If you are like most entrepreneurs navigating the Internet learning how to use social media as a marketing vehicle, you’ve probably noticed that the conversations are usually around web traffic, relationship marketing, content as an inbound tool, how to engage your reader/prospect, building community and in some cases, we can even talk about conversion.
Today, social networking, blogging and micro-blogging, geo-location and even crowdsourcing are considered solid platforms. They are there for businesses of all sizes to leverage from, they are accesible not just for brands. Some small businesses are also making a difference.
But where are we going with all this? Isn’t it time to start moving forward into other capacities that could enable our businesses to close that circle and fully leverage the social Internet?
What am I talking about?
Read more…
Do you ever wonder if the positioning of the elements on your website are really making any sense? I mean from the visitor’s point of view.
Most people in this DIY world of us approach the design of a website from a visual standpoint. We immediately jump into trying to figure out color schemes, fonts and graphics to the point of putting business objectives in the backseat.
Are you guilty?
Do you know how important your homepage is? Well, it’s usually the main point-of-entry to the site and as you know, you only have a split second to grab those visitors and make them stay a few more seconds, who knows, maybe even a few minutes. Sites that have a negative first impact most likely never have a second chance.
Read more…
This is a guestpost by Jim Belosic, CEO and co-founder of ShortStack
Companies are pushing their Facebook Pages like never before. No matter where you look – from online advertising and marketing to television and print ads, billboards, and even business cards – you’ll see “Find us on Facebook” or that iconic lower-case “f”. With Facebook’s 800 million users, it only makes sense for companies to place their products or services where they have the opportunity for so much exposure. And with sharing, commenting, and Liking, Facebook gives companies the power to reach more people than they ever could have with a traditional website. Since Facebook is getting so much love, what’s happening to traditional websites?
Less Attention From Companies
Increased emphasis on Facebook Pages means less emphasis on traditional websites. It’s trend that’s still on an upward swing as more and more companies realize the advantages of a strong social media presence.
Read more…
One of the things I consider important about looking at data or this type of visualizations is to actually get what serves us as business people. Get the data you need and adjust accordingly to your marketing plan.
For example this infographic that MBA Online published a few days ago. It shows you how different generations consume different types of content at different times of the day. Is this important?
Let’s see, if you know who your ideal prospect is and you know the age-frame, you should also be aware of the vehicles he/she uses to consume it’s media and and what times. This will take your marketing efforts to the next level.
Read more…
There is no stopping Facebook at this point, no doubt about it. And with that also comes the increasing number of brands and companies engaging in the creation and management of Pages (or “Fan Pages” as they used to be known).
We even hear about companies not having websites anymore to migrate all their efforts to Facebook. Okay, those are extreme cases but you can’t deny that at least once you heard about it.
The problem is we are jumping in the wagon as we did back in the day when we decided that we needed a website because our competitors had one. We ended up building millions of digital brochures that did nothing but get you an “online presence”. What if Facebook Pages are not all that? What if they don’t work as well as we think they do?
Read more…
Yes, it feels good to talk about Twitter after spending a full week discussing Facebook’s major announcement. And why not, a little bit of Google+ too.
By the way, I was just reading today’s post from Jeff Bullas and I’m happy to see that even when Facebook hijacked the Internet, Google+ was able to grow nearly 9 million in 2 days. That’s pretty impressive.
But like I said, let’s please talk about Twitter for a change.
This infographic from Lemon.ly talks about Twitter timing and I thought I’d share it with you because it seems to be a regular concern. One of the questions I often get from clients and readers is “What is the best time to Tweet?” and while I think there is no one-size-fits-all kind of answer for this, at least this data lets you visualize a trend.
Read more…
Well, the day was pretty much hijacked by Facebook in regards to anything related to the Internet and technology in general.
Facebook had its big announcement at the F8 Conference and as expected, it was huge whether you liked or not and we can argue about that the rest of the week. There are quite a few changes on the table and I suspect this stuff is already blowing up all over the blogosphere.
I thought about doing something different and instead of listing all the updates, I’m giving you the full image of what the new Facebook Timeline is going to look like. After all, this one image gives you a great idea of what’s going on.
Read more…
It’s on! And I’m sitting in front of my monitor with a smile on my face…
Is Facebook afraid of Google’s shiny network? Is Google trying to ruin Facebook’s party at F8? It feels like this week is “all or nothing” for these two and nobody likes to lose, that’s for sure.
But to be honest with you, I don’t care about industry egos and that kind of stuff. While these guys battle for attention, what I care about is how the end-user gets the juicy benefits of competition. The same competition I was talking about a couple of months ago when I said that Google+ was good for the Facebook user, because they will start seeing their network stepping up to the plate to keep their business.
Read more…
