Enlyne Blog

Believing In Your Brand Strategy

2012-06-18T18:05:00.000+02:00

I have been to many seminars that speak about business in general and sometimes about my industry. But there is something that I have noticed that is consistent in their mentions, which I don't find strange, but what is more surprising is that people almost hear it in passing and never recognize that this is an integral part of their business survival. The finest example that comes to mind is the "Stone-Pet" that sold like hot cakes about a decade ago. This was a normal river rock and they designed a fancy box for it. Then had a very good marketing strategy, but the bottom line is that they believed in their product, so much that it started convincing others that this might be a good idea to purchase the rock, rather than making one for themselves. "Believe" is very contagious, very addictive and most definitely attractive.

This is exactly what you must do when you have a new brand strategy that you need to implement. Believing is like one of things that defies science, they cannot be explained or proven in a formula. They are just one of those instincts that we have inherited from our Creator. When you believe in your brand strategy, you will start to see benefits and gaps where you can service your niche and your belief will start to be come more contagious, more spoken about and certainly more people will be attracted to your brand. Even when industry professionals say the business is dead, believing allows for you to be innovative, creative and relevant. You will find a way when you believe in your strategy. Small businesses, often have limited resources and their brand strategy is printing flyers and servicing a small client base. But without fail, they have a budget to print flyers, and if you were to ask them how they know that this campaign works, they would not be able to elaborate. But they believe that, that particular action has and will bring them more business and it has made a mark in their respective environment. They start acting in a different way, and that is the attitude that not only draws business, but it attracts sustainable business. Simply by Believing.

But "Believing" is not enough to have a sustainable strategy, you need to act in conformity to the strategy. As the saying goes, "If you love the end, you will love the means". Believing without doubt takes quite some energy, and it does not have to. But today to make a client believe in their strategy, it take a subscription to analytics, a fancy implementation schedule and a complex demographics research report, and not forgetting an even more intricate ROI forecast, for a simple flyers handout to local businesses.

There are 3 reasons why anyone goes into entrepreneurship:

For the Money
For the Passion
For the Recognition

Sometimes all three applies and when none applies to you, then you are in the wrong field, and a brand wants to achieve all three. All businesses seek to be profitable and it is those who seek for recognition that exceed the expectations of the of the themselves. Your brand believes that it could be recognized as a world class entity. Branding is for those who believe their business will make a bigger impact on their community, society and the world. Branding is for those who don't only want to be recognized, be in the position to influence trends, and society buying patterns. When companies like Google, Adobe, Twitter, Skype and Hoover brands are used as verbs, the brand evolves to become a brand giant. Google it, Photoshop that picture, Tweet this, Skype your family and Hoover that carpet. They got there by asking themselves the right question and believing that their brand strategy will get them there.

Visit Enlyne Branding for more articles.

Contact Enlyne Branding on info@enlynebranding.com

Social Media Intelligence: 7 Key Strategy Elements

2012-05-15T19:53:00.000+02:00

Since we have started our blog, many readers have asked me to be specific on what we do when we develop a social media strategy for a client. And Enlyne Branding likes simplifying everything in 7 steps, if it is more steps, then it starts becoming complicated and too much or what we do is simplifying it to 7 tasks on every phase. On this article we are going to reveal 7 simple key strategy elements that make your social media strategy both valuable and profitable. From Enlyne Branding's perspective, it is easier to manage your social media status from a campaign to campaign perspective, than a long on-going, endless project. The campaign is focused and has specific deadline dates, similar to a television series with 20 episodes, and have a different focus on the next campaign. The strategy elements we are presenting are based on a campaign to campaign basis.

What is most important is to remember that this exercise is a outcome-based project. If something is not working, be flexible enough to know that you need to change your offering to suit your target audience. Also to keep in mind that if it does not make money, it does not make sense, so profitability should be balanced with attracting the audience. And they are as follows:

1. Do Your Research

Doing your research is always a good idea. You are able to offer a solution that is directly focused to your target audience. Take a look at the services that you are offering, and determine how best to package them, and be packaged in such a way that your audience will be interested in them. If you don't know how to, then this will be part of your research. Depending on how extensive your offerings are, Google is always a good place to start, but as a professional, you would know who holds your industry stats, for instance, Adcorp is good place to start when you want to find information on the South African employment index. There are also research houses, that deal with industry standards of specific industries. What is also valuable is to find White Papers of released papers by several professionals in your industry, usually their papers are rich with information that is well researched and well written. Most of the time, when your product or service is unique or you want to have specific outcomes that are only unique to your business, you will have to conduct this research yourself. There are also several ways in which this could be done, you can have focus groups, you can send surveys to your customers and internally and you can use direct marketing and direct interactions with your customers.

2. Determine Who You Want To Target

Sometimes you might be running a business and you think you only have one set of people who are your target market. But most of the time, you have several people who are your target market. Take a toy store for instance, you might think that their target market is kids, but it often is not the case. Their target market are parents with kids between ages 3 to 10 years (as these are parents who purchase the most toys), and you need to know how to attract these parents, so that they can purchase the toys for their kids. And music stores are targeting ages 13 to 35, as this is the age group that purchases music the most. Also know that there are exceptions to the rule, example, a 40 year old DJ will purchase music far more than a regular person who enjoys music privately. Be very clear who you want your social media campaign to target and what you want them to do with the information, and start mapping out a clear road on how they are going to end up at your finish line.

3. Develop Content That Sells

Some business success is dependent on Location, Location, Location. In the case of social media, your campaign's success is Content, Content, Content. I cannot stress how important your social media content is, if you have to, you must hire a writer, someone who will take what you want to say, and put it in such a way that it is attractive and can sell. Please do not mistaken developing content that sells to acting too smart for your audience. Always keep it simple and straight to the point, and always be sincere and honest. People can sense when you are not sincere and when you are not honest. And your campaign will fall flat on its face, with not a single lead or success. Again, always keep in mind the goal of the campaign, it is to generate more leads and it is to have loyal customers, and other objectives you have set for the campaign, if it is going to be a series of campaigns, keep in mind what this specific campaign is going to achieve.

4. Choose Your Social Networks For Best Communication Effectiveness

There is enough information on the internet to tell you which tools to use when trying to communicate your campaign's objectives. If you are one of the people who follows Enlyne Branding on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, you will know that this week was a week of social media stats. To be brief, I will give you a few, if your business is a B2B business, you should focus on LinkedIn, as it draws the best leads and conversion rates above all social networks. LinkedIn converts 61% compared to 55% from the company blog. Please also note that people on the same grouping have different tastes and different social media appetites. So, when LinkedIn is your best tool for attracting leads and converting them, it does not mean you must ignore, company blogs, Facebook and Twitter. After choosing which social media tools you are going to focus on, ensure that you are aware of what are the rules of engagement for each of the social networks. Know on how you can use each of the social media optimally, if you are not going to use it at least 70% of its capacity, you might as well not use it at all.

5. Optimize Your Content

Even today, SEO, AdWords, and PPC are still foreign concepts to most marketers, which is a skill that every marketer must possess, in my opinion. You don't need to know the various algorithmic formulas that are used, but you have to understand why your content needs to be keyword rich. Keyword rich content is content that has the necessary keywords that people type when searching for similar products and services. There is software that can help you with what keywords certain types of companies in a particular industry. The most important thing about this element is understanding what your research has given you and optimizing content that will attract them to your products and services.

6. Feedback

Content that is most effective is content that engages your customers, therefore you need to understand a tool and content that is the most effective in giving you the most effective feedback. Again there is software that will be able to help you with the most effective feedback strategy. There are several ways to get feedback, either through direct marketing, landing pages or through social networks. The most effective is Facebook, which is the most effective in sharing content. When your objective is just to share content, Facebook should be your main focus of that particular element of the campaign.

7. Measure And Continually Analyze

We have all heard of the saying that says, "if you can't measure it, you can't manage it". And we are so fortunate that social media has got all the stats that are necessary for us to make informed decisions. All the main social networks have got their own kind of stats, from geographical areas, the number of hits, stats from live, daily, to weekly and monthly. You will be able to make any type of analysis from the information. I would suggest that for even your website, you need to have stats that will determine its ROI. Also use your stats to determine your customers' favorite product or service, and have an emphasis on the particular subject, because it is clear that they want to hear or learn more about what you are giving them. Set yourself a schedule and only for 15 minutes daily, where you read the feedback and the stats and continue to give your customers what they want to hear.

If you follow these simple steps after you have done your research on your audience and a particular social network tool. You will enjoy success beyond your imagination. Cold calling will be a thing of the past, and you will enjoy more qualified leads and more conversions. Remember, what your brand promises them, it must deliver. Do not promise them Milk and Honey, and give them Lemons and Salt Water.

Marketing Your Small Business Through Social Media

2012-05-10T20:13:00.000+02:00

I often forget how valuable the things that I do on social media until I am reminded by the followers about the articles or they ask me to elaborate more on the status I updated on all my social networks. And this is how every marketer feels at some point in time in their career, sometimes you are afraid to explore a new strategy or adventure into a new idea because you are afraid you will not be able to get the response you are expecting to get. As creatives, we should know better than to doubt our instincts and provide clients with fresh innovative ideas that will sustain their brand for months, even years to come. Recently, I have seen marketers who are very cautious on social media, some companies are using one person to communicate through their strategy or even social posts. Because they are used to strict outbound marketing rules, they want to apply them on social media. It was embarrassing for some company's CEO, who was asked about an article they posted on their blog which was posted by her, and she could not answer them, because the company has a policy that all communication about the company is only posted under her name. I wonder if they will review this ridiculous policy.

In this article, I am going to touch on some features of different social network platforms and their benefits which allows you to effectively market your small business to a wider audience. For the sake of the article, I will assume that you can use the rest of the features as they are linked to your success.

Facebook Timeline

We all know that Facebook is a powerful social media platform that can change the perception of your business to your benefit. And, I am pretty sure you know that Facebook has introduced the Timeline on Business Pages and there are tools you need to know about it and it will help your brand grow vertically an horizontally.

Set Your Cover Photo - this feature can offer your brand some flexibility, like a picture of your champion product or other things you can advertise. But there are some guidelines you need to follow. and they are as follows:

No contact information
No Call to Action
No Price or Purchase information
No references to Facebook features or actions

Set your Profile Picture - Adjust your profile picture, the image that will get shown next to each of your updates on your wall and in users' news feeds,
Organize Views & Apps - The new design features photos, likes, and apps at the top of oyur page, below your cover photo. Photos are automatically featured in the first spot, but page admins can rearrange the rest to feature the most important ones first. You can only show 12 apps.
Star, Hide, Pin -By hovering over individual stories, you can make them wider, hide them from your Timeline with the pencil icon, highlight them as important with the star icon, or delete them entirely.
Enable Messages - You can now have private conversations with your fans, which is very good, when people want to ask something very specific.
Feature Milestones - The new design also allows admins to feature what are called "milestones" on their page. This allows page admins to highlight some of their business biggest accomplishments.

All of these are very useful to your small business, firstly because it is free, but it will cost you in terms time. Through these new features you can show them how much you care and the quality you can offer. And with certain strategies, lure them into customers who will always be your own brand loyalists.

Pintrest

Pintrest is a visual social network, so you will need to create a pinboard that highlights some of your best visual content. Remembering that your goal is to gain brand recognition, drive traffic to your website and be successful at converting the new visits into leads. Get your creative juices and let people see what you are doing and you might never know what people might fall in love with. A lot of brands are taking notice of the power of online visual content for marketing and the emotions images elicit in readers. Remember that you can explore and whatever images are good. Make it super easy for website visitors to share your visual content or images on Pinterest by adding a "Pin It" button to your site. Just like other social media sharing buttons, this will help to expose your brand to a new audience.

Twitter

Twitter is one of the most exciting social networks in the industry at the moment, because it allows people to post things that are direct and gets to the point quick, which is what visitors want. But you can also use it to attract leads for your business and here are a couple of ideas.

Tweet Offers - often as a small business owner, you want to advertise your offers forget about Twitter. But please read the guidelines to ensure you don't land up on the spam bot.
Connect your blog to your Twitter Feed - There are tools that can help you achieve this, and you would be keeping your audience updated at the same time.
Landing Pages - respond with landing pages that are related to the offers that you have posted on Twitter.
Build Reach - What's the use of following any suggestions if you're not reaching anyone? This is where you need to revisit the basics of Twitter and remember to spend time building your following. The more people you sending information to, the higher your chance of generating leads.

And the most important is to make sure you know how to measure you ROI and review if these are the results you are looking for.

Although social media is relatively relaxed and easy going, you need to be careful on what you put out and know what parameters of the social network. When you have achieved this, your small business is well on its way to marketing success and most importantly, income generating initiatives is what keeps your business trading.

7 "P's" of Inbound Marketing, Understanding The Basics

2012-04-19T00:06:00.000+02:00

Most of the time marketing is made complicated by marketers, using complicated marketing jargon (which is necessary sometimes) and other technical terms. I found that when I use simple and easy strategies that clients can implement themselves, it is more valuable and it makes them part of the process of the solution. This process allows them to live the brand and be ambassadors of the brand too. I started thinking how I can come up with easy and simple ways that one can understand inbound marketing without having to include the technical bit of it. These simple steps, you would be able to do without an agency, and they can assist with the technical part of the puzzle. And I managed to come with the 7 "P's" Of Inbound Marketing, and they are easy to follow and easy to implement.

Plan - Similar to any marketing campaign you've worked on successfully, you need to plan it and determine the outcome, or what you want to achieve from the campaign. Plan the type of content you are going to have, how often are you going to post material regarding the campaign, do you have a cover page supporting your campaign, and survey's that you would like feedback from your audience.
Product - It is important, especially if you are new in the social network marketing circles to make it clear what your product or service is. You always want your audience to take action, non-profit organizations are good with call-to-actions. They run a campaign and at the end they say, to save this course, please click here for donations. And with businesses, they are afraid to ask the audience to buy, and you need it in bold. For clients to buy something, there needs to be a product, and ensure that this product is exactly what the consumer needs.
Perception - Have you ever heard the term "Perception is Reality", this is no doubt a relevant statement in the marketing circles. Manage your brand's perception online to exactly what you want it to be. Inbound marketing is the only form that you are in full control of the perception you portray to your audience.
Passion - When running a campaign online, you passion needs to be obvious. There are several ways you can boost your campaign and display passion for the subject matter or product you are offering. You could use gamification marketing, a survey or post knowledge insights about the product.
Presentation - The presentation of your campaign needs to be spot on, I assume that all the market research is done and you have profiled your target market. This is a deal breaker, if the product is not properly presented, it will fall short of what you are trying to achieve and unfortunately so will your reputation.
Persistence - Be persistent with your campaign, follow the schedule and see the campaign from start to finish as you planned it. Sometimes you will find businesses that are impatient, on their first week of the campaign, they want big results. You have to give your customers time to educate themselves on your campaign, your products and the benefits of it. You have to be persistent, but flexible enough to make changes when the campaign is not performing optimally.
Promotion - There are several things you are promoting when you are running an online campaign, firstly it needs to be the brand, and secondly your champion product. If you look at businesses that run online campaigns, they have a champion product that acts as an ice breaker and it is supported by brand behind the product. Promoting your brand and product also needs a strategy, the one that does not overwhelm the audience.

When you understand these basics, you are in a good position to make a good impression on your audience and have a lasting impression to your customers. Ensure that your brand is supported by good operations who can handle the volume of inquiries, should they need to.

Still Don't Need a Website, 46% of Your Customers are Going Elsewhere

2012-04-17T15:16:00.000+02:00

We are in 2012 and I can not believe that there are still businesses who feel that a website is not beneficial for them. I still maintain that if you are serious about expanding and delivering quality service to your clients, a website is at the top of your checklist. And if you don't have a website, somebody in your industry is raking in customers and cashing in on the sales that they are making. So, since people respond better to stats, I did a study on how well a business that has an optimized website, compared to a business who do not have a website.

My study was based on small businesses whose annual income is between ZAR500 000.00 to ZAR 5 million. I could not believe that a business with a turnover of ZAR 5 million per annum, did not have websites, nevertheless, I am trying to demonstrate that there are companies that do not value websites as part of the brand and as part of the growth strategy. I conducted this research with 25 companies, and the 11 of them did not have any web presence and 14 of them had websites, and only 5 of those that have website optimized them and acknowledged the value of SEO.

For companies that had websites, they acknowledged that having a website made them look credible and professional to their customers. All 100% (14) said that the website was a valuable part of their business. It provided a check mark to their customers that they are able to deal with the work that they are proposing to do. In essence 44% of the total companies, said that in their line of work, a website is necessary, but not essential to run their business. So, I asked them to give me their sales records, to prove my point further. The 44% that did not have website were doing their sales manually, either through a referral, or through a relationship they had with customers or through a sales team, and the 56% that did have websites, the lowest performer made 31% more sales than the top performer of those who did not have websites. Some of them did not know how the sales came about, so they put it as call ins, but we all know that these customers might have came through their site for details. The 20% (5) who optimized their sites, and included services like landing pages and had their site optimized, out performed the rest by an additional 15%, meaning that those who did not have websites are doing 46% less sales than those who have websites and optimized them. In this exercise, it proved that a website is a strategic partner for business growth.

The 44% that did not have website, did other forms of marketing like flyers, and invested heavily on sales staff to ensure that they remain abreast in making the company sustainable. In doing so, their expenditure was 73% more than those who had website and those who optimized their websites were getting better conversion rates. The brand of those who optimized their website was exposed more, and they kept on updating their website for web crawlers to rate them high on search engines. The businesses with optimized sites said they had to explain themselves less, because when they send a proposal to their clients, it included their web address and by the time they are called for a presentation, the client has an idea of who they are and what they are products and services are. And because these companies had an image to uphold (due to the brand promise, they promised on the website), they felt obliged to perform accordingly, as they were not representing a person's interest, but an organization's interest.

Because those who had functional website got more clients, it meant that their conversion rate was higher than those who did not have website. it was easier for them to convert potentials to customers. Clients educated themselves online without a sales person feeding them information leading towards a sale. So when the customer eventually bought, they were already convinced that they were doing the right thing and they chose the right product. The 56% that had websites also added that when they had someone who has been to their website, they are more articulate in the services they want, they are a pleasure to deal with, and they are far easier to close a sale than those who have not had time to educate themselves with the product or services.

The next time you look at a website that you love and has called you to action, either to buy or like the product and services they offer, remember that it was a collaborated effort and it was deliberate. You don't like them by mistake and the service you have experienced was intentional.

7 Benefits Of Social Media Advertising

2012-04-16T14:35:00.000+02:00

If you have been following this blog, you will know that I am passionate about inbound marketing, especially social media marketing. When we started offering inbound marketing as a service, we had a lot of excitement, because of the advantages it provided. The advantages were so immediate that we could not wait to get to the clients we were in our D-class classification profile. We opened up the box and found some rather interesting things that these clients said and requested from Enlyne Branding. When we started offering social media marketing as one of our services, we loved a couple of things it offered.

Accessibility
Price
Viral Potential

Accessibility

Social Media marketing (unlike Television and Radio and sometimes Print Media) was and is still accessible to everyone, whether you are a small business or not. If you currently run a Google search and you run search words that you know a big company services. You will see 4 or 5 small businesses ranking above it. This is what I love about social media too, the search codes they run are similar to those of search engines. You can get a sweet spot of real estate and you can get more hits than the big fish in your city

Price

The price is right and you don't constantly have to fight with big fish for a piece of your real estate, there is plenty of space and guess what, it is cheap. The price does not go up because your advert is placed next to a big giant and people might be able to click on your link and therefore you are charged more. This is wonderful about social media, it enables your brand to benefit just as much if not more than the big fish.

Viral Potential

Even the smallest of businesses have the potential to go viral, and if you just browse the internet, you will be showered with an avalanche of ideas and e-books on how you can turn your presence online into a big success. And this excited us quite a bit.

But our excitement was short-lived, the small businesses that we called up and presented this service to, were not responding positively. We had all the stats, all the proof and mostly all the success of how it would benefit them, but they were still not convinced. So I went back personally and asked their decision-makers and asked them what is wrong with the offer, was it the pitch, the presentation, price or you just don't believe it in. I, personally was shocked by the response, and even more shocking was their psychology about social media marketing, that was found on nothing. They said a lot of things, but one that stood out was, why was the big companies in their industry not following suit, and based on this, social marketing will never take off. We are far into the process now, and they can't stop calling us.

So after this, I formulated the 7 benefits of social media advertising and we emphasized on these points and finally they saw the light.

You Pay What You Use - Unlike other forms of marketing, you only pay for what you were exposed to. So if clients click on your link, only then will you be charged for advertising.
You Decide Your Budget - Set your budget and when your advertising reaches that amount, you will stop advertising and you will never find this kind of flexibility in any other form of marketing.
Easy To Access - It is thee easiest form of advertising to penetrate. Other forms, you need to send your ad in a certain format and you need to send well in advance. Although sending your campaign in advance is good practice, but because this is online, your ad is grouped and placed on pages with people who have indicated similar interests. This is why social media marketing is called "the marketing of niches" because it is able to target a specific audience and are able to get better results.
Self Help - From day 1, social media marketing was about doing it yourself. You don't need fancy designs to post your ad, most companies just post their logo and the link in which they are wanting to lead you to. So your designing costs are cut to zero. So what we did is that, we said, we will train the clients and they would be able to manage it themselves.
Survey's - Additionally, on the same account you can run mini surveys, where you can gauge the interest of your audience on your product or service. And again, this you can do at a fraction of the price that normal advertising would do.
Global Reach - while other forms like Television, Radio and Print Media are only limited to either local or national, Social Media marketing you can choose how far you want your advert to reach. You can choose continents and you can choose just your local city, at no additional charges. Like a local guest house we did a social media campaign for, we decided to do it nationally and she increased her sales by 300% and she spent less than 5% and she actually said it was cheaper than when she was only advertising on the local paper.
Analytics - Social Media is able to give you stats that no other form of advertising is able to. You are able to view where the people are viewing your advert, what key words they used, what is the referring site and even more impressive which browser are people viewing your ad from so that you can make your website that browser friendly. Like the saying goes, "If you can't measure it, you can't manage it."

There is no other form of marketing that will give you the same results with the money that you are paying for social media marketing. So big companies are now having continuous campaigns on the social media networks, but there is more than enough space for you and 1000 of your competitors, and the only thing that will separate you from the rest, is your creativity.

Websites: 7 User musts for your website

2012-03-30T13:45:00.000+02:00

There are many things that allow you to optimize your website and make it the best looking site online. But if you don't understand how to market your content, you will have the best content nobody reads. And to get people to read your content, you have to be interested in your audience. You almost have to be fan of your followers as well in order to understand their day-to-day challenges, what their day-to-day frustrations and offer solutions to their dilemma and all of the solutions are going to be feeds and content that will be posted on your website. In order to provide the solution that your audience is craving, you need to understand their behavior when they are online. And these behaviors will in turn help push the right type of content, and further will help you generate leads that are more qualified.

These are the 7 musts that you should survey, observe and research within your audience.

Know user's purpose of being online - There are various reasons why people go online. Some do shopping, some are e-learners, some are looking for products and services, and some are just looking for something interesting to do or read. But what is actually an undeniable fact is that 78% of users conduct their product research online. Meaning that, by the time they have come to a conclusion to give your company a call, they have compared prices, and visited your website.
Is your website compatible - What I really mean by this is that are you meeting your audience with the right tools and platform. 81% of online users use their mobile phone to check their email. So when you are developing your direct marketing campaign. Are you keep in mind that more than a third of your audience are probably view your campaign on their mobile phones. Further when you have a link to go to your website to a landing page, is your website compatible with mobile phone browsers. If not, you have lost 81% of your target market, simply by not understanding their medium in which they receive your content.
Users love relevant advertising - Did you know that 84% of 24-35 year old's have left their favorite website because of intrusive and/or irrelevant advertising. When you understand the solution you need to provide to your audience, you will understand that even though it is meant for them, you still need to make it relevant to your audience. Make the right kinds of associations to keep them interested to your solutions. For an example, if you are selling business equipment and stationery, it is probably the best idea not to have monkeys on your ad, because monkeys are associated with play and the wild.
Everybody loves referring - Create a easy to refer system on your website. When you have good and useful content for your audience, your audience will not hesitate to refer it to their friends and colleagues. They love referring so much that a study says 67% B2B companies and 41% B2C companies have acquired their customers through Facebook, and they were referred by a friend or colleague. So your website should have an easy to refer system, either by "email to friend icon" or through other tools available online.
Avoid long questioners, forms and surveys - Think about yourself, when you are looking for a service or a product to buy or to learn, you don't want to fill out long forms to access the information. This also applies to your audience. They want to engage in fun and fact based content on your website. If your website has a lot of restrictions and forms to fill in, you will loose your audience. And this is only when they are still potential customers. When they are ready to purchase, obviously you need as much information as you can to facilitate the transaction.
Users love free offers - In fact, everybody loves a free anything. I always download free e-books, free music, free videos and so does your users. Have an offer of something you can give away, and watch your website go viral. Actually, giving away free offers makes even those tough users soften up and warm up to your website and business. Free offers makes audiences behave very strangely, and very optimistic. This is what also happens at Expo and Exhibitions, they set up a stand where you can learn more about their business, and then they give you a pen, lanyard or a bag full of goodies, because they know that free offers go a long way and customers appreciate it. And so does online users, especially if they can get it immediately, so if you are to give something away, make sure it is something they can benefit from immediately, and not weeks.
Users love to Engage - When you actually answer and engage with your audience, you go viral even faster. When a user leaves a message on your website, blog or social media feed. Ensure that you answer them, even if all you say is "Thank you for your comment." It makes them feel special and makes your website relevant to them. And do not be shy to complement them by name on your website, you will be creating a loyal customer through your feedback.

Always ensure that when you are a building a website or launching a social media campaign, you always doing it for the user, and if the user is not connecting with your content, you are not capturing them, which means your efforts are all but going to waste. Remember to always be sincere in all of your posts as anybody can see through fake, thoughtless content.

Social Media: Twitter & 7 things that you absolutely need to do

2012-03-27T23:10:00.000+02:00

I have to admit that the first time I used Twitter, I did not completely comprehend what I was doing, and this annoyed me and this led to me using it once a week and sometimes twice a month. I did not understand the power it harnesses. I realized that twitter operates quite differently from Facebook. Firstly, you only have 140 characters to put your message through, and often I followed some boring people who did not add value to my social networking time. I gave myself a chance to learn, read and then I started to enjoy twitter and most importantly understand it.

There are certain things that you need to posses the minute you decide to join twitter and I have come up with 7 simple things.

Swagger - you need to impress some people enough that they are interested in following you. In my case I like hip-hop and I love what I do. So you probably guessed it, I follow Jay-Z as one of the examples, and not because he is a lyrical genius, but he has some really good tweets and I follow people who are in my industry, just to mention a few I follow on twitter are Claire Woodruf, who posts the most amazing articles and news flashes whether in the industry or not, I don't know where she gets them. Susan Waldman, who is a columnist for the Washington Post and her articles are very genuine and full of insight, I was very honoured to find out that she is following Enlyne Branding. Lastly, Donna Rachelson and she has very interesting perspectives and I love the contrast she brings to the industry. And all of them to me, have a certain type of swagger about them or what they present to me, and I believe this is how you grow your Twitter following, to have your own unique identity that others can identify with, your own.....SWAGGER
Be Sincere - All of us have this innate sense that can sense when someone is not being sincere, and this is the single most annoying thing you can experience on Twitter. There was a politician I was following, and the tweets he posted were not sincere, or not real, I don't know how to explain it, but it felt like his tweets were fabricated and I felt like he is giving me that fake laugh on the other end. Like I said, I can't explain it, but I can definitely feel it and sometimes I even felt awkward for him while I was reading some of his tweets. Remember that you only have 140 characters, so you need to express and you need to say it as short and effectively as possible.
Create your own inbound links - Make your content remarkable enough that other influencers are retweeting it. Google and Bing representatives shared that search engines will register the value of Twitter authority figures and correlate it with the value of the link posted. So search engines are analyzing the number of followers a user who retweets your content has in order to give the retweeted link its proper value of importance. The Twitter equivalent of an inbound link. Posting updates that appeal to influencers will inevitably boost your optimization efforts.
Don't over do it - Yes it is a myth and a fact, do not over-tweet, if there is actually such a thing. I will say this, if you over tweet, you tweets become meaningless, and your content start becoming very shallow. Tweets, do have a short life span, but if you are tweeting every second, you are probably boring your audience with your irrelevant tweets. So how many tweets are good for you. About 15-25 tweets a day, but there are no rules in social networking, or social media. You can actually do what you want.
Tweet Offers - This is the simplest form of lead generation, and that is to share your offers. Control how often you share your offers to ensure your account doesn't turn into a spam-bot. This will be contingent upon your business. Generate ideas on how you can make your offers regular enough to have a meaningful engagement with your audience.
Build Reach - Everything you do on twitter as a marketer is to build a reach, if you not reaching anyone you are not generating leads. This is where you need to revisit the basics of Twitter and remember to spend time building your following. The more people you're sending information to, the higher your chance of generating leads. There is software that can help you build your reach, and there are several ebooks that you can download to show you how to increase your reach.
Include Keywords in your BIO - Twitter allows 160 characters worth of information to be displayed in your bio. Don't riddle this 'about' section with industry keywords, but be sure to have at least one in the to reflect your business in an accurate way and help you improve search visibility. Keep in mind that search engines often display your Twitter bio in the links description on the results page, so make it attention grabbing.

Like I said before, Twitter has no set of rules, or social networking in general, but there are a set of rules you need to respect or rather avoid. Avoid your account being tagged as a spam-bot, and watch the name you choose, it should be professional and simple and tweet about 15 to 25 tweets a day and watch your offers. When you do some of these combined with other things. You will enjoy Twitter as much as I am today.

Feedback

2012-03-22T11:38:00.000+02:00

During the past Month we have written a lot of articles and I want to give you a chance to reflect on the articles and give us your feedback. Has the information we presented useful for you and your brand. but more importantly has it been profitable.

Are you better with your Social Media marketing, you have better insight into building a good and sustainable website, you inbound marketing is increasing in bounds and leaps and mostly, your marketing is improving and it has been showing signs of growth. If you don't feel comfortable in commenting on our blog you can post it on Facebook on www.facebook.com/EnlyneB or email us on info@enlynebranding.com

While you are on Facebook like us on Facebook and you can follow us on Twitter @EnlyneB, you can also send an email to info@enlynebranding.com and type opt-in on the subject line and you will receive our monthly newsletter.

You can also visit our several websites: www.enlynebranding.com | www.enlynegroup.com | www.enlyneinternet.co.za

Remember that anything goes within the boundries of Professionalism and you can comment on any article or any topics you want me to address within the marketing circles. Thank you

D. Maseko

Websites: 7 Benefits of having a Paypal account on your business.

2012-03-21T08:15:00.000+02:00

I have been very fortunate to have done business with businesses from outside the African continent, and one of the most important things for them was for them to pay me without any hassles, and they want to do it online in the comfort of their office, without having to go to the bank and wiring the money. When building your new website, consider having a Paypal account, it has several benefits, it is free, no monthly charges, it accepts credit cards and EFT's and most importantly it is recognized Globally. Paypal has more than 150 million accounts worldwide, and Paypal is a household name for people who are online business owners and online shoppers world wide.

So how does Paypal work? When you set up a Paypal account, you link your Paypal account to your bank account and/or credit card. When someone make a payment to your business, the money will be deposited directly to your bank account, and when you want to make a payment, you don't have to enter your banking details or your credit card details on every transaction, you will just confirm the transaction. When my clients have deposited, all I need to see is the confirmation from my Paypal notifications and depending in which country, the money will be deposited within 72 hours.

There are obvious benefits for having a Paypal account on your website for your clients to make payments. But you also have benefits of having to buy online and you can make direct payments, as we have all found cheaper prices online and it saves on travelling time and other physical factors. Here are the 7 benefits that I use Paypal for:

1. Financial Data is never released
Often people who do not shop online are worried about their financial data being released to untrusted sources, but there is not need to worry about this with Paypal, they have had years of the best security in ensuring that this never happens. So when you purchase something online using paypal, your financial data is not released to the business you bought your product(s), so you can be sure your information is safe with Paypal.

2. Instant transfer of funds to and from your account
Paypal is so efficient, when you make a payment online, it debits the money immediately so you can be sure that the balance left in your bank account is not an illusion. I have had incidences where I transferred money to a vendor, and the transaction goes through, but the money is still in my bank account, giving me an illusion that I have more money than I think. Paypal ensures the money is debited immediately when you confirm the transaction.

3. Affordable Fees
Wiring money overseas is expensive if you do it through the bank. Depending in which country you're in, the bank charges up to 33% of the money you are transferring, further you have to send a certain amount for them to make money on the wiring. Paypal, even without any serious competition still has the lowest fees and continues to add value to businesses. And Paypal is free for basic account users and online shoppers.

4. Universally Recognized
After Ebay purchased Paypal in 2002, the site's transaction increased considerably and obviously online business owners followed suit and started offering Paypal as a form of payment. In fact, it is just downright bad for business if you don't offer Paypal as a form of payment. As you might know, when dealing with a trusted brand, there will probably be less fuss when it comes to clients paying you and Paypal is the most trusted online brand, after Visa and Mastercard.

5. Paypal buyer protection
Paypal takes uncompromising fraud prevention measures to ensure that it protects its users. Their policy protects you from being victimized by fraudsters and hackers who might use your account to send payments illegally. Payments that are not confirmed by you, will never go through.

6. Dispute Resolution
This is part of the service that I appreciate as a Paypal user. If you have made a payment to a vendor and you have not received your product or service you ordered. You can file a claim with the Resolution center and they will be able to help you receive your product or even receive your refund. This for me makes Paypal more viable for me and my clients. I always refer to this and it makes them feel better.

7. International Service
I have had clients overseas paying me using Paypal, clients who I have met only on Skype and they are able to send money to me in South Africa and I use other methods to send their material like Dropbox. Paypal has accommodated large and small business to make the paying process smoother and more effective. Even the average person can now shop or do business on a global scale.

If your business sells products and you have advertised them online, and you don't have a Paypal account, probably 38% of you customers are turning to another service provider who sells the same products or similar products and using them because they can pay online with little hassle. Enlyne Branding does not have products but we use Paypal for clients to pay for our consulting, web development or digital marketing services we offer. It i sin your best interest to have a Paypal account for your business.

Social Media: Social Media In The Workplace

2012-03-19T23:08:00.000+02:00

Social Media has been a revelation for social interaction among friends, family and most importantly business. I remember when I was an employee and Facebook had just been launched and everyone in the business had a Facebook account, and it was regarded company's number one enemy. The company used the social media as their scapegoat as the reason of the employees not being efficient at their work. They blamed Facebook for the non-profitability of the company and the more they cursed and ridiculed it, we fell more and more in love with it. The company finally drew up an internet policy and enforced it by cutting off access to the social network Facebook. This, in my view was the grandest mistake they did that year.

There were obvious benefits for employees to use social media then and the benefits still obvious today. Instead of blaming social media for the flaws of your business process, use it to share and engage your audience and your employees similarly. A study showed that when a business is transparent about their dealing with issues related to customers, the customer is more likely to turn to be loyal customers. So, which is the best platform to share your challenges with customers, not considering social media as a tool. There is none that is as cheap, in fact social media is free and none that will give you better results.

Social Media is meant to make your business social, and therefore you engage with your audience on a social level. Yes, one does focus on the profitability, and social media has shown to be profitable. I consulted with one of the clients, and he was complaining to me about how much social media is costing his internet usage, and further like my previous employers blamed social media for the inefficiency of the company. Having heard this before, I decided to do proper research, to cut a long story short, their inefficiency had nothing to do with social media, the majority of the employees' performance was acceptable, and we found other factors like lack of technology that caused their slow turn around times.

Enlyne Branding set out to find a solution and we found it, and our findings were rather interesting, we found that internet usage was due to the increase in their staff and also their CRM system no longer met their requirements. Part of the solution I insisted that they should have daily tasks that all of the employees would post or tweet something about the company on the company page and similarly post the same post on their statuses. Off course there was resistance, but I had a plan, the company was an IT company, and instead of being on the social networks and updating your status just for yourself, I requested that everybody first must like the business page and further each and every one of them, the whole 210 of them, must respond on status posted on the page, three times a day on three statuses.

At first it was not well received, but what this did for the company, each time there was a problem, there were able to resolve the problem faster and with better meaningful solutions. Therefore the solution that the employees posted or a suggestion actually added value to the customer, and the customer who followed the business page on Facebook appreciated seeing this team work and started enforcing his employees to follow the service provider on business page on Facebook. And together clients and service providers shared valuable insights, but most importantly started using social media as a quick solution generating tool. There were other things that were shared as well, like clients year end party functions videos, training pictures, interviews with some of the client stake holders and in this platform anything was acceptable within the boundaries of professionalism.

Today, my client doubled his internet usage and he is not complaining because he has actually quadrupled his income, just by posting two to three posts a day, five days a week and each and every employee responding on the post with valuable insight of the daily experiences of their desk. He is able to use Facebook as an overview assessment tool to determine which area of his business he must focus on. He says, "I see some employees posting negative feedback, and I am able to address it immediately," and sometimes other employees encourage and support other employees through the social media tool, Facebook.

So what is the moral of the story. The moral of this story is that we as marketers are viewing social networks as gateways for customers to engage, and businesses should learn not to scorn social networks, but view them as tools that differentiate the brand from their competition. Social media also has some internal benefits that could assist to improve things like team work and sharing and these benefits are often ignored. So my challenge is, instead of blocking the social network platform from your employees, make it part of their daily operational process and success, social networks are already on smart phones, ipad and other communication gadgets, use it creatively and you will see continuous success and enjoy continuous interactions between the heart of your business (employees) and the customers. As for my previous employers, they never did recover, in fact they retrenched a year and a half later, and still wondering today what caused their dip.

Marketing: Advertising continued....

2012-03-16T18:25:00.000+02:00

Last week I spoke a little about advertising strategies and how it is used to lure people into buying. I touched a bit on Band Wagon strategy and other pieces of advertising property that is popular on TV or with a certain kind/type of industry. This week, I am going to go into radio and why it is still a popular form of medium for advertising, and especially how the radio industry has evolved to meet the needs of its listeners.

Radio is an old industry and to begin I will go a little bit into the history of radio advertising. It is not clear who or what station did radio commercials first but it all seem to have bubbled up in 1922. The first ever recorded was in March 1922 by Remick's music store (which published and sold sheet music) where one night a week they sponsored a programme on the station KFC, co-owned by an electric shop and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper. And on April 4, 1922, a car dealer Alvin T. Fuller purchased time on WGI, Medford hillside and he was stopped by the District Radio Commissioner, since at the time doing direct advertising was not permitted according to Herbet Hoover's interpretation of the DOC Regulation. Or was it the Queensboro Corporation of New York who sold real estate. It was developed by WEAF and it was a set of five programs over five days starting in August 28, 1922 and the cost was $50. So since then the commercialisation of radio was in effect, and since then there was a rush in competition as in those days there were not a range of radio stations.

Because radio only transmits audio, it is different from television. On radio you need to send your message as clearly using just words and/or music. Radio is what actually inspired studies into using the right set of words to advertise a product. Radio required you to lure the listener to your product using just words and/or music and using them creatively. There are a certain type of words that sound better when put together and further we want to hear them over and over again. Words like "happily ever after", "That's why," and the most popular, "you get." Using these words taps in our psychology and activate positive emotions, almost hypnotizing us and at the end of the advert they will call us to action. Either asking you to text message or call a number. And this is why there are radio advertising experts that know the kind of words they need to use to entice the listener to take action.

Most of the market then were advertising products and other new inventions, but today you can advertise almost anything. Today I was listening to a commercial by a telecommunications company who were advertising internet bandwidth, and it was quite catchy. They were advertising the new product of 126gig package and they used a surfer's perspective. They used this guy who is a semi-nerd and always on the computer, downloading videos, music and games. And most of all the bandwidth they were advertising was cheap, enough for me to pay attention. Once I heard the affordable price, I imagined myself using these bandwidth and me having an permanent smile. This is what they successfully managed to do, lure me to listen by imaging the perfect candidate for the product, outlined how he was enjoying and the price was the deal sealer.

Radio also is similar to television in terms of the slots. The most expensive slots are the morning from 6am to 9am and again in the afternoon from 3pm to 6pm. The adverts are charged by the second and they are determined by the average number of listeners around those time frames. The availability of radio in the cars also pushed up the number considerably and actually, the majority of the listeners are on their way to work and/or home in the afternoon and listening to their favorite radio programme, and these are called Drive Time shows. The number of ads that will be Aired are determined by the number of avails, which is the number of unsold units of time available for broadcasters to sell to advertisers. And radio is more popular on Bonus spots which are an additional spots provided to the advertiser at no charge to raise the overall audience delivery of the schedule.

Radio profitability is also done by interviews of a popular figure in the media and this is also done to raise the interest of a particular audience. And together with targeted adverts and social media as a feed to the show, radio has evolved to use the social media platform and it has proved to be profitable for radio and its listeners. It provides a cheaper option to provide feedback to the radio rather than calling in. Social media has infiltrated many markets and radio is not different.

There are many strategies used to make the shows profitable and these assist in determining the availability of the slots and the price. These with the number of followers, broadcasters are able to use a certain formula to determine the popularity of the show. And this means more income for the show. Off course radio has mostly transformed as a platform for music and employing popular music dj's and personalities is part of the strategy. And popular media personalities like Ryan Seacrest, Steve Harvey are just part of the strategy used by radio stations to attract listeners to their respective shows.

Next week I will discuss how you can use television and radio to increase your brand's strength and to attract your users to the brand. We will also discuss on how all this advertising is doing for your brand and why it is important that you advertise if and when you can. More radio advertising equals to more sales and if your product is relevant to the market.

Inbound Google: 7 Google Tools you forgot about

2012-03-15T12:52:00.000+02:00

Two weeks ago, I was going through my Google products and I just realized how much Google has supplied us or at least me with quality inbound tools that benefit us personally and professionally. And Google has done this for us to make our lives that much easier and that much more effective. The tools that Google has allowed any business to flourish and even the big guns have joined the party. There are so many tools that Google has introduced, that I even forgot about some of them. You can use Google tools for almost everything you can think of, there is G+ the social media platform, Google Docs which allows you to save and share documents and other functionality, Google play where you can save your music and share it with your friends. This is me is one of the many reasons why I will follow Google most of the directions they take. Because they not only add value to me, but to my business.

Here are the top 7 Google tools that are forgotten.

1. Google Trends

When this tool was released, every marketer rushed to use it including myself and now that we have dashboards and other tools that are a one shop stop, we forgot about this useful tool. Google Trends compare the "world's interest" in certain words and topics, which charts the number of times a word or phrase appeared on the web over time. This tool is great for checking out the history of popular neologisms and brand names (like iPhone or iPad). You can also pit terms against one another.

2. Google Alerts

This tool makes your web search results come to you, through email notifications that list the new web pages your search terms pop up on, real-time. Google Alerts automatically hands your searches every morning and you can search for any topic and if you want results for several items, separate them with a pipe (|) or combine terms with AND, like Cape Town AND Fashion Week.

3. Google Book Search

I used to use this quite a bit when I was in college and this was a great tool to have. And this is what Google Book Search is good for, developing a ever growing digital library all the time. Flip through pages of the books scanned into Book Search, and add books to your personal virtual library as well. Along those same lines, academics won't want to forget about Google Scholar for searching papers, theses, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations.

4. Google Notebook

We all find snippets of web pages, quotes, and images all over the web we want to copy to a personal library, and Google Notebook is a powerful way to do just that. Whether you're researching a particular project, capturing ideas as you come across them online, this is a very powerful tool.

5. Google Sketch Up

I once had aspirations to become an architect and I used to create wonderful 3D images using Google Sketchup modeling program. It lets anyone become a virtual architect and you can design your dream house, office space or skyscraper.

6. Google Code Search

Mostly of interest only to programmers, Google Code Search is a pretty incredible mechanism for finding and browsing the innnards of countless open source projects. Use the lang: operator to limit your search results to a certain language, and search by developer name, file name, or comments.

7. Google Page Creator

I remember when this was launched a lot of home based businesses used it and it was incredible, that someone who sells jam or has a local Bed & Breakfast would have a space where they could post their pictures and other data for people to see. And this site creation tool hosts up to 100MB of files for free. Truly amazing.

There are a million (okay just exaggerating, maybe hundreds) other tools that one can use to either enhance your online experience through Google and to make your business profitable using Google tools or apps. I love using Google tools for various reason, but three that is at the top of the list, is that they are reliable, easy to use, and most of them are free. So for any business that is still providing mediocre service and claim that they don't have the funding to purchase proper software, your excuse just became LAME.

Websites: Content For Your Website

2012-03-14T01:57:00.000+02:00

Clients always ask me what is the single most important element for a successful website. And often they want me to tell them different things, but one thing that they cannot avoid is the content. The content is probably the only thing your developer is unable to help you with. You can bring in a writer and get them to write beautiful, flowing content, but you will have to come up with the exact composition of what your business is about. The intricacy of creating content for your website is not only in the writing, but several influential factors. It is a similar exercise as when someone asks you to talk about yourself, not an easy thing to do, because you are trying not to sell yourself short, but at the same time not to come across as arrogant.

And most clients, probably even you while reading this article think that when I talk about the content, I'm only referring to text. And you are about 20% correct. Text is the largest contributor to your website's content, but in this case I am also talking about pictures, videos, downloadable files, forms, icons, buttons and a logo. All of these are integral part of the content. And to develop and balance your content is something that you the owner of the website will have to take as a personal project. For this article, I will only address the big 4, as I call them, text, pictures, forms and icons.

Text

99.9% of websites that I have come across have text that elaborates what the business is about and why you should choose them to be your preferred vendor. Everybody does and those who are good at attracting customers with their fancy words, win the tug-of-war. Enlyne Branding has done research on text in several platforms, and the results are astonishing. 87% of print media buyers say that they buy a particular magazine or newspaper, not because of the content, but because of the style of writing, it makes them feel like the words are directly talking to them. Further, we found that 93% of the headline stories in most print media articles are similar, and there are 2 differences, the inclination and the style of writing.

76% of online readers and print media readers say that content they respond to is emotional and provides solutions. The whole 76% did not care whether the content was factual or well researched and only 20% cared if the content is factual and 4% were on the fence, meaning that they cared on some content and did not care on others. The are 2 factors that you need to consider when developing your text, firstly, write for your readers, meaning engage them emotionally and secondly, consider how you are going to optimize it.

Pictures

As you are developing your content, you must accept that you will have different visitors and most of them absorb pictures better than words. When you are a freelance photographer, it is helpful to post pictures of your work rather than trying to explain in words. Try to use original pictures as much as you can, and you might want to acquire services of an illustrator if you want to use images that are drawn or composed. Even when most of your content is images/pictures, ensure that they balance and each image is able to communicate the message of your services effectively.

Forms

Forms are part of 93% of websites globally, and they are used in different ways. Some forms you will find in the contact us page in the website, some are landing pages forms and some are used as online registration forms. And these forms have separate functions, and since their functions are different, they should never be confused as one or the other. And you should assist your users by using them as they should be, meaning that when you create forms for landing pages, make sure that it is clear at the top right before where the form starts that the user understands what they filling their details for, and similar with other forms. The common practice is that they will state that fill in your details to receive your free ebook, or fill in the form to send us your query, and so on. This form of content is also important that it is balance and well placed.

Icons

Icons play an important role in ensuring that the navigation of the website is user friendly. They assist with the sharing and transferring of information from a current page to another page and even a separate URL. Icons have 3 important roles which are:

Assist with the look and feel of the site
They provide links to other pages with content
They enhance the look and feel of the website

The placement of your icons will determine the ease of navigation and also whether your visitors will have the patience to follow your your links. The key is to make your icons easy to understand, meaning that if you want people to email something to your business, use the envelope icon, which is known for sending mail, and the relevant social media icons, to share your content. Your visitors will automatically know what the icon is used for, unlike using foreign icons that they don't understand, and this will make them loose interest in your website. It is essential to use them correctly, but most importantly place them in the right places to make it easier for your visitors to navigate to the relevant area of interest.

When the content of the website is properly used, it attracts more visitors to your website, you get more leads, you start converting leads into customers and they start referring friends, colleagues and family to your website and you generate more revenue. And this, is the ultimate goal for every business, to use every resource possible to generate revenue. So next time you create content for your website, consider what you are feeding your visitors, and is it going to keep them coming back to your website.

Social Media: Strategy is key - 7 elements

2012-03-13T00:06:00.000+02:00

Social media is one of my favorite topics to blog about, because you can literally go wild and it is okay. Social media was not developed on some principles and philosophies, so there is really no right way to do social media, yes there are guidelines, but no rules. Although there are no rules, no strict conditions, you have to plan your social media campaign and strategy is key. A myth says that you can never speak with a marketer for more than two minutes without them mentioning the word 'strategy.'

And with good reason, without strategy a marketing, branding or social media campaign would be a very good and creative idea, but the strategy makes it relevant. Without strategy, the campaign is simply a bunch of pictures, words and film put together creatively to stimulate...nothing really from your target audience. And without strategy, marketing firms would not be the business that they are, but a hobby and a place where creatives congregate to indulge in the artistic pleasures. A business looking to use social media as a marketing tool, should have a strategy that will take the brand further and attract more people to follow it.

There are essential steps or elements that one should follow to ensure social media success. And from this be able to formulate your social media strategy to enhance your brand and attract your audience, whoever they may be. Social media is not solely a platform to attract an audience, but to generate revenue, attract investors (should it be your inclination) and market your products and services. The following are just some elements that will help you have an effective social media strategy.

1. Start with an end in mind - a great habit to have from a very inspiring person Stephen Covey. I find this very important in starting any new project. When you start thinking where you want to be and who your social media campaign is attracting and what contribution you want to make to the audience you have attracted. Once you have thought about this, you are able to work backwards and be able to plan, step-by-step on how you are going to achieve your goal.

2. Have a schedule and follow it religiously- Planning is one of the things that makes anybody or a business succeed. Good planners will achieve considerably okay results, but great planners with achieve remarkable results and no planning will not be able to achieve any results. A schedule helps you to stay focused and allows you to do the research well in advance and you are able to deliver quality articles, ebooks or whitepapers to your audience. And believe me, you might not get any responses, but it is definitely appreciated. You can also give your audience a teaser of upcoming articles in the week or bi-weekly or even monthly. Most clients ask me, how often do they post articles or interactions on their social media feed. I always tell them, it is up to you, you decide, but once you have decided, follow it and condition your audience.

3. Short-term Goals- There are a lot of goal setting workshops that one can attend, and the same principles you have learned there, you can apply with your social media strategy. These goals will actually lead your audience to understand the uniqueness of your brand or business. Have short-term goals that will have long term effects and you do this by educating your audience rather than selling to them in your social media campaign. People will forget a sales pitch the minute they're finished reading it, but an informative article goes a long way.

4. Consider the tools- Any professional is as good as their tools, and this is relevant to the social media landscape. There are tools that I listed in the article last week Monday that are excellent to enhance your social media campaign and they actually assist in attracting more audience and it is up to your marketer how they strategize to ensure that the audience on the social media feed, find their way to the relevant offering on your website.

5. Assess your audience- Take time to read the profiles of your followers and study them, follow links of their tweets and read the articles they post. There is a reason why they are following you, and don't be afraid to ask them questions. Ask them how you can be of value to them, do it by sending them direct messages, inboxing them on Facebook and doing online surveys. They will appreciate the effort you are making to please their social interaction need.

6. Be a Socialite - Be easy-going, relax. Social media is about socializing. Comment on pictures that your audience post. Post jokes especially about the industry you are in and I can assure you it will be well received. Be careful not to over do it, remember your objective is to provide content that is informative and beneficial to your audience, not to "entertain" them. If you are going to joke, keep it simple and non-offensive.

7. Assess the impact - There are tools that can assist in showing the impact of your campaign. Measuring your success with accurate data is something marketers were only able to enjoy in the past couple of years. It never used to be like this, and the marketers strategy is getting easier to measure. And you should be able to measure your social media campaign with tools like HowSociable, which I also wrote about last week Monday. Learn to check your impact metrics on a daily basis and you will be able to know the kind of audience you have and how to please them.

Social media can be a success quickly when done right. One thing to remember is that when you start your social media campaign, be prepared to learn and tweek your campaign to suit your audience. And the trick is to run with patience, when you do it right, the numbers will come, and if you follow the 7 steps above, you will be able to keep your audience glued to your social media campaigns, and most importantly you will continue to generate revenue for your business.

Building Brands, driving sales and doing Good, by Sarah Britten

2012-03-09T17:26:00.000+02:00

It is always good to hear a marketer look at their marketing landscape and looks at how they can enhance their brand, but also help out. I have been fortunate enough to have very good mentors who are so passionate about marketing that they can elaborate the whole day on any given subject. And they also spoke passionately on how marketing firms are doing nothing to improve our country and our image. And Sarah speaks about the little difference that one can make to improve the situation of others in our immediate surroundings. Without further due, here is Sarah Britten's article.

Do you have a favourite example of how marketing can have a positive impact on the world? I never hesitate when I'm asked that question: the Outsurance pointspeople.

Every day, they make a real difference to my life and I'm always happy to see them. More than that, the campaign is completely relevant to the product that Outsurance offers - helping motorists negotiate dangerous intersections helps reduce the risk of accidents, which in turn reduces the risk of claims.

Social good meets brand awareness and affinity: it's a win-win situation.

Never enough money for good causes

There's never enough money for good causes, and, with many NGOs coming under increasing pressure, there's a real need to find other ways to bring in funding. Could more marketers achieve their objectives and do some good at the same time? I believe so, and I've tried to bring through this idea into my own more recent work.

Marketing: Advertising

2012-03-09T00:56:00.000+02:00

I have to admit that I am a little nervous writing about advertising. This takes me back to my early days in the industry, young and with a take over the world attitude, and I got shot down by industry Goliaths. And this time, on the contrary, it is a good nervous, cause I think I have earned my stripes now. I think I have learned something about advertising in just a minute that I am fortunate to be in this wonderful industry, and this is a tough industry.

Part of being a creative is too look at things a bit oddly to see a different perspective on any situation. In fact being a creative demands it, and to bring out the perspective you have discovered into the light so others can see it, takes a another special set of skills. And the discovery of advertising for revenue generation has been the biggest revelation in the industry. Today there are many platforms that one can take in order to optimize your advertising strategy, which could be part of your brand strategy or your marketing strategy. The most popular advertising platform is television, then radio, print media, bill board, and the new kid on the block, digital marketing.

Starting with television advertising and will write about others next Thursday, businesses globally pay big bucks ensuring the right kind of advert is placed in right piece of advertising property based on the PVT/PUT stats. And these stats determine the price of that slot (based on the Average Quarter-hour rating) and the longer your advert is in the hottest slot, which in South Africa is between 17:30 to 21:30 the higher the price. So it is the duty of the marketer to come up with specific types of advert that distracts the viewer, send a clear message and engages the viewer emotionally to purchase the product. This should be done in a matter of seconds, viewers no longer have the patience to view long and meaningless ads.

And this kind of advertising runs simulcast in other platforms, for example a magazine also has hot slots that one can choose to advertise on an these slots are higher in price as well, depending on the page you choose your advert to appear. The point I am trying to get through is that advertising has become a monster and a billion dollar industry. It is just one of the many ways that businesses advertise their products, especially consumer products. And this article looks to address the benefits of this type of advertising.

Brands all over the world are using their marketing budgets very creatively. I will make an example. Samsung still does a lot of television ads, but they are smart to sponsor a football team like Chelsea football club in England. They are able to achieve a couple of objectives, a soccer match is at least 90 minutes of un-interrupted action, and constantly you will see the Samsung logo on the shirts of the players. And unconsciously, when you start seeing Samsung elsewhere, you are quick to warm up to the brand because you see it almost three times a week for 270 minutes. That is a fraction of the amount compared to placing an ad during the time the football is on, and this is done on different platforms. This saves a brand like Samsung the headache of Pre-emptions and other pitfalls that might haunt them later.

There are a number of factors that the calculations are made, when the football team is playing, ,television coverage and the number of supporters. And this kind of strategy we like to call the bandwagon strategy. When you advertise a product using the bandwagon strategy, people are most likely to buy the product not because they need it, but because they are afraid of being left out. And this strategy has been generating income for the companies, especially the informational industry. This enables marketers to determine how much the space on the T-shirt or the relevant platform is worth, and the price will determine whether the company logo will be on the chest or the arm or prime-time or housewife-time.

Other ways to attract advertising is exactly how the Los Angeles Galaxy, an MLS soccer team. They attracted advertisers by recruiting David Beckham to play for them. David Beckham is the first global football rockstar, he is the most popular figure in football's history, and he, by himself attracts a lot of businesses to David Beckham "The Brand." So when the LA Galaxy signed him, it was easy to attract 3 or 4 sponsors who can use his popularity status, to promote their brands. And can you imagine how many businesses including Enlyne Branding would pay big money to have a picture of David Beckham wearing a shirt with their logo on it. And marketer use this as a leverage to earn big income, not only for themselves, but for their clients.

Businesses are obviously seeing the benefit of advertising across all media platforms and if they all did not do the job, we would be seeing less and less of it, but it seems like all types of advertising are still relevant cause we see more and more of it. And the benefit is ensuring that the brand is recognized and most importantly trusted, and the ways to put this message across is getting more and more creative on a daily basis.

Next week I will continue with advertising, because I have barely scratched the surface on the topic.

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Inbound Marketing: Lead Generation

2012-03-08T02:23:00.000+02:00

This morning I could not contain my excitement when my colleague said I am writing about lead generation. I am not a sales person by profession, and/or passion. But I am the leading sales person in the company, in fact I use lead generation to assist me with my sales, and the lead is more qualified, more willing to buy, and I close 71% of my sales on the first meeting. I am not a sales guru, but closing 71% on my first meeting is a pretty impressive record.

So let's get into it, what is "Lead?" A lead is when someone has shown interest in your company's product or service. And in online terms, a lead is when someone completes a landing page to get access to a webinar, company offering, ebook, or a product demonstration. Having someone's email address does not make them a lead, rather consider them as a contact, they have provided their email address as a subscription to a blog or newsletters. You now have an opportunity to convert this person into a lead. When a person completes a form on your website called a Landing Page with an interest in something you are offering, you are able to qualify them and with special skills, nurture the lead and closing will be an easier task. Beats cold calling.

Since information transactions through landing pages generates leads, marketers often ask how much information is sufficient to ask your potential lead. The more information you ask, especially sensitive information, the less likely the visitor will complete and submit the form. This will also give you an opportunity to involve your sales team and ask them what information they need to nurture the lead. Too little information on your landing page will burden your sales process and your sales team will not be able to prioritize their leads. Have enough information to make it easier, and often ask your lead to specify what they are interested in, or ask them what is their biggest challenge in 140 characters or less. This will help your sales team to prioritize the leads and helps your marketing team ensure the right leads receive the right campaigns.

Inbound lead generation is by far the easiest way of generating lead, and better than cold calling or other forms of prospecting. Think about it, when you get an inbound lead, the visitor has completed the landing page form on your website, meaning they have read your offerings and more importantly they know who you are. So it saves your sales team a ton of time trying to explain who you are and what you do. The lead already knows your business and this builds to your professionalism and your credibility. When driving leads online, a business needs to have a few key elements in place. From a tactical perspective, a marketer needs three crucial things to make inbound lead generation happen:

1. Landing Pages - A landing page is a website page that has one distinct purpose: lead generation. This page contains a form that captures contact information from a visitor in exchange for an offer.
2. Offer - An offer, in the context of lead generation, is some sort of content or product that is of enough value for a person to provide contact information in exchange for access to it. Traditional lead generation offers include things like ebooks, whitepapers, webinars ect.
3. Call-to-Action - Landing pages and offers are useless if no one sees them. to send people to a landing page, you need a call-to-action. Often abbreviated as CTA.

Below here are some best practices and to learn more about this you can visit Huspot.

Improve Positioning of Your Calls-to-Action
Be More Clear About What You're Offering
Use Images, Not Just Text
Use Colors that Contrast with Your Site Color Scheme
Make your CTA a Hyperlink to the Corresponding Landing Page
Place CTAs on the Most Relevant Pages
Add CTAs to Each Blog Post

Off course these are best practices to optimize your lead generation and not commandments. Don't be afraid to try your own things, but if you are using the above, you are on the right track. Lastly as a marketer, your work does not stop the second that a lead hits the submit button. Your top priority is to ensure that the lead makes it to your sales team quickly and you can use your in-house CRM software to manage this process. Secondly as a marketer you need to aid the sales team in converting that lead into a customer. One of the best ways to do this is through a process lead nurturing. And lastly remember this, lead generation is not the ultimate goal, generating revenue is the ultimate goal. Work closely with your sales team and your leads to optimize the revenue generated directly from your marketing efforts.

Websites: Start Blogging

2012-03-07T00:39:00.000+02:00

Running a 21st century business is a full-time job, because the customer is becoming more and more demanding, and products and services are getting more and more accessible. Customers have an option and definitely has choice of where their loyalty lies. I have always advised my clients that if you want to create a loyal base of customers, start with a blog. But this comes with a lot of research, discipline and good content.

The blog in itself is a very important part of your business's brand, so important that you need to have the discipline to feed your followers on a constant basis. This is why static website are no longer performing their duty, because visitors will only go to the site only once, because the site has the same information and is updated after a long period of time. Having a blog in your website allows your visitors to come and learn more on your products, your events and even your topics that you post on the blog. Having the discipline to post articles, discussions and events is important depending on your sales-cycle and you need to develop the following when you start your blog:

Blog schedule - your schedule is important, for those who are interested in a specific topic will make sure they contribute to that topic and it will generate traffic for your business.
Content - The content is key, it needs to be relevant, direct and engaging
Boost your content with teasers - when posting articles, give your viewers a teaser of what to expect in the future.
Be sincere - Blogs are intended to engage not to sell, give your customers content to engage and don't spoil the content with a sales pitch, leave the selling to direct marketing.

The benefits for your business are is the real-time discussions that benefit your traffic, and mostly for your credibility. People who blog, are passionate about what they blogging about negative or positive. And this is why musical artists do so well with blogging and it seems like every artist goes viral on the number of followers that follow them. Further with a blog you get an opportunity to post information immediately and days and sometimes weeks before it gets published in newspapers and magazines. Your followers and fellow bloggers have an opportunity to make their view points and their comments published immediately and they are the first to know, through the blog.

Publishing your blog is far reaching than publishing on print media, blogging usually gets people form all over the world and allows you to get a good balance from different perspectives. And when you publish on the blog, it is far cheaper than print media, which saves your marketing budget and you can invest in other low cost marketing initiatives that yield better results than conventional marketing.

A blog is a tool that generates traffic and this is without any doubt, and it a fact that your web crawlers love new content and a blog will benefit your business as it will rank high on organic searches, and people's responses will serve as a catalyst to your cause. So when you write a good article or simply posting something on your discussion board, make sure that your blog is keyword rich for web crawlers. Off course write your content for you audience, and then consider the web crawlers and if can't find the balance, rather write for the audience.

The benefits on having a blog on your website is without doubt very important, and there are many reasons I can list. And all I can say is that, get started, and if you don't have a website for your business, get on with it, okay I will list a few benefits so that I keep you coming back to this blog. They are as follows:

Professional Appearance for your audience
Content control
Brand Promotion
Revenue Generation
Growth
Site Integration
Generate Leads
Test New Ideas
Position yourself as a subject matter expert
Increase social sharing

Should any of these raise your eye-brow, you should not read to end of this sentence without you making bold steps towards a blog. Go ahead and let me know how it is going, go for now.......

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Social Media: 8 Tools to Boost Your Social Presence

2012-03-05T23:39:00.000+02:00

Clients often ask me which is the best strategy that I have developed or seen in my years in consulting and developing digital marketing (inbound marketing) strategies. The answer quite frankly is not one specific strategy, but a combination of strategies and tools used creatively to influence the customer to take action. And this is what is important to me when I measure the success of a campaign, it is not about how many people viewed it, and how many loved it, but how many people took the corrective actions. In this article I am going to briefly mention my favorite 8 tools that made a sound contribution in making people take the right action and determined the profitability of the campaign.

1. Seesmic:
Seesmic allows users to manage unlimited Twitter accounts, Facebook, LinkedIn and Foursquare accounts. A well organized dashboard which allows you to sort a variety of timelines detailing tweets, retweets, @mentions, direct messages and lists. This tool created by Loic Le Meur, founder of LeWeb and his San Francisco team also publishes trending topics, making it easy to join already popular conversations. This tool is free, simple and affords the ability to update several statuses, send direct messages and check in to locations from one easily navigated page. I like this tool because of its simplicity and ability to organize my data into simple yet effective reports for my perusal.

2. Brizzly:
This tool simplifies your social media browsing and updating experience while taking some of the work out of keeping up to date with trends and followers. It lets you update on Twitter and Facebook, and comes with it the benefits of managing multiple accounts and is able to accurately measure the impact of your status live. Also keeps record of @mentions and retweets of your status. I like this app and is able to help me when I am updating my social media presence and that of the company in one simple update.

3. LiveFyre
This tool takes social commenting to a new level, the one that marketers like us get excited about. Using this tool users are more engaged with the story, tweeting out their comment is a breeze, and it really facilitates discussion on the blog, and across Twitter and Facebook. In one easy click you can send a a message saying "You were mentioned in this conversation..." with a link back to the blog post. I like this tool because it is free and in some way make your blogs more relevant for a longer period of time. If you can manage to get it into the social media sphere, you can harness that inherent virality that comes with it.

4. HootSuite.com
A fantastic free online tool to manage multiple social media profiles, pre-schedule updates for specific days and times, monitor keywords and analyze statistics. And, you can check and reply to saved searches, Twitter Lists, @mentions, Direct mentions and more. Also available as a mobile app which provides an excellent way to pre-schedule your social updates on the fly. I think what impressed me the most is the ability to schedule your posts for specific days, I love this cause it disciplines me to write my tweets early and my market can be conditioned to check my updates at certain time-of-day.

5. Facebook like Button
Adding a small piece of code to your website and/or installing the Facebook Like Button allows visitors to your website and blog to share your content with all their Facebook friends. You can change the verb from "like" to "recommend" - great for placing on the top right of an entire website. Include the Like Button on all opt-in pages and sales pages for extra viral visibility. I have to say that the Like Button has revolutionized my marketing efforts and is a tool I use consistently and every time with great amount of success. Clients love and fans are crazy about it and your website is incomplete without the Like Button.

6. StepRep
This tool I use all the time, and it is essential for businesses who just starting to crawl in the social media sphere. Anytime that your business is mentioned, anywhere on the web, you'll hear about it immediately through StepRep. Which is very useful when you are running multiple online campaigns. It is able to give you reviews, mentions and even statistical data when you are mentioned in a positive, neutral or negative light. What I love about this tool is that it even has a mobile app, which impresses my clients and makes them believe that the campaign is doing what is intended to do. This to me is the easiest tool to use to listen to your target market, learn how you can improve your content and find out what your customers are thinking and use these insights to make your business smarter.

7. Sysomos
Information about what people are saying on their respective social media networks is big business, it is such big business that is has doubled the marketing budget of conventional marketing returns in just 2 years of its existence. And you can not mention a tool that listens to these conversations more accurately and consistently than Sysomos. Sysomos allows you to monitor billions of conversations happening in blogs, social networks, forums, news, sites and measures to give you access to an in-depth analysis. Gather intelligence on the conversations and understand what you should offer to the market and allows you to shape your business decisions and strategies. Finally identify and engage your strategy with key influencers driving the conversations and actively establish and maintain relationships.

8. HowSociable
HowSociable has been providing a simple way for you to begin measuring your brand's impact on the social web since 2008. HowSociable has measured over 250, 000 brands while requiring zero configuration on the part of the user and only a few seconds wait while they analyze a brand's presence to calculate initial scores. How it works is that it crawls into the social media networks and finds any mentions of your brand, any comments and any retweets or @mentions over a period of a week, and it uses a smart algorithmic intelligence and will give you a magnitude in which your brand is making in that particular social network. For me and my clients it is a quick and easy way to see the impact of your campaign over a period time. And this for me shows "HowSociable" a brand is and it is one of the first tools I use. I use it in the infant stage of the campaign, in the youthful stage and in the mature stage and the client will be able to see the difference and able to measure the success of the strategy.

Marketers have consciously or unconsciously used social media tools creatively and have made social media a billion dollar industry based on a principle of hanging out or a chilled out philosophy. And this new way of marketing has made businesses do-away with old static ways of marketing and made way for a new optimized and energized way of engaging customers. At the rate that social media marketing is going, it will soon take over all other mediums and become the primary medium of marketing, sooner than we think......

Marketing: The South Africa Marketing Landscape

2012-03-02T20:12:00.000+02:00

I've been doing some work, looking at the South African marketing landscape, and it is interesting how the market tends to blow hot and cold at times. One year South Africa will win all the advertising categories and it seems to fall into a complaisant dip. But it is unfair to generalize the market, the companies that performed good the previous year were no longer making good strides the following year. Always when I quote the stats I get excited because they don't lie.

In 2010, the two most recognized brands did not perform that well in 2011, further the top 2 companies that increased their market share in 2011 with radio, print media and television adverts, are not doing well in the last quarter of the financial year. And this is not the trend of the top 2 brands, it is a general trend that is evident. 69% of businesses who their gross income is R2 billion and over showing signs of slowing down their marketing presence in the last quarter of their financial year. A slightly bigger percentage of 75% of small businesses who's gross income is R5 million and R25 million a year, have decrease their marketing efforts at the end third quarter already. Does this mean marketing has seasons, and businesses slow down their marketing efforts in the first quarter of the year.

Research took us even further, round about February and March, big retail companies are gearing up for Easters. The budget for the Easters is getting bigger every year, increasing by 9% every year according to the Financial publishers. And the smaller retail companies follow suit soon after, and their efforts if not creatively constructed, their efforts are almost huffed away by the 'Big Boys' of the industry. Smaller companies are constantly striving to keep their niche happy and most promise their customers lower prices. When the 'Big Boys' release their strategy, they do a total media evasion, hoping that they struck a desirable balance of distracting their audience and a powerful call-to-action campaign (CTA), from conventional ways of marketing to inbound marketing. Everybody is learning to market themselves in a fresh unique way, but nobody has been more creative than the top 23% small businesses.

Most executives still believe that the only way to engage their audience is either through sales and a benefit of some sort at the right time. They wait until the rush, and this is when they fight to get the attention of their audience. By this time, those smaller but creative businesses were in touch with their customers during the 'so called quiet season' are now having to put a smaller budget during the 'rush season'. A big company like McDonalds understands the saying "Out of Sight, Out of Mind", the minute they stop advertising in the manner they've always been, their customers will look for other options, so they constantly need to keep their foot of the marketing pedal.

In the past it used to be that the business with the biggest marketing budget gets the best marketing experts and the best creatives. But the South African marketing landscape has changed, today there are more platforms to reach your target market and you are able to publish your campaign in various ways. There are platforms like social media platform, webinar platform, and the most popular these days is exhibition platform where most small business are optimizing to ensure that they not only attract their niche, but their are able to qualify them before they even contact them.

As a marketer, we are constantly on the look-out for new ways to save the customer money and send the message across effectively. And due to the increase in the platforms, it makes it easier to effectively reach your niche and give them material that is worth their money. So, has the South African marketing landscape changed, in a big way, those agencies who still prefer one platform over the other, are still stuck on their out-dated philosophies and principles and forgot what marketing was intended to do, serve their customer's customer.

Inbound Marketing: Blog at first sight

2012-02-29T19:24:00.000+02:00

Over the years blogging has shown to have influenced major business decision, but even more importantly determines the buying powers of customers. Nearly 40% of companies in the United States Blog, and in those companies they have increased their leads by 136%, and in South Africa less than 4% blog and those that do blog have increased their leads by 271%. Clearly indicating that blogging is an essential part of every business's marketing strategy.

Blogging in South Africa has been a smart business concept, meaning it is not a small business or big business tool. In the 2010-2011 financial year, businesses cut their marketing budgets by the biggest margin in two decades, and those who maintained and sometimes increased their sales activity were blogging among other form of inbound marketing.

When thinking about blogging, do not think like a businessman, but think about a journalist or a magazine editor. Your blogging goal is to engage your audience with industry expertise, to educate and to provide insight in the solutions that you are offering. Your blog should not be about promoting any of your products as this will quickly make your audience feel like you are pitching to them, but let your article serve as a helpful guide to your industry's in's and out's.

When writing your article be open minded and be ready to take negative criticism and be open to the idea that other marketers and the general public are going to have a different opinion on your article. Allow yourself to be moved by articles published by other professionals in your industry. Promoting the good that your competitor is doing on your blog is a sign of confidence, and if you get the chance comment on their blog or a proper platform on the good work they are doing. You would have earned the respect of your audience and they will fall in love with your integrity.

A well-constructed blog post should include several key components:

An Attention-Grabbing Article Title: Because your blog article's title is the first thing people will see, it's important to make sure it clearly indicates what the article is about, is concise, keyword rich (because the header tag is the most important for SEO), and attention grabbing.
Well Written & Formatted Text: The body of your article should be well-written and formatted in a way that makes it easy to read.
Images/Videos: Relevant multimedia content can make a blog article more memorable and fun to read. It also helps to break up text to make it more pleasing to the eye.
Links: Include in-text links to relevant content. These can also point to landing pages to help you generate more leads for your content.
Call-to-Action: Each and every blog article you publish should include a relevant call-to-action at the bottom of the article to help boost lead generation.

There are also ways that you can promote your blog so as to attract more traffic to your blog and redirect traffic to your website. Here are 7 ways in which you can optimize your blog.

Include Social Media Sharing buttons: social media buttons like facebook, pinterest, twitter and linkedin encourage the audience to share your content with their personal networks and expanding your reach beyond your networks.
Eye-catching & Optimized titles: Be clear and direct, create urgency and people love titles that gives them numbered 'How To's' or bullets.
Formatting: Using formatting to make your text into nice readable chunks is a good idea.
Make it Actionable: Whether your blog was found through a search engine, email or subscription, when you have links on how to solve their problem on the blog, the chances are high that they will refer it to their networks.
Relevance: Using metaphors in your blog is a useful part of storytelling and in your blog you can also use it to engage your readers.
Be Entertaining: Be informative and also entertaining, when you use humor and other forms of entertainment makes your blog memorable to your readers
Definitive: Great blog posts are not meek or subtle, they are direct and definitive. Take a stand on your advise and never waiver or doubt it, the article you wrote is of your professional opinion.

Blogging makes your audience trust that you are professional in your trade, it generates traffic to your blog and your website and you are able to generate leads and increase your hit rate and your conversion rate. Ensure that your content is engaging and optimize it to expand your reach. Network and constantly invite people to your blog, those who are reluctant to join will most likely become your loyal bloggers.

I would like to get your opinions on your blogging ideas and post them on the comments field. And if you have a business idea and looking for a cost-effective way to market it, blog at first sight.

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Websites: Making money online?

2012-02-28T21:20:00.000+02:00

Constantly I get emails from marketers and other individuals who run their business online. And one thing is clear, they use their website to sell their products, and help others sell theirs. And this is how they use their website to generate an income. They use an affiliate site to get income for their clients and themselves. So how do they do it, how do they make money online, while the rest of the world are working 9-5 trying to make an honest living. What is so special about them that they don't even have to have an office in order to maximize their sales with seemingly little effort. And most importantly, why do so many people trust that they are a legitimate business.

It is a matter of engagement, and when you follow the right kind of research and the right kind of results, anyone can know that you identify a gap in someone's life and offer the solution. Advertising and Marketing firms have been doing it for decades, maybe centuries. This is how trading was initially developed, you had gold and I had corn, I needed gold and you needed food. And industries started forming to fill the gap that is exists not only on a one-on-one basis, but on a mass scale. And the internet and eventually the online industry was formed on a need for mass people to be able to access information and other forms like communication and recently social media and marketing. A website is used as part of this industry, not only to feed people with information, but to additional supplement this service with physical products that can be sold online and shipped to your door, without leaving your home.

Research has shown that 89% of the United States population find buying online easier and more efficient. Someone must be selling to them online and someone came with an idea of transacting money online. A company like Paypal with 6 million transactions daily, has made it possible for people to transact online in a trustworthy manner. You are able to open an account with Paypal and link it to your bank account and have people deposit money into it, if you are the seller, and you can also pay people using Paypal. And this is how you get people to trust that the sale is legitimate, having a trusted brand behind you. Paypal will be able to trace the transaction and if what you bought online does not get delivered, you can trust that they will help you find the fraudsters. And an online credit card software by Visa and Mastercard is incorporated into your website and can transact in a safe manner. Research also shows that more and more products are shipped all over the world using website that sell products. The transaction is immediate and the companies are able to ship the product in record time. And you can not say online transactions without thinking of Ebay and Amazon.

How do they make money online. They sell products that are essential or rather marketed in such a manner that you feel empty without it. They do it just as well on a website like they do it on TV. They will start by listing all the struggles you had with using everyday ways or gadgets, and then offer a solution that is more efficient and very effective. And they get people who are good writers, who are good with 'emotional jargon' and using it to make you feel left out. The second thing that has worked wonders for website sales is testimonials. When you see ordinary people who put their testimonials, you almost feel left behind. And this another powerful marketing tool, make it seem like everyone is on the bandwagon, and you are the only one left behind. Most people purchase, not because the product is useful to them, but purchase because they don't want to be left behind.

Are the people selling you things online special? Off course not. They just saw an opportunity and decided to take that risk, and before all this automated systems that we have today. People used to do it manually, so they would get an order, and they would call the shipping company and follow the whole process manually. But today, the shipping company comes with an online notification and they already come with the reference number issued by the website, and they match the transaction and the company issues the product. And the most important element that is more advantageous than any other business like it, is that customers pay upfront. Sometimes they don't even have the stock of that product with them. And they are able to control the demand with exact numbers and therefore their loses are almost non-existent. Someone saw a gap, and spent money wisely promoting the product online. They also offer other products to supplement their business, and a great way to get your product off-the-shelves, is to say it is a clearing sale, and a time-bound sale.

How do you join a market where people are using websites to earn a comfortable living, you need to do your research and offer people the lifestyle they would like to live with your product. Offer them a solution that is a pain to live without, (or a perception that it is a pain to live without), and the pleasure of living with your product or service. If you ask the right questions, you will offer the right solution, with unbelievable sales growth. Join the 45% of businesses that transact online and increase your base market and definitely increase your bottom line. Websites are doing things more effectively and if this is what you are promising your customers and you are not handling transactions online, you are loosing 6 million people, who are willing to pay you upfront.

Social Media: The New Social Media, Pinterest

2012-02-27T16:08:00.000+02:00

The past two weeks I wrote about G+ as the new social alternative. The social media competition is getting more and more interesting. And with the growth of more people having access to the internet, you find new ways of marketing and more social media platforms where people meet and socialize.

What is Pinterest?
Pinterest is a social network that allows users to visually share, curate, and discover new interests by posting also known as 'pinning', images, videos to their own or others pinboards. Users can either upload images from their computer or pin things they find on the web using the Pinterest bookmarklet, Pin it button or just a URL. You can comment on items that other users have pinned, and members are encouraged to interact with the content by reposting it, sharing others' pins on Facebook and Twitter or via email, and even embedding individual pins on their website or blog. Pinterest's mission is simple, they are using a visual emphasis, the social network as a concept of a person's lifestyle, enabling you to share your interests and preferences with others and discover those like-minded people. As Pinterest put it, this is a social network meant to connect everyone in the world through the things they find interesting.

Pinterest enables users to log in using their Twitter or Facebook profiles, connectivity that is critical for social media success. The site now connects with Facebook, according to a recent Open Graph announcement, enabling users to automatically post new pins to their Facebook feed for others to see. This means more eyes from other channels get access to your pictures. However, remember that you still cannot connect Pinterest to your Facebook business page. When members are browsing through pins, they will also have the ability to share posts through Facebook, Twitter or email. This feature is great to boost social sharing and get your evangelists to spread the word about your brand.

Facts: About Pinterest

In December 2011, Pinterest made Hitwise's list of the top ten social networks, sitting at number 5 and beating big names like LinkedIn and Google+. As with any hot new social network that comes onto the scene, marketers are chiming in with, "Can I use it for marketing?" and in Obama's famous words, Yes you can. Further data from Monetate shows that referral traffic from Pinterest to the websites of five specialty apparel retailers jumped 389% from July to December 2011. Based on this data, it's not surprising that many businesses early adopters have been lifestyle brands like home goods retailer West Elm and Real Simple Magazine. Pinterest is easier to adopt to other social networks because its business does not make users choose, they actually welcome the idea that you can share things on Twitter and Facebook using Pinterest.

The market is ripe for new online media, and since social media has created the platform, it has become the easiest way to connect, share and post your life's experiences online for everyone to see and for everyone to to post their opinions. Marketers, like us, are always looking for ways to raise the bar everyday. And Pinterest has come up with a strategy of sharing that marketers can use as a way of generating leads and managing their referrals. The marketer of the 21st century is optimizing LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube and now Pinterest to get your social interest and bring more products to you faster, better and definitely more Pinteresting.
To sign up for your Pinterest account, visit http://www.pinterest.com

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What Social Media's Leaderless Revolutions Have to Gain From Old-Fashioned Branding

2012-02-25T18:57:00.000+02:00

I believe in social media so much, that when I learned the ins and outs of social media, it offended me when someone did not see the same benefit. Although this article I read by Maja Rode left me with a feeling of doubt and whether social media is really leaderless and does not represent a brand. I really considered her opinion, and you know what, I am still a champion of social media. Social media has taken brands to new heights, businesses that would normally not get a chance on old-fashioned type of branding, are now making headlines, because the people that follow them have made their opinion count. Don't get me wrong, branding is also my passion, but I do not view them separate from social media, it is actually complementing branding, just like a website complements what a company represents and stand for. It is a way of the 21st Century. Without further due, I will present to with great pain, Maja Rode's article and follow the link.

I've recently had the pleasure of attending a few talks by social media commentator Walter Pike. He often draws on the example of the nameless, faceless protestor that Time magazine named as its 'Person of the Year 2011' to illustrate the power of social media in generating mass movements that effect real political change virtually overnight.

http://www.bizcommunity.com/Article/196/82/71090.html