5 Ways To Benefit From Customer Video Testimonials
For any business owner looking to attract and convert more visitors, one sure way is to utilize and implement video testimonials from satisfied customers. When used properly, these videos will make your website more visually appealing (and sticky!).
Getting more exposure
In today’s social media society, visibility is vital to being a leader among your competitors. A few short video testimonials can draw quite a bit of attention, which often times will encourage your visitors to share your content with others on sites like Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Not only will this help increase exposure across social media networks, it will also help your search engine rankings. This makes it easier for prospects to find your business, access your website and purchase your products and services.
Touching individuals in different ways
A video testimonial can easily answer a customer’s questions, almost acting as a visual form of a FAQ. This can provide both visual and audio reassurance of a company, its products, and its staff.
For some customers, a video testimonial adds credibility to the website and adds a personal, one-on-one experience.
Linking your videos to your social media properties
Websites that also leverage social media pages for their business can reap the benefits of these videos testimonials by showcasing clips on YouTube and Facebook for a double-dose of visibility. This can be another strategy used to gain more followers and momentum online.
Displaying important information above-the-fold
Some visitors prefer quick information when they visit a web page. Most people don’t appreciate pages of content and dozens of confusing links to navigate through.
Video testimonials, if used properly, can summarize common questions about:
- Pricing & billing;
- Discounts;
- Warranties;
- The company’s return policy.
Boosting credibility and putting your visitors at ease
Not only will these video testimonials serve as a visual source of information, but they also have the ability to put potential customers at ease. If a visitor has never used your company’s product or services before, this can boost your credibility and make them feel comfortable buying into your offering or simply reaching out directly for more information.
About the Author: Sean Rosensteel is the Head of Business Development at Bravo Video, a web-based platform that enables businesses to easily capture video from customers, users and fans – right over the web.
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5 Things You Can Do to Start Driving Traffic to Your Site Fast
These days, getting people to your website is key to make sales. Even if you do not sell directly online, your website will often serve as a first port of call and your main marketing tool to capture prospects that search for what you are offering.
The trouble is, all this fails if no one visits your site. You can have the best online presence possible but unless someone actually sees it, it’s pointless.
Gaining traffic to your site is not an easy task. Traditional and the most effective methods such as SEO are quite time consuming, yet you might want to drive people to your site much faster than this.
Luckily, there is a number of things you can do to make this happen.
1. Use Google Places
Setting up a Google Places account should be the first thing for any business to do, regardless of their website promotion activities. However, this can be used to gain visitors to your site as well.
Google Places offers small businesses a chance to create a local listing for themselves. Your listing will only show for anything related to what you are offering and only in your location, which is perfect for most companies. Also, the Places listing will rank in Google much faster than your website and depending on your industry, it might even start showing on page one of the search engine relatively fast.
Moreover, your Google Places profile, which is very easy to set up, can include your website address, pointing people to it for more information.
2. Submit Your Blog Posts to Reddit
Nowadays, a website must have a blog. It is the most effective way for you to add new content and build an image of yourself as an expert in your field. But there is more that you can do with your blog than just create posts for it, you can use it to quickly drive traffic to your site.
Submit your blog posts to Reddit, a social bookmarking site, known for thousands of users who are there for one purpose only, to discover new content. Submission process is easy and the traffic spikes after you do so are incredible.
3. Promote Your Business With Online Press Releases
Press releases are great for many things, from announcements to raising the awareness of your business. However, they can also help you gain website visitors.
A well written press release can attract many people to your business and if it gets picked up by the press, even more people will find out about you.
By including your website address in your press release you increase your chances of getting visitors to your site from there.
4. Use social media to drive traffic to your site
Sites like Twitter and Facebook are the best places to find people interested in what you are selling. And, it is a known fact that people like to click on links from those sites. Therefore, start using social media and promote your website there as well. Include your web address in your profile but also post links to your latest posts and so on.
5. Submit Your Site to Business Directories
Just like with Google Places, you can create profiles for your business on various other business listing sites and promote your website there. Including a link usually goes beyond what you get with a free listing though so you might have to spend a little but in the end, it will be all worth it.
Promoting a website is not an easy task, however, as you can see, there are a lot of things you can do quite easily to start receiving traffic to your site. Of course, none of them will replace the long term value of good SEO but in a short term they will help you to get things moving with your site.
About the Author: Pawel is a writer and publisher of business books for beginners and through his publications helps newcomers to start and build a successful business.
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Build a Strong Online Presence for Your Business Even on a Budget
To be or not to be part of the online world? I believe in 2012 we’re well past this question. Almost any former offline-on-purpose SME has moved towards the internet at some point. We are aware of the massive benefits it brings even to hyper local small businesses.
One topic is still to debate (and you’re invited to state your point below the post): what elements do we really need in order to establish a successful online presence? Is the combination website+blog+social media necessary and sufficient?
Well, it’s simpler than that. Little goes a long way and this article will prove it’s neither difficult nor expensive to establish a competitive and robust online presence for your business even if you are not a web pro.
Why do small businesses need an online persona?
During my years of work in the small business field, I have met entrepreneurs who were internet savvy but still hesitated to bring their own companies visible online. There were two main arguments they stayed aside:
- the costs they thought to be involved
- fear of not being able to manage the online signals with tact (“if you can’t say something wise, it’s better not to speak at all”)
I admit to find the second assessment very common sensed and legitimate. Facebook, Google +, Twitter, LinkedIn, this is already an immense charge of signals. It’s best to find a certain degree of online involvement that you can handle with ease, otherwise you will be like the high street shop with no customers, well placed but poorly managed.
There are certain benefits for any brick and mortar business to go online:
1. It’s a sure way to build word-of-mouth reputation and trust, as part of your marketing strategy
2. Opens new sales opportunities and automatizes the process
3. Helps you grow the contacts portfolio and do business networking
4. Saves money on offline advertising.
Customers don’t use yellow pages or the local business directory anymore, they search the internet to find your business. Moreover, peer reviews are more and more a decisive factor when it comes to choosing where to buy from. Your company cannot miss this.
The online kit you really need
I argue that a website is not mandatory for a small business who wishes to go online. There are sure fire ways to get noticed and become popular without having to maintain a standalone portal, which, in many cases, turns into a brochure-like website. The following elements build up a reasonable online presence for your business.
E-mail address. Snail mail is a thing of the past, so you need an e-mail to appear on printed advertisements, business cards, flyers etc. It can be on a public e-mail domain such as Gmail or Yahoo, though it’s more professional to have it on your own domain. You can then go advanced and build e-mail lists for newsletter marketing using mailing management services (AWeber or Mail Chimp).
Online surveys. Occasionally, you will need to test variables such as customers’ satisfactory level or business demographics. Perform this research on the web rather than on paper, so you can disseminate surveys effectively and minimize the hassle of filling them in. An online survey builder is an effective tool for building and managing your surveys remotely, without needing a website of your own. You can send your surveys through e-mail, instant messaging or social media and have the submissions sent directly into your inbox.
A social media profile. LinkedIn is great for B2B connections, while Facebook is the thing for B2Cs. It’s best to focus effort on a single social network at first and see how much time you are willing to invest. Always monitor the level of user interaction and adjust your messages accordingly.
Google Alerts. Set one with the name of your company to see who has mentioned you publicly and maybe reply to it. You can also have alerts with the main terms your business is centered upon. This way, you will be aware of all the live discussions and blog posts over these topics that take place on the internet.
Google Places. Your online promotion will largely benefit from local listing of the company on the world’s major search engine. All you need is to sign up a Google account (it takes one minute) and register for Google Places: http://google.com/local/add. You will gain a business page on Google, where you can even run promotions for your customers.
All the investment involved in the above tasks is a couple of hours a day. Of course, at some point you will need a delegate to deal with the daily notifications on the social networks and manage your online image. However, you will certainly find the ROI was indeed worth it.
What are your experiences in going online? Please share your thoughts below!
About the Author: Laura Moisei writes for 123ContactForm web form builder that helps small businesses get in touch with their customers. Laura is a dedicated blogger and small business consultant with a passion for technology.
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10 Ways to Achieve LinkedIn Failure
LinkedIn is a rapidly evolving social media platform that caters more exclusively to business individuals than do Facebook or Twitter; especially, business-to-business (B2B) opportunities. You most likely know that. Most of those people want to prosper with LinkedIn marketing and generate new leads, business, or career options. What you may not know is how profoundly you can fail on LinkedIn as a super-busy entrepreneur or small business owner. It’s simple! Just follow these 10 simple steps.
1. Don’t fill in your Profile Summary section
This is vital to failure on LinkedIn. Lots of people want to show up in People searches, but not a radical like you. Leave that Summary portion blank since it is the key area that the LinkedIn search, and Google for that matter, index to evaluate about your value. Who wants it? Invisibility rules!
2. Restrict who can contact you
People can be downright bothersome, so keep your configurations so that you’ll minimize contact with them. Go to your privacy controls on the Settings tab and pick the most minimalizing restrictions, like switching off your activity broadcasts (you’re not doing them anyway!), making sure only you can see your activity and networks, and guaranteeing that you snoop other profiles incognito. Victory is yours.
3. Put your current job only
Reality says that no one is worried about your past work history anyhow, so just post your current employment. Keep in mind the KISS principle, so keep it simple and short and avoid using repetitive phrases that these SEO types call ‘keywords’. By uploading only one job, you won’t have to worry about having to mess around with the mundane writing of keywords in your former roles either.
4. Don’t post a photo
Pictures are for models. As a programmer, consultant or other business pro your work speaks for itself and your face ain’t your money-maker, so screw the personal comfort that humans since birth seem to feel when they see a real person’s face behind the computer lingo. This is business, not warm and fuzzy socialization!
5. Avoid References
These are fabricated and everyone knows that, so why make an effort. Who cares if LinkedIn references really hyperlink back to the referrer for effortless confirmation of who’s doing the talking? If I ask other business joe schmoes for references, they’ll just want something else from me, and who has the free time?
6. Don’t accept just any connection
Hold your contacts close to your heart and only have that handful of network associations that you presently do business with, that way you can contact any of them with an inquiry and not feel bad about it. What good can a large number of connections do for you anyhow, they will just bug you for their little jobs you have no interest in at all. It’s not as if LinkedIn functions like Google and those connections are like backlinks that boost your search relevance to get on page 1 when your keywords are– Ouch! No keywords written into our profiles in an understandable manner.
7. Don’t show your work
LinkedIn offers Applications for you to post more material about you, supposedly to distinguish you from other professionals. The “theory” is that when people get to your profile, you stick out by already showing what you flourish at via slide presentations, case studies, video (ah-hem!) et cetera. Balderdash! Just something else to maintain. Why put something up that only 10 or 20 people might read or look at.
8. Groups are for losers
Subject matter interest groups abound on LinkedIn, from job search groups to industry verticals. Who has the time to pay attention to a few “professionals” spout off about one subject or another and post links to their blogs to develop conversations. Besides, why must I share my valuable knowledge about my industry for FREE? I’m not crazy! I get paid to deliver expert discourse. Damn straight!
9. Fill it out and quit it
The allure of a LinkedIn profile or any site is that once you go ‘live’, you are finished with it for good. The more you alter it the more you can upset your search engine ranks, no? That is the perfect motto for LinkedIn implosion. Don’t you wish you thought of it? Changing stuff around requires a lot of time to boot. Post the dang site and be done with it.
10. SPAM your contacts
If you’ve got a few contacts, you can make it even fewer by making persistent inquiry or pitches to buy your product or service or go to your site. Contacts will leave you faster than if you attempted to eliminate them, because they’ll do it in mass, so send a few overly smarmy emails each week and your LinkedIn demise will be finished.
The truth is: you’re not striving to fail on LinkedIn. You desire to succeed as well and create more LinkedIn business leads and use LinkedIn as a bona fide advertising tool for your website, but perhaps you just don’t know how. If you’re like a lot of small business owners, however, and can look at yourself under the microscope and see any of the Top 10 LinkedIn Failure Methods explained above in your talk or actions, perhaps it’s time to question assumptions and transform your approach. It’s opposite day and this ain’t Seinfeld, so have a look at what NOT to do, and do the opposite and then watch your LinkedIn statistics soar and your telephone start to ring.
About the Author: If you actually want to SUCCEED on LinkedIn, check out LinkedIn Profile Optimization help by Smart Company Growth, a company owned and operated by Karl Walinskas to provide unique lead generation tools to white collar professionals. He’s authored Getting Connected Through Exceptional Leadership and many, many articles published in print and online.
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Marketing for Small Businesses on YouTube
All small businesses these days require a web presence if they are going to get by on on anything but walk-in clients and still, internet presence is a vital source of proof of the business authenticity. Those who want to broaden their companies online also know that video clips of any sort are usually an advantage for websites. It stimulates stickiness or prolonged view time on the website, offers value and entertains the viewer if it’s at all good, and is positively loved by the search engines — Google, Yahoo, Bing, and all the particular niche engines.
Using YouTube Video to Promote Your Business
No dialogue of web video could be complete without mentioning the king of all video hosting sites, YouTube. If you’re swimming with the seals off the coast of South Africa, you should to know about the sharks. Well, suppose in your small business realm, you could be the shark as opposed to the seal? Look at the video below to find out how.
The video above was inspired by an article I read at marketingprofs.com concerning marketing on YouTube. It lists various business examples of businesses that creatively and innovatively exploited YouTube to get viral and dramatically increase sales.
I explained Executive Video Interviews on Skype for small business marketing, in which in 30 minutes you can make a refined business interview video from your own office or house without any business disruption. Find out how you can affordably cultivate branding videos for your business using this method, and take a look at the growing list of videos in our portfolio for happy customers.
So how are you using YouTube or online video to propel sales to your business? Comment your creativity below.
About the Author: Karl Walinskas is the CEO of Smart Company Growth, a business development firm that helps small to mid-size professional service firms builds competitive advantage in an online world of sameness. He is author of numerous articles and the Smart Blog on leadership, business communication, sales & service, public speaking and virtual business, and Getting Connected Through Exceptional Leadership, available in theSmartShop. Get your FREE LinkedIn Profile Optimization eBook & Video Course, Video Marketing video and course, or Mastermind Groups e-course & video now.
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3 Essential Social Media Optimization Tips for SMEs
Having an active Social Media presence can make a big difference to small and medium sized business, especially in sectors where companies rely on word of mouth for a lot of their custom.
1. Set up an Official Google+ business profile
Utilising Social Media to promote your company can be a very effective way to increase its visibility and market the goods and services that it has to offer to millions of potential customers. Google+ business profiles are set to become very popular as they combine the advantages of Social Media marketing with the power of the world’s most popular search engine. The number of votes that you receive from other users will help to improve the position of your page in results when people search using keywords that are relevant to your business. For this reason, it is well worth taking the time to make your Google+ page both informative and entertaining, to ensure that people are encouraged to visit on a regular basis and give it their seal of approval. Status updates also feature in Google search results now, providing companies with another opportunity to appear in search engine results pages (SERPs).
2. Branding your Facebook Business Page
Many companies have already taken advantage of the opportunities that this extremely popular network has offered them to promote themselves to consumers across the globe at a very low cost. However, simply creating a page and including a few details about your firm and what it has to offer is just the starting point when using Facebook. Updating your page on a regular basis is crucial if you expect repeat visitors and the inclusion of eye-catching images and informative videos will help to ensure that people have a reason to come back. It is a good idea to run a feature on specific products or services every so often as this will help to make sure that your page remains of interest to visitors and will give you the chance to showcase some of the things that your company has to offer. Including a link to your corporate website is obviously important and whilst most companies choose their home page, you can link to any page on your site that you wish. Use visual elements, including graphics that match the layout of your website, to help give a sense of professionalism and brand identity to the page.
3. Interaction
One of the biggest advantages that Social Media has over static websites is the ability to interact with potential customers that it offers businesses of all sizes. Consumers are much more likely to buy from a company that they already know and trust and it is possible to build a rapport with people on Social Media networks by answering their queries promptly and engaging them in discussions about your company’s products. The Facebook Notes application enables companies to add articles on a regular basis, which is a good idea if you wish to build up a following. Establishing yourself as an expert in a particular field by offering free advice and tips is an excellent way to attract new customers, as people are keen to do business with firms that they perceive as helpful and knowledgeable. Competitions are another way to attract visitors, who may well turn into valued customers in the future.
About the Author: Emma Tomlinson is the Head of Retail at Smart Traffic, a leading SEO company based in Bristol delivering successful campaigns to both SMEs and major brands
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LinkedIn Marketing for B2C Companies – The Audiences on LinkedIn That Will Double Your Sales Guaranteed
During a presentation that I was giving at a small business owner’s boot camp, I was asked a very interesting question by one of the attendees:
“I am a real estate agent and I am not sure how LinkedIn can help me since it is a business to business platform and I am targeting consumers and homeowners. Should I be focusing just on Facebook which is more consumer oriented? And, if I should be on LinkedIn, how can I best utilize it to help me obtain more business and clients?”
My Answer to How Business to Consumer (B2C) Companies Can Use LinkedIn Marketing
One of the biggest advantages of using LinkedIn if you are a B2B business is being able to access targeted prospects. Now, it’s quite difficult to do that if you are a B2C company as business professionals are there for these purposes:
¨ Build and cultivate profitable relationships
¨ Get the information they need to develop.
However, that doesn’t mean you should not be using LinkedIn marketing and just stick to Facebook and Twitter. Use Facebook and Twitter to build your community of prospects – but use LinkedIn marketing to attract these three audiences that can double your sales guaranteed:
Media Professionals – A recent study showed that 92% of all journalists are on LinkedIn which is more than any other social networking site. This means that you have more access to individuals who are looking to quote experts like you or publish articles regarding your industry and how you can help your prospective clients. By reaching out to these journalists you can develop meaningful and valuable relationships as they will come to think of you as the expert in your field and ask for your information when they are putting together their next piece. This extra publicity will give you more exposure to even more prospects and enhance your credibility so prospects will want to buy from you.
Referral Sources – Through LinkedIn you can build and enhance relationships with key influencers who can provide you with access to prospects you would otherwise not have known, met or done business with. A referral source is a valuable tool because it is a third party endorsement and they can act as your sales agent as they want to give their customers and clients more value.
Larger companies that offer products or services that are supplementary to yours – Smart companies are always looking to increase their revenues by giving their clients and customers more value. Think of the different companies and organizations that can add your products or services to their own at a premium price – and use LinkedIn to build relationships with the different company’s executives.
Your Next Steps…
Figure out who would be the best referral sources, key influences, types of media and companies for you to connect with. For example, one of my newest LinkedIn Profile Makeover clients is a real estate agent who is an expert on short sells, foreclosures and troubled properties. Before we completed her profile, we had her brainstorm who would be the best referral sources which include:
¨ Divorce attorneys – In a divorce couples often have a house to sell. Couples also have other traditional real estate assets that often have to be sold in a divorce. Plus, at least one of the parties in a divorce will need to relocate – meaning they’ll need to buy a new house.
¨ Local bankruptcy attorneys who have clients who have no other choice
but to either short sell or go into foreclosure
¨ Florida attorneys that represent HOA’s s so my client can help them with the rental of the property, property managementt and eventual short sell
¨ Accountants who can refer clients to sell their residential or commercial properties to avoid further liability and eventual foreclosure
¨ Financial planners, estate attorneys and probate attorneys who want to give homeowners relief from their unexpected financial burdens
¨ Banks who want to sell their foreclosed properties in the shortest amount of time with the highest net to them
Create a LinkedIn profile that is written for the referral sources and media you want to attract starting with your headline. In the headline, identify the audiences you want to connect with – and why they should want to connect with you. In your summary, explain to referral sources how you can be of value to their clients and customers and how your relationship will help them. Also, if you are trying to attract publicity, show the media that you are an expert. Use any media mentions to your advantage in your summary sections as well as having a complete media kit on your profile using the Box.net, Slideshare and Google Presentations applications. To help you create the copy you need for your LinkedIn profile, check out my Instant LinkedIn Marketing Templates at http://www.InstantLinkedInMarketingTemplates.com
Stay on top of your referral sources’ and media professionals’ minds – Once you figure out who your best key influencers, referral sources and media types, start doing your research on LinkedIn and make connections. When you make a new connection, invite the referral source or media professional to your LinkedIn group where you provide tips, tools and articles. Every time you are published, featured or quoted in the media you should be announcing it to your connections and group members. This will show them that you are a valuable resource and keep you on top of their minds. So when a referral source has a client needing your expertise, they’ll think of you. And, when the media needs an expert to quote- they’ll come to you.
So create a strong LinkedIn profile using my Instant LinkedIn Marketing Templates, figure out who would be the best referral sources and media types and start making connections that can double your sales guaranteed.
About the Author: LinkedIn Expert Kristina Jaramillo creates online marketplace opportunities for B2C companies and marketing executives that want to get more publicity, build relationships with key influencers and double their website traffic and sales. Now, with her free special report, you can uncover easy ways to gain more connections fast by avoiding the top 14 mistakes. Get this information for free at: http://www.Free14LinkedInMistakes.com
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How to Survey on LinkedIn
LinkedIn has surpassed simply being a site for aspirant unemployed guys to linger waiting for the next big break. It’s a way for business experts to hang out and interact with like-minded others and find the folks out there who show expertise in their niches on a daily basis.
Peoples’ viewpoints make for good content. If you read my eBook LinkedIn Profile Optimization for Maximum Exposure, you know that in the chapter on Applications I touch on polls on LinkedIn but didn’t have a lot of detail to accompany it. Here is a bit more on LinkedIn polls and how to utilize them.
My First Poll Experience
To more completely research market demand for a product I was developing on Executive Video Interviews for business leaders, I posted the following poll on LinkedIn.
So what did I uncover? Well, obviously I learned more people like using web video for product demonstrations, something not all together surprising given the ease of filming something in action and throwing it on YouTube.
But did I truly find that out?
With only 16 responses, I’m no statistician but I’d say this lacks statistical significance. I had wanted a lot more to answer the poll. I mean, I placed a link to it on about twenty LinkedIn groups. There really should have been thousands of replies right?
Learning My Lessons
Here are some things I learned about using this poll to engage the business community:
- There is a ton of noise online at LinkedIn. Readers won’t see or even care about your poll saving you MARKET THE EVERLIVING HELL OUT OF IT. That means posting in the Groups, tweeting several times, and using Facebook and other social media to the max leverage you can.
- This is an inkling, but I believe that my Executive Video Interview responses don’t tell me that much about acceptance to my product. Why? Because people haven’t seen it it yet! Two of the three responders to this survey on that item were customers of mine who had them done. Since there is no one else I know who does this like I do, that insider information slants the polls results. Which way I am still debating. Since I took this poll down, market experience is advising me that my sample portfolio of client interviews is mustering up a lot more interest than a survey with a product not universally known. LESSON: All obliged choice replies need to be commonly known. For product acceptance (like this one), survey based upon product outcomes, not the brand of the item.
- Often the most interesting facts are the feedback left by people who take the poll, describing what they have done for their firm (in this case). Don’t overlook that gold mine.
- Marketing the survey in interest groups only slightly related generates no results. Because I use web video to assist small businesses, I got more LinkedIn Group outcomes from a group on Web Video with only a couple hundred, dedicated specialists. The complication here was that some of these folks, being enthusiasts in web video, may have been informing me what they focused on, not what small business wanted.
Connecting with LinkedIn Polls
LinkedIn creates a fantastic survey and it’s easy to put together and put on their site, but it has 2 issues:
- LinkedIn only keeps each poll around for a month or so. You have to be capable to promote it and market it fast because you don’t have forever to accumulate your results. Fact is, in most surveying circumstances, they’ve run their course in just a two or three days, so LinkedIn has a point.
- You can’t post the poll on your LinkedIn profile; you can only put it in your status update and submit to Groups. If you’re optimizing your profile you know you are posting updates every few days at the very least. Unless you want to become an aggravating spammer on LinkedIn Groups, you won’t advertise your survey there more than once or twice every few weeks. This implies that on LinkedIn itself, your poll has little staying power other than in a generic Polls page, and typically speaking, people aren’t surfing that searching for something to do.
Not a big deal. Here are a couple ways to influence surveys in LinkedIn:
- Embed on your Site
- Tweet out to your favorite hash-tag trends and followers
- Facebook post it for your fans
What about types of questions for surveys? Well, if the poll is something you are just looking to get replies to, appeal to low common denominators like pop culture or politics. Everyone has an opinion on them. If, on the other hand, you are hoping to find specific niche advice about your business or market, as I was in this case, do anything you can to reach the audience to the niche so that they are interested in it enough to want to find out the outcomes themselves, or just deal with a small response rate indicative of your target reader size.
One way to do this targeting is to upload your survey in a blog post or article and send to search engines. Through SEO your article will be checked out by those who discovered it who were trying to find it, and odds are better they vote on the poll. In the next few days I’ll be doing this with one more LinkedIn poll on marketing techniques for business. Get statistically substantial results, particularly if they are unpredicted, and you have developed a news item that you can now leverage with, you guessed it, another blog post, a press release to news outlets, or placed as an item of interest on your website.
About the Author: Karl Walinskas is the CEO of Smart Company Growth, a business development firm that helps small to mid-size professional service firms builds competitive advantage in an online world of sameness. He is author of numerous articles and the Smart Blog on leadership, business communication, sales & service, public speaking and virtual business, and Getting Connected Through Exceptional Leadership, available in the SmartShop. Get your FREE LinkedIn Profile Optimization eBook & Video Course, Video Marketing video and course, or Mastermind Groups e-course & video now.
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Photo Credit: nan palmero
5 Ways to Make Pinterest the Newest Asset To Your Company
Link Pinterest to the Facebook account of the person with the most friends in your office
Does this sound petty? It’s not. People who are your ‘friends’ on Facebook (usually) have more of a connection to you than your company. They will check you out because they are interested in expanding their own Pinterest network. You are easier to find than your company (that they may or may not be able to recall). Once friends find your artful curation, it will not matter whose name it represents.
Build your Boards before you go on a follower rampage
Whether you are an individual or a company, people will not be interested in your account until you have something to show them. Even if you acquire a few loyal followers (your CTO and best friend from college) with no content, to gain an engaging set of followers you must produce something of value. Invest in finding images that mean something you. Humor is always a plus, but do not underestimate the power of a beautifully composed photograph.
Tell a story
Let the Pinterest audience know who you are before you throw at them what you sell or provide. The point of Pinterest is not to gather an immediate, lucrative following that will tote your brand like Abercrombie & Fitch in the late 1990’s. You want the people, yes people, on Pinterest to get to know you (as a representative of your company). Images in general have the power to evoke powerful emotions; just look at all of the Boards titled ‘Motivation,’ ‘Imagination,’ ‘Love.’ Using images to evoke true feeling is not exploitation. It is an opportunity to connect with individuals who are looking to be touched in a way they are not yet aware. Surprise users with how thoughtful, tasteful, creative, intelligent and witty you are.
Don’t over do it
There is nothing more agitating on a social media site than someone who thinks they are a world-class hoot. If you set out to impress, you are sure to disappoint – both your viewers and yourself. Be genuine in your approach, with image selection/captions, and stick to it. People will see through your obvious innuendos and over-eager “wit.” Take the advice of your elementary school teachers and just be yourself.
Interact with people who share similar interests
Does this sound obvious? It should. However, many companies are eager to follow anyone and everyone in the hopes they will return the favor. Besides flooding your homepage with images you are unimpressed with, it will take longer to sort through to find those with whom you actually share a visual bond. Connecting with people whose pins relate to yours inspires an actual “Pinterest” relationship of mutual (and frequent) repinning. It also leads you to other pins, and people, who are more likely to be interested in the images you have chosen to represent your company ethos.
About the Author: Erin Nelson is the Communication & Marketing Manager for the Berlin-based startup, exploreB2B. The new social, business platform, exploreB2B, allows individuals the opportunity to connect and collaborate with other professionals through reading and writing self-published articles.
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