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Using Social Media Smartly to Create Brand Loyalty

When it comes to building brands, people need to make the best possible use of the medium that they have chosen to build their brands. It is the medium that people use the most that ends up becoming the most vital component of establishing the success of any brand. After all, the medium that most people use is the one which they depend on for information and knowledge.

Popular Mediums of Communication

In this era, virtually every single person who has access to the Internet, whether it be through their smartphones or even computers has an email account, and most of these people also have a social media network account. According to a survey done by the Pew Research Center, as of September 2014, 71% of adults who are active online have a Facebook account, and this number has grown even more in the past year.

On August 27th, 2015, one billion people used Facebook within a span of 24 hours. This means that in one day you could easily have one billion people being exposed to your brand using only one medium of communication.

in one day you could easily have one billion people being exposed to your brand using only one medium of communication.

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How Social Media Can Be Used Effectively

The first thing which you must know about using social media as a method to create brand loyalty is the fact that you shouldn’t focus on just promoting the product or service.

Since most people inherently use social media to communicate with friends and family, they can used to increase the value of the product by using content smartly.

Content which is substantial and informative and tells the audience about the product/service helps to spark the interest of interested buyers. Once the audience embraces the content, they create brand loyalty. Content need not be just be blogs and articles, it can be videos and photos as well. One of the more well-known cases of such success being created by social media is that of singer Justin Bieber, who went from uploading videos of himself on YouTube in 2007 to earning $55 million in 2013.

One of the most important things which budding entrepreneurs need to understand about creating brand loyalty is to understand the customer base on the Internet. Millennials or Gen Y, comprise of a huge number of the total number of users on the Internet, and they are more liable than the previous generation to use a brand once they are satisfied with their initial purchase.

Another important point that social media establishes is the fact that the brand is made by real people. Since many of the owners/employees of a brand are also members of social media networks, it helps the customer base to feel like as if they are getting their services from people just like them instead of a faceless corporation.

So as you can see, social media is a great way to establish brand loyalty. If used smartly, it can ensure great profits without needing expensive investments. If you too have some thoughts and ideas on how social can be used you can share them in the comments below!

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Easy to Implement Social SEO Techniques For Your Online Business

Since the Google Penguin update of 2012, Social Media has taken a dramatic turn in becoming a major part of SEO in recent years, and continues to push forward in helping business awareness the Internet.

You Should be Focusing on Facebook

Every business should have a Facebook profile and if you haven’t, well, you are missing out and we are about to tell you why.

Facebook is used by millions of people worldwide and offers business the chance to showcase their products and services. Having a completed profile page, great graphics and a link pointing back to your site is a fundamental part of having a Facebook page.

It also helps you take your customer service to another level, offering customers the chance to contact you here and get instant responses. Think of Facebook as a hub for customers, engagement and promotion.

If you have budget behind you, you can’t go too wrong with Facebook Ads either which provides a backbone for you to reach out of your own audience into a granular level of demographics.

The more likes, the more engagement, the more chances of sales it’s as simple as that.

Don’t Forget Twitter

The second social platform that boasts millions of users is Twitter; the difference with Twitter is that it’s not behind a close privacy wall. Whatever you tweet can be accessed by millions of different people; the only catch is that you have a limited number of characters to get that message out.

If you decide to create a Twitter profile for your business which we would strongly advise, then look at the use of hashtags which can be a powerful addition to any Twitter campaign, especially trending hashtags that relate to your brand.

Again, Twitter comes with their own ad management centre where you can promote brand messages.

Other Social Profiles

In addition to those big profiles it’s also worth setting up Google+ profile pages, and if it applies to your business Instagram and Pinterest for graphically driven industries that can really make an impact with visuals.

With Google+ you can also tie your address up with Google Local which will allow people to locate you via Google Maps, leave reviews and generally engage with your brand through comments, +1’s and shares. You will also get some prominence in search results for your brand name on the right hand-side and under your main search result listing.

Content is Forever King

What we all must remember is that content is king, and it comes down to the kind if content you are creating. If you are rewriting articles that have been rewritten time and time again you aren’t adding any kind of value. Instead, think outside the box, think about creating unique infographics that are easy to share, or think about collecting your own stats from independent polls or sales result patterns. These kinds of ideas will offer a platform to write something that no one else has ever done.

Editors Note: Sunny Popali is an SEO Strategist by profession and an editor at Good Monster where he helps people boost their business/websites in digital world.

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How to Perfect Your Product Shots

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, and this old adage certainly appears to be true — at least from a business perspective. In many ways, the right picture of your product or service in action can be just as valuable to your sales as a blog post, white paper, or similar type of content. If it captures the attention of your audience in just the right way, they might just share it far and wide, helping to spread the word about your business.

Capture, edit, and share the most social-worthy product shots possible. Here are a few tips to photo success.

Learn Your Settings

Just as buying an expensive hammer doesn’t make you a good carpenter, a pricey camera doesn’t mean that you’re a great photographer. Your camera can only take you so far in the world of high quality business photography.

For the best results, take the time to learn your camera’s settings and pair that knowledge with a good angle and the right lighting. A camera that has a 105mm lens will also be beneficial for close-up work like the kind needed for jewelry photography, for example.

Utilize a White Background

In the world of product photography, your goal should always be to showcase the quality of the product above all else. Make sure that the product remains the focus of the photo by eliminating elaborate backgrounds and minimizing props. Place the product front and center, and allow plenty of room all around for cropping when it’s time to edit. By utilizing a stark white background, you place the emphasis on the product, where it belongs. Remember: less is more!

Master Editing

When you start to edit the product shots you’ve just taken, don’t overdo it. Avoid going crazy with filters or color correction. Instead, focus on minimal editing like cropping to make sure that the emphasis remains on the product. Careful cropping and just the right amount of color correction can really bring out the detail in a product, even if it’s only a still image.

Make sure that every edit you make is well thought-out and showcases your product in the best light possible.

Know Your Social Network

Understand your target audience before posting your newly-edited photo on social media. Is a post about your product appropriate for your company Facebook page, or might it be better on one of your business’ Pinterest boards? Perhaps Instagram brings the most engagement with your posts as of late, or Twitter draws the most conversations around your brand.

Be thoughtful about each post that you make. Be intentional with what you say and share, rather than just throwing something up aimlessly and hoping it sticks.

To see this in action, pay attention to how other brands are utilizing social platforms like Twitter to spread the message about their products or services. The LifeLock Twitter page, for example, breaks up shorter text posts with multiple images that are relevant to their target audience. This allows for maximum effectiveness when those pictures are posted.

A carefully planned photo will be well worth the time you invest. Take care to find the best shot using the right equipment, be conservative with your editing work, and compile a social media post that will be meaningful and resonate with your audience.

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Introducing Tumblr Sponsored Posts Now Powered By Yahoo!

As we know Tumblr, which was recently acquired by Yahoo, 300 million unique visitors per month, and more than new 125,000 daily registers. To assist advertisers take advantage of on this growth, the blogging policy is kicking off the New Year with a foremost upgrading to its advertise platform. This is not just Tumblr’s first update into sponsored posts. Previous year the system begins presenting an ad on its Radar, a segment of the dashboard observable to all users on Tumblr. And the end of 2013 the Tumblr launched sponsored posts into its mobile interface.

As part of its totally refurbished ad solution, Marissa Mayer declared that Tumblr Sponsored Posts are now powered by Yahoo Advertising. As an effect, organizations and media shoppers will have an additional sleek way to purchase ads on Yahoo partner sites like Tumblr and finally, Flickr.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer publicize on 7th January, 2014 in Las Vegas new prime ads for Tumblr powered by Yahoo Ads, a Yahoo Audience Ads system to aim ads across Yahoo and associate sites, in addition to a new Yahoo Tech site, a Yahoo News Digest applications and much more.

“The internet advertising world nowadays is fragmented, tricky to navigate and not for all time user friendly” official statement of Yahoo. Exterior of the ads unit, Burke said Yahoo is launching a new Ad Manager, which is expected to provide advertisers straight right of entry to the businesses ad product or service, not considering of what company’s size small, medium or large. Along with a latest Yahoo Ad Exchange an open forum for systematic ad-buying.

Mayer coming back for speaks about main parts of search, communications, digital magazines, and video. They are “powered by two incredibly vital engines” Flickr and Tumblr. Mayer describes Tumblr, one of the extremely influential publishing platforms on the web and the intelligence behind the fresh digital magazines. She extols of founder David Karp and she requests him to come up to the stage. Karp comes on stage and speaking about how engagement goes like a bullet by 55% previous year and 250% when speaking about especially mobile.

Yahoo is also growing some of the advertising tools on Tumblr

David Karp said that the usual Tumblr post was re-blogged fourteen times but that the average sponsored Tumblr posts which is an ads was re-blogged ten thousand times. The company is now going to join together Yahoo Advertising peculiarity into those Tumblr sponsored posts that will permit advertisers to targeting their audiences by gender, geographically and other data point of views.

The Big Deal in Features

  • Tailored audiences: This feature allows targeting your audience by gender and location.
  • Pay for engagement: You can only charge for any action such as re-blogs, likes, follows and clicks on the sponsored post.
  • Guesswork testing: Advertisers can check some manner and then focus that campaign which creative style performs finest.
  • Analytics tools: Use this features for tracking demographic data and measuring outcome.

The power of a Sponsored Post

  • 60% of Tumblr users who have seen Sponsored Posts locate the content fun, engage and top quality.
  • 70% of customers feel that a brand additional popular after seeing a Sponsored Post.
  • 50% of users who saw Sponsored Posts studied the sponsor afterward.

“We are excited to launch these enhanced abilities to the salient creative work and native advertising experience that describe sponsorships on Tumblr” said Karp. This is wherever advertise is really enjoyable and we designed on keeping it that way.

These latest Yahoo Advertising products present businesses and advertisers the mainly engrossing ways in the marketplace to exactly target campaigns, use data and insights from Yahoo, advertisers and third parties. For the reason that Yahoo is at the middle of people’s daily behavior across search, communications, media and videos so they can offer inimitably powerful insights on customer behaviors.

About Author: John and Jeremy provide best social media training on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube presence. They are dynamic and energetic Social Media Speakers and Founders of the Social Expert Academy.

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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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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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5 Hints For Increasing The Visibility Of Your Law Firm’s Website

What good is a website if it’s just essentially acting as a virtual business card and only holding space on the web. You’ll want to optimize this space and increase the visibility of your website to draw in more clients and increase your reputation in the field. There are a lot of different marketing strategies you can use to increase your visibility.

In this article we’re going to cover five ways you can increase your visibility on the web and hopefully the amount of clients on your roster. The last thing you want is your website simply taking up virtual space, instead you’ll want to do your best to convert your site into an asset that’s working for you.

Increasing The Visibility

1. Use your blog wisely

One of the smartest ways to increase your traffic and readership is to use the power of blogging. Make sure the content you create is very high quality and will encourage readers to share. At best you want to provide legal wisdom that few people can get anywhere else. In doing this you’ll become known as a trusted resource, and gain authority in the eyes of Google. Everything you write should be geared towards providing value to your potential clients and not just for keyword rankings.

2. Implement smart SEO

You can do certain things to optimize your home page and blog posts for certain SEO purposes. For instance, you can include keywords that you’re trying to rank for, such as “Michigan Defense Lawyer”, in the title of your site as well as in the H1 tags within your posts. By choosing local keywords to optimize your site around you’ll be able to rank easier and send more qualified traffic for your way. Namely, people in your local area searching for a lawyer of your caliber.

3. Continually create fresh content

The freshness of your content plays in huge role in the overall rankings of your site. By updating your blog with great content at least once a week you’ll be able to offer your readers a reason to come back on a frequent basis, as well as increase your potential to rank in Google. Not to mention, creating new content will also allow you to rank for keywords you never thought of in the first place.

4. Utilize online directories and other sources

To achieve local rankings for certain search terms it can help to obtain backlinks from certain directories. This will help direct people back to you if they are using the directory to find a lawyer, and it will also help to increase your natural rankings in Google.

5. Test PPC for increased traffic

If you don’t have the time to invest in creating content and focusing on your long-term traffic strategies you can always utilize the power of PPC, or pay-per-click ads. These guarantee you a certain number of clicks or page views, and hopefully direct the right viewers back to your site. If you test the copy enough and experiment with different ads you may eventually be able to create an ad that works perfectly.

I hope you’ve found this article valuable and you now have a better understanding at the steps you can take to properly optimize your website. Having a website is great, having a website that brings in new visitors everyday is even better.

Author Bio:

Zane Schwarzlose is a writer for the Loewy Law Firm, a personal injury law firm in Austin, Texas. Zane is helping the Loewy Law Firm improve their online visibility.

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Facebook Hashtag 101 for Businesses: What to Do (and What Not to Do)

Over the summer, Facebook introduced their new hashtag feature. If you’re a Twitter or Instagram user, hashtags aren’t so foreign to you. If your main mode of business marketing is Facebook, though, you may not know where to begin. Don’t feel left out if you’re not up on the hashtag trend – it only launched in 2007, when Chris Messina needed a way to monitor user’s interests on Twitter. It wasn’t until 2009 that hashtags went international.

Facebook Hashtag

What Is a Hashtag?

A hashtag is a keyword or phrase with the pound sign (#) before it. That pound sign – or “hashtag” – turns the keyword or phrase into a link. When you click the link, other News Feed posts with the same hashtag will pop up. While the word hashtag technically refers to the sign before the word, people use the term “hashtag” to refer to the entire thing (the sign and the word together). For example, someone might say, “That’s a popular hashtag,” referring to “#NYCNightlife.” It’s also important to note that if you’re going to hashtag a phrase instead of just a single word, there can’t be spaces between the words.

Hashtag Feeds

Now, Facebook users can put a hashtag into the search box and see an entire hashtag feed. These feeds work as threads that can keep conversations going and can even resemble real-time chat conversations at times. In order for a business to maximize this feature, they have to monitor popular hashtags in order to get in on the conversation. There are various monitoring tools available, allowing you to keep track of any buzz about your brand or niche. You can also use the tools to find out how successful certain hashtags are, which in turns will help determine which ones to continue using in the future.

What Not to Hashtag

If you take a virtual stroll around Instagram or Twitter, you’ll probably notice a ton of hashtags that don’t really relate to anything specific – there are hashtags that are plays on words or inside jokes. These hashtags aren’t meant to guide a conversation, which makes them useless for most businesses. “Extreme” hashtags are great for social media users who want to showcase their creativity or get a laugh out of their friends, but most businesses won’t be able to make these types of hashtags work for their benefit. The exception is if a business is trying to get a new catchphrase to trend – over time, the public may catch on.

Privacy Settings

Unfortunately, many people on Facebook have their profile relatively private. Since only public hashtags will appear in a search, this can limit how many people a business is able to engage with and how accurate their hashtag monitoring will be. Many businesses find that while utilizing Facebook hashtags is an excellent addition to their marketing campaign, they still have to be active on Twitter. There are far fewer private profiles on Twitter than there are on Facebook, which makes it much easier to tap into hashtag trends and interact with users.

A Few Things to Keep In Mind

Many businesses have their Facebook page connected to Twitter so that every Tweet also ends up on the Facebook News Feed. Any hashtags on a Twitter post will become automatic links when posted on Facebook. The same thing goes for Instagram posts.

Most mobile Facebook users still have to live hashtag-free, as many mobile apps don’t yet support hashtag feeds. While it’s possible to post a hashtag via your mobile app, you won’t be able to click through it via your smartphone.

Don’t overwhelm your posts with hashtags. One or two carefully placed hashtags should benefit your post and page, not confuse consumers or distract from the point of the post.

About Author

Jason Bayless is a professional blogger that gives small business and entrepreneurs SEO advice. He writes for BestSEOCompanies.com, a nationally recognized comparison website of the best SEO services in the United States.

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