Blog

Making the Most Out of Google+ Business Page

by Melvin · Dec 30, 2012

This is a guest post by Amanda Green.

It’s a fact that Google+ is evolving with time and is slowly becoming an integral part of any business’s online reputation and subsequent sales. It makes your Google+ business page really important, since it reflects the online reputation of your brand.

If you’re not making the most out of your Google+ page, then you’re definitely leaving money on the table – money that you could put in the highest interest rate savings account and increase your overall earnings.

Advantages of a Google+ Business Page

Your Customers Are On It: Whether you believe it or not, your target customers are already on Google+ socializing and consuming information. So instead of interrupting them with your advertising, you can use Google+ to connect to them and engage with them.
Create More Direct Relationships: One of the plus points of using Google+ is that the social network gives utmost value to quality content. Content that you can create to establish more direct, personal relationships with your target audience.
Use Video Chat: Google+ Hangouts, the video chat feature is great to hold video talk sessions with your prospects/customers. Getting them involved will help you generate more feedback.

How to Market Your Business with Google+

Creating a Google+ business page is one thing, but marketing your business effectively using it is something else. Unless and until you’re doing your best to market it well, you won’t see results. Here are some ideas to go with:

Create a “Suggested Circles” List: One of the easiest ways to market with Google+ is to create a list of suggested circles, sorted out by priority, which is placed on the top of your profile page’s About tab.
Leverage Google+ Search: When you’re there on Google+, then make some noise. Show the world that you’re there by searching Google+ search for industry keywords, and mentions of your brands. Save these searches and monitor them daily to respond to mentions, reply to comments, etc.
Join Others’ Hangouts: While it’s totally up to you if you want to start your own Google+ hangout, you should definitely participate in others’ to understand how to effectively use it. This helps you make your own hangouts much more successful when you hold them.

Promoting Your Google+ Page

Focus on getting more followers
Make use of Google+ badges
Add your page to your sitelinks
Share really valuable information
Use Ripples to connect to Influencers
Host hangouts for customers
Promote on other social media platforms
Enable social extensions in Adwords

Remember, Google+ is not just another social network. It’s a revolution in itself, which is lead by search engine giant. So if you want your business to grow online, then see to it that you’re taking full advantage of Google Plus.

Check Out The Credentials

by Melvin · Nov 14, 2012

This is a guest post by Amanda Green

What do you need to do to get a job? Given that a prospective employer has contacted you about it, you need to send in a resume, then go in for an official interview. Yet, when we contact people about a service or product, we often take corners. We simply go by how cheap it is, or how high up on the hits list of a search engine they are. This is simply inexcusable when it comes to big decisions like who to trust with financial and investment advice.

In order to trust anyone with providing you a service you need, whether it be a builder or investment advice, you need to do some research. One of the best ways to do some preliminary research on someone is to look at any online business profiles that they have. There are no shortage of sites that you can host a profile onto, so they should have at least one.

If you are requesting services of a company and not an individual, look up the information on its president. Let’s look at a Charles Phillips profile on investing.businessweek.com as an example. If we browse through, we would see that he is well connected with people both inside and outside of his industry, owns a profitable company and in general seems to be a very reliable person.

Not everyone has profiles like this though, or perhaps their profile is bare bones enough that you want more information. In this case, dig a little deeper. Search through any online news articles about them. In a lot of cases you will come up blank, but this is usually a good sign.

Positive services get little attention from the public after all. Negative attention though, such as incredibly bad reviews from customers or cases of serious apathy or neglect, do get attention. If the person you are looking into has had a history of anything like this, you should be able to find out with ease. And if they do, needless to say, you should not be doing business with them.

You cannot hand the reigns of your company over to just anyone and expect it to survive. Yet, when you take advice from those we barely even know, that is exactly what you are doing. Ensure that someone has both the knowledge and the credentials before hiring them for advice, otherwise both you and your company will suffer for it.

Getting Your Business to Have a Good Online Reputation from the Start

by Melvin · Oct 26, 2012

This is a guest post by Amanda Green

If you’ve just started a new business, building your online reputation is very important. There are many consumers who now research companies they’re thinking of doing business with before they buy any of their products. Having positive comments posted about your business and its products will help convince many of these consumers that they’re making the right choice by doing business with you.

The key to building a good reputation from the beginning is to start out on the right foot. Ensure that all of your products are of high quality and that your business policies are not only fair, but also clearly posted on your website. This will reduce the likelihood of someone posting complaints about your company because they were dissatisfied with the products and services they’ve received.

You can start building your reputation simply by using your own website. Allow your customers to leave ratings and comments about products they’ve bought from you. Include a discussion forum on your site where people can ask questions, as well as share feedback and tips about the products you have available for sale. These are all things that are used by some of the top online retailers. It will also allow you to catch on to any customer dissatisfaction and resolve the issue proactively before the customer goes and posts negative comments about you on other websites.

As for comments about your business on review sites, personal blogs and industry related discussion forums, these will come naturally as your business grows. If people are satisfied with what you have to offer and found your products to be useful or very well priced, they’re more likely to write about it online to share their opinion with others.

Remember that internet reputation management is an ongoing task. Once you get going, you should monitor review sites, related discussion forums, blogs and social networking groups for any mention of your company. If there are any negative comments posted, you should quickly address the issue to show that you care about your customer satisfaction levels and are willing to correct any problems rapidly.

Remember that building a positive reputation online first involves giving your customers something to be happy about. If they like your business, many of them will leave comments about it online. As your sales numbers grow, so will the amount of positive information about your business, thus helping you build a solid reputation online.

5 Ways to Increase Sales while Decreasing Overhead Costs

by Melvin · Oct 5, 2012

This is a guest post by Amanda Green

Business managers will tell you that organization is what makes a business profitable; marketing professionals will say, it is due to their advertisement campaigns, but in truth, it is the sales team that increases your revenue, especially if you have a team that works together like a well oiled machine.

Here are 6 things you can do to improve your sales while at the same time reducing certain overhead expenses to produce more profit:

1. Consider Working with Distributors or Outsourcing your Sales

A distributor already has a network of retailers or businesses they work with. They have sales reps that cover the entire nation, and some even offer international services. This gives you a better chance of giving your product or service the best visibility.

A company like Cydcor has experienced sales reps with a large portfolio of existing clients. So getting your product to a larger number of customers is easier and can be cheaper if you outsource your sales to someone like this. Check out Cydcor on Facebook.com to learn more about how this business model operates.

Working with a distributor can also help you reduce your overhead costs as you don’t really need to carry large inventories of product. Remember, a company like Cydcor will also want to add products to their existing line that gives them a more varied mix and better sales returns.

2. Expand Your Sales Across the Nation

If you can’t find a representative willing to take your product line on, expand your sales team to cover territories that are closest to you. You can also start a search, looking for online stores that carry similar products. Focus on territories where the most stores carry products like yours.

3. Sell to Department Stores

This is another way to expand your business and save on costs. Work directly with department store buyers. Contact the buying department directly and find out what requirements suppliers must meet to work with that particular chain. All you really need to do is get your foot in one department store door, and your sales will increase dramatically, allowing you to reduce the effort your sales team makes on smaller sales.

4. Specialty Chain Stores

Focus on small specialty stores which have national chains. Identify the stores that have several branches and focus your efforts on these small stores as they can be large buyers but are easier to sell to than the larger department store.

5. Online Service

Find other successful e-commerce websites to showcase your product. Use catalog websites such as Yahoo, Amazon, Shopify, Etsy, Groupon and Shopify to showcase your products.

There are actually many inexpensive ways to increase sales while decreasing your overhead. It’s just a matter of getting out there and talking to consultants, reps and other people that can help distribute your product. The absolute best solution is to outsource some of your sales duties by finding a representative willing to help you with your product.

A New Challenge – Effectively Marketing a Local Website

by Melvin · Aug 20, 2012

Despite of me being totally busy with work and other stuff, I decided to launch a new website purely based on it being a hobby (or maybe not even really). ‘Passion projects’ aren’t really the best thing in life because aside from the fact that it doesn’t give you assurance of making money, its also a time sink and something that could hinder you from doing other things that are more “worth it” financially speaking. But life is all about being happy eh? 😛

You Still Trying to Make Money Blogging? That’s Old School!

by Melvin · May 19, 2012

Well, its really not! 🙂 But blogging has changed a lot over the past 10 years that a lot of bloggers were left (in the dust) because they’re still doing blogging the same way they’re doing it 5-10 years ago. I gotta admit that I sort of consider myself one of those who have not been doing what I’m supposed to be doing different than what I was doing before.

A couple of days ago, I read a post from one of my favorite blogs entitled ‘The Future of Blogging‘. Now I know you’re probably thinking that this is one of those cheesy posts where the author just puts something together about how blogging will still change the world, whatever, but trust me its not. The post is the longest post I’ve read in a while, and more importantly it tackles the reality of blogging and where its really heading in the future. Here’s a pretty long excerpt:

This is an important blog post, because it makes a prediction. A prediction about the future of blogging; a platform actively used by over 181 million people (Nielsen data for October 2011). Not only will you learn why I think most blogging advice is dated and ineffective, but I’ll also reveal where I believe this entire industry is heading, so you can stay ahead of the competition.

This is not only an important post, but also the longest I have ever written. It’s more like a mini-eBook, without the price tag. Don’t let its lack of cost make you doubt the value here though. I will at least sell you on what you’re about to learn:

A weird tip I personally received from Google’s Matt Cutts which increased my ViperChill search rankings

What Gawker does once per week to double their traffic figures. That’s going from two million to four million uniques per day

Why the Daily Mail recently surpassed the New York Times as the number #1 newspaper website in the world

How Mashable crushed TechCrunch on traffic numbers (even though they used to be the underdog)

Why the successful ‘make money online’ blogs of the past have now faded into obscurity

The number one reason Leo Babauta dominated the personal development industry in two months

What Steve Kamb did to build a six-figure blog in the overly saturated health niche

Why feed counts mean absolutely nothing (and never really have)

Which Huffington Post articles attract 3X more clicks than any other

Why the Verge was one of the fastest growing blog launches in history

…and most importantly, how this all helps me to make a prediction about what it now takes to build highly profitable blogs.

What I love about the post aside from that it covers a lot of different interesting subtopics is the fact that Glen backed up everything with numbers and proofs. I know research is overrated but the amount of effort that was done here is just phenomenal. I rarely print blog posts (not sure I ever did before) but when I read the first 60% of it, I was convinced that I should.

Again, give it a real read and I can guarantee that this post will benefit you.

Immense Growth of Internet Marketing Companies

by countolaf · May 15, 2012

Do you ever wonder why you’re getting emails literally almost every day from companies offering internet marketing services in general? Whether it be article writing services, search engine marketing or even a simple website optimization service that includes web design and such, it’s just clear that these internet marketing companies are sprouting and growing faster than ever.

There’s a good reason for their growth and this is due to demand.

Demand for Internet Marketing Services

The growth of internet marketing companies has actually started a long time ago. Ever since late 2005, there are already companies that offer marketing services to other businesses. The only thing different these days is that it seems these internet marketing companies are sprouting faster than ever. Every person who knows a thing or two about blogging or SEO seems to be convinced that he’s qualified to do the business.

To be fair with these companies, the reason why a lot of people are enamored to do this is because there is a huge demand. The entire internet marketing hype has reached its peak and that has convinced a lot of offline business owners to incorporate online marketing to their business. Hence, the plethora of internet marketing consulting firms has started sprouting.

Regardless of how they’re charging their clients, they seem to be offering pretty much the same things. The only thing that’s slightly different is positioning. Perhaps the way they ‘position’ their offer is different but the basic concept is the same.

Positioning pitches or offers is something that companies use to their advantage. For instance, if I offer marketing services myself and just offer it as a general internet marketing service to my clients, it would be harder for me to sell it as oppose to someone offering something specific like a Pay-per click management service, who can later on build more and upsell other services to his clients.

A lot of people are even primarily offering social media consulting but it’s not hard to see that it’s the same internet marketing service that others are promoting. And as I mentioned above, you have those other companies that ‘front’ even smaller services like article writing/guest posting and webpage optimization packages.

To simply put it, companies offer a specific service in hopes that the client will be satisfied and thus avail more of their services.

Who’s really your client

The main reason why internet marketing companies position their offer differently is that it depends to their potential clients or the market/niche that they are offering this to.

It’s easier to sell an SEO service to a local business that’s starting to get established online than an online business that already has some knowledge perhaps on how the internet works. I’m not saying that its easier because you’re selling something to a “fool” but rather it’s just how business works.

Flower shop owners in Chicago hire companies who provide internet marketing in Chicago to do campaigns for them not only because they’re not knowledgeable on that part but also because they don’t want to be knowledgeable and thus involved on doing those things. The same with dentists near your location, veterinarians in Alabama, or even real estate business owners in Dallas. If I’m good with taking care of cats, then how would you expect me to be good with PPC or even be interested with it?

Another good example is traditional & old online businesses. People offer the social media/web 2.0 services because they know that that these businesses might not have been involved deeply yet with social media and some of the “newer” stuff. Here you cannot offer content-writing services or copywriting because they already have people that are doing this for them for a long time.

All in all, it’s about who you are targeting to. Most companies make this mistake of just ‘shot-gunning’ everyone with their ‘general’ offers not knowing that the people they’re pitching to might even be better than them at what they do. Like how I receive emails daily from people offering me their search engine optimization services as if I don’t know SEO myself (but I’m not an expert obviously).

There’s no doubt it’s good to get as many potential clients as you can to send your services to but whether they’re really a ‘potential’ client or not is another thing. This is where most marketing companies fail. And unfortunately, this is the trend that new internet marketing companies get themselves to do as well. They just follow the herd and don’t do it the proper way.

To be fair with these companies, the reason why a lot of people are enamoured to do this is because there is a huge demand. The entire internet marketing hype has reached its peak and that has convinced a lot of offline business owners to incorporate online marketing to their business. Hence, the plethora of internet marketing consulting firms has started sprouting.

To simply put it, companies offer a specific service in hopes that the client will be satisfied and thus avail more of their services.