Thursday, June 27, 2013

Do You Blog?

It’s a fact if you want to increase your Google rankings blogging is one of those magical keys.

Right now only 40% of companies out there are use blogs for marketing purposes, is your competition a blogger?

With over 80% of all people rating a Blog as a useful tool in a company’s marketing attack why of why are blogs given such a low priority in a company’s marketing mix?

What if your web site through an organic key word search got a 4 figure hit increase? Yes I’m talking over 1000% increase in organic traffic on your web site! What if you got 3000% or 4000%? How many more eyes would that be?

So why aren’t you blogging? The most common reasons people tell us they are not using this powerful tool are:
I am not a writer.
I don’t know what to blog about.
No one is going to read my blog.
I don’t have the time and resources to keep a blog updated.
I (just) don’t have a blog page

Don't have a blog? 
No problem, we can create a blog for you.
Here are some features of our Blogging Services and Marketing that we offer:
> We Create & Maintain your Blog for You
> We promote the blog to RSS Feed Directories for Greater Visibility
> Weekly – 400 minimum Word Blog Posting - Written and Promoted
> Blog Pinging to the top blog directories & search engines after each blog post
> All blog content is social bookmarked
> Put links in your Blog to point to pages on your web site
> Content written to use your Keywords
> Get greater web site exposure and a constant stream of keyword targeted traffic
> Build more back links to your site
> Boost your search engine ranking

Larson Notes & Satire:  If you don’t, can’t or just plain don’t want to write a blog we can be helping. Don’t be kidding yourself content is King and fresh content is Emperor. Weekly posting might not seem like a lot but after a year that is 52 posts. Do 2 a week and that is 104 more content pages then your competition. And if your competition is standing still doing nothing you are way far out in front of the race to top ranking.

And if you want your business to be more and have more, call us for an appointment.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-1294
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://www.linkedin.com/in/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Monday, June 24, 2013

Using Facebook Hashtags

They are new so it is not or would not be a surprise if you’re not using them or if you’re using Facebook hashtags in the right or best way possible, 9 times out of 10 you’re probably using them the wrong.

Coming after another long build Facebook build-up, Facebook finally announced that it is supporting clickable hashtags. You know just like twitter does. Facebook is saying this is the first step of “a series of features that surface some of the interesting discussions people are having about public events, people and topics.” If you have played with them at all on twitter you can start to understand the power.

Few things Facebook has released have except for Facebook itself really transformed how social media users interact with each other within, but hashtags, hashtags can change all of that. Hashtags are basically identifiers (the # symbol) that indicate a theme or interest. These hashtags are pretty much everywhere Twitter, Pinterest and Tumblr. Hashtags are just a way for users to scan strings of thoughts.

Hashtags are created by users are clicked upon, and they link an entire conversation thread on that hashtag. Hashtags presents people the chance to follow a conversation as well as reply to the same conversation without the problem of looking back to find the thread, so interact action, and engagement with you and your social media sight grains traction.

Hashtags on Facebook are working pretty much the same way they do everywhere else – with a few differences. Let’s look the differences that Facebook hashtags are and a couple of tips on how to use them, as a social media power user, can leverage them to your advantage.

MONITOR: The first step if you’re planning to really get the full potential out of your hashtags is to first understand how they are currently being used. Start by searching for a hashtag. Just pick a keyword you’d like to see information about and type the # symbol and entering it into the Facebook search box. Searching for the hashtag will return updates from other Facebook members as well that you may not be connected to. This can be both good (you can post with hashtags and like key words on a SEO dominate the word (for free) and bad (they might find your competition) but live with it. Searching regularly for hashtags related to your company is a valuable social easdropping tool on the competition. Using Hashtag research can start to give you an understanding of what’s being talked about, shared and discussed, providing competitive insights and an advantage when it comes to creating your own updates. 

As of yet social media management tools aren’t yet providing any statistics to track #hashtag word clicks, but I think it will happen rather quickly. Major money follows trackable items.

INTERACT: Once you have a good understanding of what hashtags are going around, as well as the overall tone of those hashtags (positive, negative or neutral) you can start interacting with the people who are using “your” terms. To really do this, you need to find posts of theirs you can like and share and, if possible, make a comment on it. Interaction is a basis of success in social media, so be social! Be audacious! Put your neck on the line and get out there in front of an audience, your audience that shares similar thoughts and needs, experiences and beliefs and you will start to find yourself in a  better positioned to receive not just a positive response but more positive responses more often.


Larson Notes & Satire:  But perhaps the most important thing to know about hashtags is just that they exist at all on Facebook. It will be important in the future to monitor their use related to your company, your brand, your product and/or service, your interactions and your engagement with the Facebook community. Hashtags don’t need to define your social media presence on the network, but they can support it and in a very proactive positive way.

And if you want your business to be more and have more, call us for an appointment.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-1294
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://www.linkedin.com/in/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Friday, June 21, 2013

Generate User Reviews

If you are doing any kind of Social Media Marketing, no matter what size your company is, you should know how important it is to leverage reviews in both online and offline marketing efforts. Some studies are showing that 72% of consumers trust online customer reviews as much as a personal recommendations. Who’d have guessed, huh? Obviously any reviews no matter how or where it comes from can help to get customers to make buying decision.

There are of course a few areas that can make you get a little worried about reviews. There is of course the fear of negative feedback. Then there is the fear of time needed to develop and implement a successful reviewing tool while obtaining trustworthy, relevant reviews.

To help you, here are a few ways to help you get user reviews without really trying too hard.

1. ASK YOUR FANS: 
It’s not against the rules to ask. Really, just ask the 3 F’s (family, friends, fans) to make their love of you and your services known to the world, via a formal review. After all if you can’t as your 3 F’s who can you ask?

2. FOLLOW UP A POST-SERVICE/PURCHASE:
There’s a key time frame to follow up with a customer who has purchase a product or service from you to allow you to ask for a review. I cannot tell you what that is because it is different for every kind of company category, but one exists. You might need to test different time lengths to find what the optimal follow-up period for your business is but then you will know and you will never have to miss an opportunity to send a follow-up email, letter or phone call asking how a customer’s experience was.

3. ESTABLISH A PRESENCE ON MAJOR REVIEW SITES:
Yelp, Google Places, Yahoo Local, Merchant Circle, Storeboard, Citysearch, etc. are all good trusted sites to get and posts reviews. Or at least they want you to think so. Now I’m not argue so go get your company listed with a profile, then keep it updated and respond to all user comments both good and bad. These review sites also impact SEO, so by establishing a profile, your company can gain greater visibility, attract more hits and, hopefully, more reviews.

4. MAKE IT MULTI CHANNEL FRIENDLY:
As those in the online space are well aware, mobile and tablet usage is gaining traction. To ensure that customers visiting your site, regardless of the kind of device they are using, can easily access and enter their reviews, you need to make it multi channel friendly. Need help with this, call us and we can make it happen.

5. CREATE USER PROFILES:
As ego-driven people, we tend to act or as the case may be, write differently if we know someone is watching. By not allowing anonymous reviews, customers are not only likely to give more accurate reviews, but also more helpful ones because their name is on it (literally). In the B2B world, user profiles can also create an opportunity for user promotion, as a reviewer they can enter their company name as the user name and get a company plug.

6. PUBLISH REVIEWS FOR THE PUBLIC:
There’s no sense asking for reviews, if other people cannot see them. Additionally, those who previously read reviews that encouraged them to make a purchase, are more likely to come back and review their own experience.

7. OFFER DIFFERENT WAYS TO REVIEW A PRODUCT/SERVICE:
Not all of us are great writers. So the problem is if a customer , who isn’t great writer, could give you are great review you might want to offer them an option of multiple choice questions in order to rate your product or service on a scale of 1-10, this way all those non-writers will be able to leave an favorable opinion.

9. OFFER TRIAL PERIODS:
If you want reviews, but don’t have any customers, to leave them, one tactic is to offer trial period for your service. Do not make the condition that they have to review your service in the end, but offer the service and hope your quality offering and your follow-ups brings them back to give you a positive review.

10. WORK WITH A REVIEW AGGREGATOR:
There are companies out there that help companies generate reviews through referral engines (like us). They help to take the guess work out of the process by sending follow-up emails on your behalf, working with your social media profiles and offering customers a follow-up options to your business.

Larson Notes & Satire:  Social media can be made to be better. It just takes a little work. Now you know a few more tricks of the trade.

And if you want your business to be more and have more, call us for an appointment.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-1294
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://www.linkedin.com/in/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate


P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.