to better their reputation and online customer service. Be proactive and put some safeguards in place to ensure a quality reputation both online and off. Perhaps the best way to ensure that your business earns a great online reputation is to follow the same policies you would for in-person customer service: Be kind and quick.

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E-commerce: The reliable guide to improve your search engine ranking

Having the best e-commerce website won’t generate any revenue during the holidays, unless you take the initiative to make it more visible and popular on the World Wide Web. So, is your website ready to take on the holiday season? If not, then you can use the search engine optimization (SEO) tips discussed here.

These tips would make the difference between notching up your sales revenue and losing your business to your competitors.

Search Engine Ranking

SEO tips to improve search engine ranking

Here are the SEO tips to get ahead of your competitors as far as search engine ranking of your e-commerce website is concerned:

  • Study your competitors – It is important for you to know what strategies your competitors are using to rank their e-commerce portals on the search engines, before deciding one for your own. For that, you may begin with tools like SEMrush or Mozbar to have a proper idea regarding the kind of keywords they’re targeting.
    Moreover, you can also take advantage of various other tools like Open Site Explorer or Majestic SEO to study your competitors’ inbound linking strategy. This will help you to identify the ways to reach out to some of your potential outreach collaborators while you continue to implement your own SEO strategy.
  • Conduct keyword research – As you settle the chore of finding out the keywords used by your competitors to rank their websites, you can put that information to good use to flag off your own search for a set of relevant keywords. In this regard, you may use Google Keyword Planner Tool so as to find out the LSI (long-tail) keywords and identify the primary keywords based on which you’d promote your website.
    It must be noted here that your keyword strategy must include user intent since without it any such SEO tactics would be incomplete.
  • Get an awesome homepage – Your website’s home will receive the highest volume of visitors as compared to any other pages. You need to capitalize on this fact through a visually attractive and memorable homepage. Regard your website’s homepage to be your only chance to strike a positive note with your prospects and an highly effective platform to connect with them better than your competitors.
    This would answer their queries like ‘why should I buy from this website?’ or ‘what unique does this website has to offer me than the others’ Have a USP (unique selling proposition) of your own that would be next to impossible for your competitors to beat you at.
  • Enhance web-usability – Optimize your website so that it has a simple, responsive and an easy-to-use layout that will keep the visitors hooked on for an extended period. Having so would definitely increase their chances of buying something from your website.
    If you prefer to have fun and want to do so in a way creative way, then you can employ the tricks of gamification to encourage your visitors to participate more on your website and leave their reviews in order to win badges or points.

Apart from the above factors that would help you to raise your website’s search engine ranking, its page load speed as well as mobile device compatibility will also play a crucial role in the search ranking process.

About Author: G. Adams is a financial writer and contributes his articles to different blogs and websites. He is associated with several finance communities as a Guest author and forum member.

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Internet marketing – How it helps you promote business and increase your customers

With the help of Internet marketing, it has become very much convenient to earn money. People can now relax at home and work according to their suitable time. You can reach at any corner of the world to conduct business and make money online. These days the mobile phones have all the features of getting connected to the Internet. You may use LinkedIn mobile app feature of your phone for promoting your business so that you can increase your number of customers soon.

Internet Marketing

4 Benefits of online marketing

1. Increase your potential customers – One of the benefits of Internet marketing is it enables you to increase your probable customers. When you conduct your business online, there is a possibility that more people will get to know about your products and services and thus, may show interest in your business. With Linkedin mobile app feature that is available on your phone, you can now update information about your business from anywhere and everywhere.

2. Target your advertisements – You need to target your advertisements so that it appears on the website. See that the advertisements match with the interests of your potential customers. For example, you may sell equipments related to bodybuilding and sports on your website. The Internet also enables you to advertise your products depending upon demographic criteria. For instance, LinkedIn, Facebook are some of the popular social networking websites that are used by millions of users regularly. You may advertise your products in these social networking platforms to let more people know about your business.

3. Accessibility of products – The accessibility of different products that are available on the Internet is another advantage of Internet marketing. If you notice a signboard while you’re driving, then you may look at it for one or two minutes but you’ll forget about it after sometime. On the other hand, when you see any advertisement online and you find it interesting, then you may link directly to the website for more information about the product and buy it in few minutes.

4. Less money is needed – Internet marketing is a great way to promote your business at a low cost. Since you do not need to create banners for your business and you can advertise your products in these social networking websites, you actually save a lot of money. With the help of Google AdWords, which is actually web advertising service, the users can set up a particular budget within which they’ll be  advertising their products and services. As per Google, the users may set a budget of minimum $5 for each day. You’ll also find some websites that allow free advertisement. Craigslist is one such website that enables to advertise any product or service without having to pay any charge for it.

Thus, if you are having your own business and you want to promote it, then Internet marketing is the best way to do it. You do not need to put much effort when you advertise your products online. Besides this, if your phone has the feature of LinkedIn mobile app, then you can even promote your business whenever you want. Since more and more people are involved with these social networking websites, you’ll find it easier to promote your business and thus, make huge profit.

About Author: G. Adams is a financial writer and contributes his articles to different blogs and websites. He is associated with several finance communities as a Guest author and forum member.

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4 Web Design Trends that Should Impact your Page’s Text

The internet has come a long way from the bizarre color schemes and intrusive flash ads of the late 90s. While a large portion of the web might still be playing catch up stylistically, the internet is generally trending towards simple designs, softer colors and a content-focused system that makes it easier for people to enjoy the aspects of a site that they’re actually there to see.

This has some significant implications for all aspects of front-end web design, but particularly for the way we present the text on our pages.

Despite the significant impact that images and video have on a site and despite the average internet user’s short attention span, the web is still run by text and that isn’t going to change anytime soon. Text-based content, particularly in the blogging arena is still the most useful and relevant way to provide information on the internet.

Today’s most successful websites have gotten to be popular, primarily because of the text-based content they provide.

While images and videos have their place, they’re not replacing the written word.
In consideration we should be carefully assessing how the current web trends are impacting the kind of text we use and the style in which we present it.

Here are the primary things to keep in mind:

1. Minimalism

If you could describe current web design trends in one word, this would be the word to use. Modern design demands a minimalist approach with a lot of soft colors (more on that later) and a lot of open space. Navigation needs to be easy and helping people find what they’re looking for should be top priority.

Implications

This means that text should likewise be minimal. Now this doesn’t necessarily mean small, but it does mean you should choose a solid, straightforward font – possibly from Google fonts, that’s easy to read and easy on the eyes.

2. Soft Colors and Contrast

To achieve a minimal design the color schemes have settled down dramatically in recent years. Lots of white and softer dark shades are usually the way to go. This makes for easier navigation and better readability.

Implications

At a basic level, text should always be black, unless you want to mix it up for bolded or heading text. Even then, stick with the more conservative choices.

At the same time, it can help to soften the look of your text by going with a lighter shade of black or charcoal gray.

3. The Focus of Text-Based Content

Websites as a whole are becoming more focused on properly displaying their content and making that content the centerpiece of their site. With the internet being a primarily text-driven system, this should have a say in the entire design of your site, particularly as it relates to where you direct the eyes of your readers.

Implications

Any block or div that houses text on your page (particularly the main body of content) should be the primary focal point and should be housed in subtle borders and almost always a white background. In some cases, it’s ok to use a subtle off-white background, but usually not for the main body of content or the “reading pane.”

4. Short Paragraphs

In order to deal with the short attention spans of the typical internet user, text is more often being presented in short one to three sentence paragraphs. This is more a writing style issue than a design issue, but it does have some implications for design, particularly as it relates to spacing and the margins between paragraphs.

Implications

It’s ok to just use one space between paragraphs since they’ll occur more often in this scenario. It’s also good to use bold and italics to highlight certain paragraphs or sentences that you might want to bring to the attention of the reader.

5. Larger Fonts

While this isn’t a universal ideal, a lot of websites are moving to a larger font to increase readability and make their page pop a little more. One of the better examples of this would be Copyblogger as they use a larger font for both their title and body text.

Implications

Larger fonts aren’t a must for your page but they are a more recent design trend that’s worth considering. Try a few different sizes and see if it works with your scheme and overall design. Larger fonts can work, but you’ve got to make sure it doesn’t clash with the rest of your page.

Keeping Text Trendy
If you’re mindful of these trends than the text on your page can and should follow suit. Remember that if there’s any doubt, a simpler more minimalist solution is the better option and is going to be an easier read for those on your site.

Web Design

Image by: Thomas Heylen (http://www.flickr.com/photos/heylen/4310529876/)

You can’t go wrong with keeping it simple.

Kelvin Jenkins is a professional blogger that shares his advice on online marketing and SEO. He writes for HigherVisibility.com Reviews, a leading search engine optimization firm.

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The role of Social Media Optimization in digital marketing

Social media has gained a lot of popularity in the present world. Most companies are engaged with the different social media these days in order to get an online presence. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn are the social networking platforms where people can promote their business and company. If you are having your own business, then you can promote it with the help of social media platform. Thus, the more people will come to know about your business and this way, you can increase your potential customers.Social Media Optimization

Popular social networking platforms – How they help in your online business

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest and Tumblr are some popular social networking platforms where millions of people post various information and other updates on a daily basis. Marketing has become an important part for any kind of business and with social networking websites gaining a lot of popularity, the companies need to update almost everything on a regular basis.

Social Media Optimization – What role it plays in your business

Social Media Optimization or SEO plays an important role in digital marketing. Read on to know the vital role of SMO in this.

1. Search engine enables you to become more active – The search engines like Google provides immense importance to sharing on the different social media platforms. The more you may be able to share a specific link in the social networking websites such as Google+, the more important Google will be considering it. You must try to change your digital marketing towards attracting the social media signals. This will enable Google and the other search engines to understand the importance of the content.

2. More communication with Twitter – Twitter is another social networking website that is very user-friendly. It is a bit different from that of Facebook. Just like Facebook has become very common with the huge masses, Twitter has not yet gained so much popularity. As such, it has less number of visitors in comparison to Facebook. In simple words, Twitter is a social networking website that is much favored by the media and the people who are very much brand-conscious.

3. Understand the vital importance of Facebook – Facebook is competing with the most popular search engine, Google in all aspects starting from importance, usage and size. While discussing about the vital importance of Facebook, the SEO experts will be giving much more preference to the social networking websites that has innumerable online users. If you want to promote your business and get online presence, then you too can do it with Facebook successfully.

Thus, while talking about digital marketing, social media optimization or SEO plays an important role in increasing the number of online visitors. Do you have your own business? Well, if so, then you must follow the above-discussed tips that will enable your business to get online presence with the help of the different social media platforms. This will also ensure you to secure a good ranking of your online business in the search engine results.

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WordPress Plugins for Event Management

WordPress is a very useful tool for programmers, web designers and other people who are less familiar with creating websites. It’s becoming more and more popular due to its convenience and diversity of services.

If you have a WordPress website, this article is just for you. It can give you an idea of how to organize events with WordPress.

Event Management

Credit: http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4099/4919659112_b9f6b0df8f_o.png

If you have ever dealt with managing events, you surely know how time-consuming this can be. The to-do list is practically endless. It may include repeating schedules, events, multiple days and tracks, multiple organizations, multiple prices and payment methods, etc. This can become a real torture for anyone.

Well, here we will show you some tricks with plugins, features and themes of WordPress that can help you organize events more easily.

Now let’s have a look at the event-management system and what features and plugins you are going to need:

Events

Of course, if you are going to manage events with WordPress your event-management tool should support events.

Registrations

If you want to make events easy for you and other people, you should allow them to register for events on the website itself. This will attract more users. Another thing to take into account, the people who register on the site should be able to have access to the information they provide and the events they join.

Event taxonomies 

Using taxonomies will help keep events in good order. How is it done? By separating events from other content on the site by means of tags and categories.  This is very useful especially if most of the content on the site is not Web development based. So use separate taxonomies for the events you provide online.

Payment gateways

Providing payment gateways online is another great way to make your site a favourite place for many users. Not to mention, it makes it easier. If you are wondering what payment feature to choose for your site, make sure you pick up the one that accepts the highest number of payment methods.

Sponsors

Normally, big events have sponsors. The latter usually provide financial assistance and in return require that website owners place their company logos at different places on the site. Having a sponsors feature is just the thing you need in this case. With it you are going to be able to add logos, descriptions and names of the sponsors that contribute to your events.

Participating organizations

Just like sponsors, other participants in the various events you may be hosting are  companies. For this reason, you are going to need a plugin or feature that will help you attach organizations to events.

Multiple day events

Sometimes events last longer than a day and splitting them is a great way to organize things. That’s why you need a multiple day events feature that will help you out. Also, you should be able to control everything from an administration section.

Notification management

Two types of notifications may occur on a website: on-site notifications and email messages. On-site notifications appear to users when they have a problem registering or when they have successfully paid for a ticket, for example. It is very useful to have a plugin that will make it easier for you to manage notifications.

There is a number of other tools and features of WordPress that are not for free, however. If money is not a problem for you, you may also want to try Events Manager, Events Planner and Event Espresso. Otherwise, if you have a budget to stick to, have in mind the plugins and features mentioned above.

Author Bio: Rose Finchley loves to write about Internet. She currently works as a manager of http://www.perfectcleaning.org.uk  and she has a lot of experience to share with her readers.

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The King of Social Video: Vine or Instagram?

Mobile video accounts for more than half of all wireless traffic in the U.S. That’s the latest from the Cisco Visual Networking Index, and it says video captures a larger slice of the pie each year. There isn’t a social network that doesn’t have its hand in mobile video in some way. Facebook paid a clean $1 billion for the wildly popular Instagram while Twitter started its own service: Vine.

One boasts more than 100 millions users. The other carries a more humble 13 million. Based on those numbers alone, it seems obvious that Instagram is clearly the superior service for social video sharing, but when stacked against the still-impressive Vine, the race is much tighter.

Ease of Use: Vine

Regarding a video capture app, Vine is simplistic. Users open the app, hold a thumb on the screen to record and capture a quick six seconds of video before sending out to the world. Because Vine is video-only, where Instagram is also a photography app, there are no extra steps to reach the video recording function.

Editing and Effects: Instagram

Simplicity goes both ways. Vine is easy to use but also limited. Once a video is captured, there are no editing or filter options. Instagram users can apply the same photo filters to videos and even upload existing videos from the phone’s library. It also gives users a full 15 seconds to record and share video instead of Vine’s six. The extra time and features make Instagram a more visually improved video app.

Marketability: Vine

Businesses have presence on both networks, but there’s an extra variable with Vine that makes it friendlier to marketers. A look through sites like Brands on Vine shows just how involved companies are with advertising with the niche video service. This video from Lenovo shows, Vine is a popular way to tease new products and services with a short six-second preview. As an added bonus, the constant looping of Vine’s videos make it likely the viewer watches it more than once.

Shareability: Tie

Are you an avid Facebooker? Instagram pictures and videos show directly in Facebook news feeds but are limited to just a link on Twitter. Vine, on the other hand, plays natively inside the Twitter app but isn’t as Facebook-friendly as Instagram. The fact that Facebook owns Instagram and Twitter owns Vine makes each video service more compatible with its father social network, so this one’s all about preference.

Fun Factor: Vine

Instagram is interesting but Vine is simply fun. Accounts like “King Bach” (above) are nothing but hilarious videos that are somehow funnier because they loop endlessly. Instagram accounts don’t have the same consistency when it comes to funny videos, but that doesn’t mean it’s completely void of them.

So when looking at the final tally, it seems like Vine is the clear winner, right? The truth is there’s no reason why you should limit yourself to one app or the other. Both contain fun features and are great social video networks in their own way. Download both and go nuts.

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SEO and social media management – How are they related to each other?

Social media has an influence on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in several ways. Some people believe that Google and the other search engines use social media platform for getting high rank. The concept that lies here is that the more number of Facebook likes you can get and the Google Plus 1s and Tweets a site will have, the more popular the website is considered to be. Thus, it will ensure that the website is of high quality, thereby confirming high ranking of the website in the major search engines.

Social media – What should you know about it?

The main objective of social media is to develop a brand and enhance the visibility of the brand. Social media has gained a lot of popularity in the present world. As such, the more you can promote your brand on social media platform, the more number of people will be able to know about it.

The advantage of social media is you may use it to build good relationships with your probable clients. With social media management, you can interact with innumerable people and businesses before they may turn out to be your permanent customers. People will definitely want to gather more information about the company they want to do business with, before they decide to get committed to it. As such, social media management s believed to be a great way for getting this information.

Social media enables the potential and the permanent customers to know about the brand you are promoting. This can be done in the form of some particular campaigns and updating people about the recent changes. Brands reveal that they are up to date with the latest happenings in the industry. As such, they may comment on industry developments and get engaged with customers, probable customers and competitors. This will enable you to produce new business and hold your customers too.

Search Engine Optimization – How is it different from social media?

SEO is not similar to social media. The main objective of SEO has three stages – improve the search engine ranking, which will increase the traffic to a website, leading to an increase in the business. The main objective of SEO is to increase business. This means you must use the right keyword for improving your business.

SEO enables a website to look much more attractive in the search engines. Yo need to have the most appropriate content, good links and a blog are that will enable your website to get a good ranking in the search engines.

SEO and social media are very much different from each other. Social media is about branding and interacting with the clients and probable customers while SEO is about increasing the rankings in the search engine results which may lead to high quality traffic. The objective of both is to enhance business. Social media will conduct this by communicating with people and letting them know of the brand. On the other hand, SEO will be doing it by improving the rankings for the things that the possible clients may search for when they want to buy any product or service.

Author Bio:

G. Adams is a financial writer and contributes his articles to different blogs and websites. He is associated with several finance communities as a Guest author and forum member.

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Key factors for planning your own online marketing strategies to generate online sale

In the past few years, the online marketing strategies have changed drastically. With the Panda and Penguin algorithm updates, most of the websites have lost their ranking. However, Google updates haven’t devastated all the online marketers. Those who practise white hat seo have not been affected like the marketers who employed black hat seo techniques. The ranking of the sites plummet as the online marketers employ online seo techniques. The websites run  without the assistance of a dedicated marketing team to test and tweak the strategies have experienced steady dropping of the website ranking. If your website ranking has dropped due to the latest algorithm updates of Google, then you’re required to follow the most important online marketing strategies given below. Online Marketing Strategy
Here are some of the effective online marketing strategies that you can consider while creating online marketing strategy:
1. Create a brand name before approaching the market audience: A brand name and image is really crucial in this marketing world. Your brand name will make you different from your competitors. So, you need to select a name, trademark, website along with a business plan before designing any strategy.
2. Analyze your competitors: Before you launch your own website, you’re required to analyze your competitors sale process that is inclusive of the marketing strategies. Make sure you check the past and the present of the marketing strategies of the largest competitor in the business. It can help you understand their marketing strategies and employ them while implementing your own online marketing strategy.
3. Evaluate your target audience: Make sure you evaluate your target audience and the niche market as these factors can help you designing your online strategies. Your online marketing strategies are based on the demographic instead of all the online consumers. If you’re aware of the niche audience, then it can be easier for your to market your product or service or plan your online marketing strategies.
4. Social network – One of the effective marketing strategies: Facebook, Twitter, Google+ are some of the popular social networking sites that can help you bring positive result when you promote your product or service through these social networking sites.
5. Create videos for YouTube: Make sure you create videos for YouTube as it’s considered to be a powerful platform for marketing an online business. You can share the videos of your products and share necessary information with the target audience.
When you promote your product with the help of the video online, you’re required to keep the following things in mind like:

  • A keyword-researched headline
  • A clear editorial message
  • A call to action

6. Employ proper search engine optimization technique: Online marketing is incomplete without a proper search engine optimization technique. If you employ right SEO techniques, then your website may rank on top of the search engine result. When you employ SEO techniques, you’re required to keep the following things in mind:

  • Relevant Keywords
  • Valuable Content that is Shared
  • A Website that Loads Quickly
  • Both Images & Content
  • Backlinks from Respected Websites

Therefore, you’re required to keep the above mentioned points in mind when you plan to employ online marketing strategies to promote your online business.

Author Bio:

G. Adams is a financial writer and contributes his articles to different blogs and websites. He is associated with several finance communities as a Guest author and forum member.

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