Here’s a simple guide to follow which should give you an endless amount of easy to write content for your social media marketing or blogging efforts.

Let’s use Facebook as our example social platform. You can share videos, photos or plain text information to your audience. Videos get great results on Facebook and allow the user to get encapsulated with what they are watching. But, it might not be practical to create videos all the time. Photos are your next best option and the most efficient way of producing content. People want to see photos of you or your products. Your friends, family and business colleagues will share and like your content which will give it more exposure.

Frequency of Your Posts:

This depends on your business model. A good recommendation is that if you have active paid advertising on Facebook, you want to give proper exposure to each advertisement and allow the full length of each ad spend to get the most exposure it can.

A sample post strategy would be to post every 3-4 days and when you have advertising this allows that post to gain traction without too many other posts cluttering up your page and Facebook knows which post to display to avoid competing posts that end up not being able to use up all their budgets (if the target market is similar).

Content options:

• Videos
• Photos
• Text

Sample content to post:

Educational:

Help people understand the benefits or how to utilize your product or service to the best of its ability.

Testimonials:

Tell a story about how someone benefited from your product or service.

Promotional:

Do you have a special offer, current promotion or upcoming event? Let people know about it.

Specific Detail:

Describe your product or service or go more in depth on one particular service or product.

Inspire:

Say something inspirational and motivating that speaks to your target audience.

Industry Related:

News or relevant information people should know about what you do or about your industry. Or, link to specific articles or press releases that you’ve come across.

Ask Opinions:

Social media is a great way to do market research. Ask what people want to see more of or ask for an opinion on something specific.

Something Fun:

Just for the heck of it post something fun, cute or heartfelt. Often this is the one that gets the most traction because they can see you are human after all.

Facebook can be a great place to attract new business, gain exposure in the marketplace and receive valuable feedback from your loyal fans. In order to gain much needed exposure as a business, I’d highly recommend setting up paid ads. In my opinion, it’s absolutely necessary for any Facebook marketing campaign to include an advertising budget. The size of your budget entirely depends on your business and expectations of the results.

The posts on your page only go out to 17% of your fan base. Facebook realizes that the user experience wouldn’t be so pleasant if everything was an ad in their face. So they limit this.
In order to gain more exposure you need to pay for it with a pay per click model or pay per impression.

Contact ROI Web Hosting today to receive a free Internet marketing consultation.

I’m not going to tell you that you have to be on social media.

I’m not going to tell you that you are missing out. I’m going to tell you that based on these factors, you can better decide whether social media marketing is for you:

• What type of business model and structure is your business? Business to Business? or Business to Consumer?
• Do you sell products or are you service based?
• How much resources or funds can you dedicate towards social media?

Then you can decide whether you should be doing social media marketing and which channels you should be focused on.

But before we get into social media, let me explain something. Your website is your most valuable marketing tool for your business. Before heavily promoting your business page on Facebook, ensure that your website is up to date enough that you feel that you can convert business if someone is to visit it from your Facebook page. After all, when someone has decided to check for more information about you or your business, they will visit your website. Do you feel your website will convert visitors into buyers? If so, begin social media marketing to attract website visitors.

Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are the most popular social networks for businesses. Google+ is another popular social network but we won't refer to it in this article. It’s better to do one social network exceptionally well than to have more networks that are just okay.

Facebook

Exposure:

An excellent pool of social butterflies and entertainment seekers sharing and liking various cool and interesting things.

Facebook is the biggest social network. If you are business to consumer, your target market is on here. You’ll need a business page. This is different from a personal page and it allows you to advertise, which is a key component to gaining exposure and traction on Facebook.

Advertise:

Facebook advertising can target demographics (male, female, age groups) interest groups (such as fitness or nature), geographical areas (cities, countries, radius Km distance from a specific city).

Generate Leads:

There are several different ad types available. The most popular are, 1. Page Post Engagement, 2. Increase Page Likes, 3. Clicks to Your Website, 4. Remarketing. 

Facebook is a popular website where visitors aren’t usually ready to buy right away. It takes time to build trust with visitors by actively posting and engaging your audience. Consistency and tracking your campaigns will help you be successful.

Twitter

Follow & Keep Informed:

An efficient way to communicate your business news, promotions, new product launches, opinions, build relationships or general banter in 140 characters or less.
Users can follow your tweets to keep up to date on what’s happening in your business very easily.

Build Relationships:

You can in a professional manner send a quick tweet to a business colleague or various colleagues to thank them for a great meeting and tell them you are excited to be working with them.

Connect:

Think of twitter as a way to text message (like you would from your phone to their phone) to a business address or person. This message is received on their account whether they are on their computer or have Twitter set up on their mobile device. Their response is then a text message back.

Twitter can be effective for events or announcements of product releases in a timely manner. It can also be used as a support tool where users can send you a tweet asking a question and when you answer it, you’ve answered it for many users that follow you as well.

Twitter is a tool for businesses to build their brand, gain exposure, create interest and attract website traffic and conversions. You can search and find various users based on a variety of search options or keywords and choose to follow them, tweet at them or send them a direct message.

LinkedIn

The ultimate business to business social network.

There’s a type of aura about LinkedIn where people don’t just post what they had for lunch that day, it’s mostly business-related on LinkedIn.
For most of LinkedIn’s existence, they’ve been all about your personal profile. Recently, they’ve added company pages and allow you to post as your company. People can then follow your company's posts as well. Your staff can add themselves as employees of the company and link their profiles to the company page.

Advertising:

LinkedIn has advertising options available to target specific profiles or job titles and display ads to those people. There are mixed reviews on the results so far but if you are looking to recruit someone to join your team, this may be an angle to target specific people to get your company noticed.

LinkedIn can also be used as a lead generation tool. You can direct message users or ask to be introduced or connected from someone else in your network. The more connections you have, the more people you will be able to contact unless you purchase LinkedIn Premium.

Publishing:

Another feature of LinkedIn is the ability to publish articles via LinkedIn Pulse. Only select profiles are allowed to publish posts (you can apply to be an author). This works just like a blog does where you write an article and upload an image, preview and publish. When you post an article there’s a notification that goes to everyone that you are connected to and tells them that you’ve just published an article. People can then click on the link to view your article as well as like or comment. Views are tracked to see how many people read your article. Publishing articles is a great way to give information about your industry or what you do to gain interest and exposure as well as to enhance your profile and brand as an expert in your field.

Contact ROI Web Hosting today for your free consultation on internet marketing success.

When designing a new website you’ll want to make sure to analyze your messaging and content first. View our article on ‘Content Messaging for Your Website’ to find out more about this. Below is a guide to help you develop, upgrade or create a new website for your business.

Content and Messaging:

Be sure to develop high quality content for your website and answer questions that your ideal target audience is looking for:

• About You
• About Your Business
• Your Credibility (Testimonials)
• Your Warranty or Guarantee

Video:

You have 3-5 seconds to make an impact. Video is a great way to get people a lot of information in a short time. (make sure it’s a high quality video)

Design:

Ensure your website design is clean, easy to read (not too fancy of font), not overly designed (keep colors simple). Make sure your homepage has key content directly in the line of view for the user without having to scroll. The viewer needs to be interested right away or they will leave.

Conversion Points

Include a call to action. What do you want people to do when they get to your website? ‘Call now’, ‘Insert your email address’, ‘Fill out this form’, ‘Download this’. Why should they do what you say? Make it enticing!

Mobile Friendly

Make sure that people can view your website properly on their mobile device. *No Adobe Flash* or programming languages that don’t play on mobile devices.

Do you need a specific mobile theme for your website that’s different from the desktop version? Depending on your industry you may need a ‘Call Now’ button to be the first button they see on the mobile device.

Social Integration

Is your business going to be heavily marketing on social media. Maybe your conversion is to get people to like your page from your website if your sales cycle is a long period of time. Or if your purchase price is large. Allow the ability for people to subscribe to your updates to bring them back to your website. Maybe a app contest is in order? Like us on Facebook to enter our draw to win.

Internet Marketing

It takes 5-7 touch points for an average purchase or sale to take place. How will you retain your website traffic in order to increase conversions? I mentioned social media, what about email marketing?
Email marketing is often over looked by how active people are on social media. Depending on your clientele, email marketing may be a more effective route. When given the permission to send people marketing emails it converts higher than social media marketing.

Landing pages:

Creating new pages on your website for a specific advertising niche and or catered to one conversion goal are called Landing pages. You want a website visitor to ‘land on this page’ from advertising or direct search and take action. (Usually fill out a form, download, or call.)

Remarketing:

You can target people via Google or Facebook advertising to come back to your website and make a purchase. Consider these options as a way to increase the touch points in your sales process.

You can see the importance of your web marketing planning during the stages of creating your website. If you plan on hiring two separate companies, this can add to the costs (one to build the website, one to do the marketing). Be sure to think this through before deciding on building your new website. ROI Web Hosting offers both web design and web marketing, this helps save companies money and headaches of dealing with two separate companies for your Internet marketing efforts.

Contact ROI Web Hosting today for your free consultation on Internet marketing success.

Is it time to take a closer look at your website?

To make a successful sale, the purchaser needs to understand some key factors about your business, product or service and the person they are buying from. In order for this person to be happy with their purchase and understand the value of it, they will want to know the following:

• About You and Your Company:
  • Who is this person or company?
  • What does this person or company stand for?
  • What do they believe in?
  • What is their story, purpose or brand messaging?
    
    
• About Your Product or Service:
  • What are the benefits of their product or service?
  • Why should I buy this? Why do I need it?
  • Not only the product specs but also the reasons behind how this will benefit me.
    
    
• What Makes You or Your Company Credible?
  • What accreditation or awards does the person or company have?
  • What kind of clients have they worked with and what are their opinions? (Testimonials)
  • What is the warranty or guarantee that is included?

Now, is this information easily found on your website? How does one find this on your website? Make sure you have an "About" page that outlines you, your company and your values. The big goal here is to develop trust with your visitors. People buy from you if they like and trust you.

Analyze Your Product or Service

Ask yourself the following questions when you are navigating through your website. It will help you upgrade your content and potentially even revamp the pages or layout to increase sales and conversions.

• What is your top-selling product or service?
• Where is it on the website?
• Is there enough information about your product to make someone want to buy it?
• How do they get to the "Buy" page or "Inquiry" page?
• Is there a call-to-action telling them how to purchase or where to inquire? Example: Call now or fill out this form to receive a free consultation.

Make sure you have a clear path to find out why they should buy your product and enough information to be convinced to buy. Guide your visitor through the sales process. Make it nice and simple for them.

Usability and Navigation for Your Website

Now that you know the content and messaging of what you should include, how do visitors get from one page to another?

When website visitors get to the bottom of each of your pages, think through how they get to the next content you want them to look at.

It’s proven that once a website visitor gets to the bottom of a website, they are either going to close the window or click on another link to stay on your website. This could be solved by adding a submenu to the bottom of each page or you could add a call-to-action line at the bottom of the page that includes a link to the next page you want them to visit. Example: If the visitor clicked through to the "About" page, maybe you want them to view your "Services" page next.

ROI Web Hosting offers web design and web marketing services where we take all of this into consideration to improve your website and increase your sales and conversions. Contact us today to get a source of new leads for your business.

It's about time! The Google Analytics App was released in July 2014.

It's free and it's getting good usability reviews. The app can be used on iPhones, iPads and even iPods! Now you can access your website analytics data on any iOS device.

What Will the App Show You?

• Number of visitors.
• Where people are being sent to your site from.
• Visitor behaviors eg. what time your site is viewed the most.
• Visitor demographic eg. what countries visitors are from.
• Conversions: If setup you can see how well your marketing is performing.

More Info

• The app can track multiple websites.
• Offers data real-time.
• It doesn't have ALL the features you can access through your desktop/laptop computer.

It's FREE for both: Android and iPhone download it now!

Featured

Here is another tool to complement your website - Start using Olark today!

Set up the Olark Chat console and connect with your customers! This is a tool which allows customers to chat online with you or your team, real-time. You can set how many chats you want to take on and you will get notified when a new chat comes in.

Why set up a chat tool?

Get to your customers before they abandon their shopping cart or when they visit a specific page on your website. Targeted chat lets you talk to the customers you want and gives you all the info you need, such as where they've been on your site and how long they've been on it.

Chat with your customers from your phone!

Olark works with 3rd party chat clients available for iOS, Android and Blackberry, so you can chat with your clients anywhere.

Your company app can help retain your customers and maximize repeat business

We've been working on our first sample app that will be released in August, 2014.

Stay tuned!

Ideal Industries for This App:

An App is not always a high priority for some industries. Here's a quick list of companies that should really consider getting into the mobile market as soon as possible to be innovative leaders to their client base.

• Massage Therapists
• Chiropractors
• Naturopaths
• Accupunture
• Night Clubs / Bars
• Restaurants

Why a mobile app for your company?

• Establish more powerful connection to your customers.
• It's proven that within 4 minutes, mobile users check their text messages or push notifications.
• Create loyalty from your customers and increase engagement by offering promotions or notifications about special events.

Mobile App Features & Marketing Strategies:

After you have your company app created, the next step is to market your app. Get your current customers to download your app. This may involve sending it out to your newsletter list and having them download it this way, or downloading it from you when they enter your office or store (via QR codes). This may need an incentive for them to download your app. Maybe offer them a discount or free promo swag for downloading your app and showing it when they come into your office/store next time.

Next, you'll be given access to a website in which you will have the power to send direct messages to everyone who's downloaded your app (just like updating your Twitter or Facebook page).

When you log into this website there's an area to type your message and a send button. This message goes out to all your company app subscribers who've selected to receive notifications from you. Direct messages to your mobile app customers are called push notifications.

Why Send Push Notifications?

Healthcare Professionals:

Do you have cancelled appointments? Are you losing money from cancellations?

Why not send a push notification (message directly to your company app users) when a cancellation comes up? Through a push notification, you can let them know that either 1) There's a discount to fill the spot, or 2) You are so busy that someone from a waiting list can fill that spot on a first-come, first-served basis. It's entirely up to you how you'd like to use the push notifications, although be sure that every update you send out is an important one. No one wants to have their phone buzzing from constant updates. Ever get annoyed by Twitter users that pump way too much garbage out? Be careful with this and make each post count!

Restaurant, Bars or Nightclubs:

Do you have slow days? Want to send out promotions when it's slow to bring up your sales?

I used to work in the restaurant industry where I learned that most Mondays at 3 pm aren't as busy as Fridays at 5pm (unless, of course, that particular restaurant is known for specific offers on Mondays).

Restaurants can now add their mobile app to their regular social media updates with this ace in the hole so to speak. Strategically, every once in a while, a push notification is sure to get the message out to your app users to improve slow times, promote an event or roll out a new menu.

Most successful restaurants, bars or nightclubs have loyal regulars that come in each week or every couple weeks. Imagine treating them to some reminders or promotions that you have every once in awhile. How would this increase your sales?

Having a company app created for your business can boost your sales and increase loyal followers. Contact us to get started today.

Please help us create the best mobile apps for your business by filling out this short survey below.

Are you a Massage Therapist, Chiropractor, Naturopath, Acupunturist or health care professional?

Want to learn some essential tips on marketing your website on the Internet.

Kevin Hicks, Internet marketing specialist at ROI Web Hosting has just released a guide which includes tips and strategy on how to market your business online to maximize lead generation.

In this guide you will learn:

• Website marketing strategy that you can start using right now.
• How to create a keyword list for your AdWords campaign
• Sample AdWords setup (for massage therapists)
• Tips on creating landing pages
• Reasons to blog and tips on sending out your posts so that people read them.
• Email marketing top software outlined
• Search Engine Optimization tips

Click the button below to visit the download page.

DOWNLOAD NOW

Are you a health care professional that’s great at what you do, but lack the business knowledge to grow your business at the speed that you want?

Kevin Hicks, Internet marketing specialist will be presenting ‘Website marketing strategy for health care professionals’ on June 25th, 2014 at BNI Urban Professionals. The event will be held at The Renaissance Hotel in downtown Vancouver, BC.

Who Should Attend:

Any business professional will benefit from this information. Although, this specific presentation is catered to the following professions.

• Massage Therapist
• Naturopath
• Physiotherapists
• Chiropractor
• Dentist
• Fitness Trainer
• Acupunture
• Homeopathy
• other health care professionals

You will learn:

• Strategies to implement in your Internet marketing right away.
• Average costs you should spend on your Internet advertising to get results.
• How to attract the right website traffic.
• How to convert website traffic into buyers.
• Access to additional resources to help grow your health care business.

Bonuses from attending this event:

• Meet 20+ friendly entrepreneurs looking to connect and meet new people.
• Bring a 60 second pitch about you and your business
• Bring lots of business cards

Event Details:

Date & Time: June 25th, 2014.

7 am - 7:30 networking. Event starts 7:30 - 8:30 am. Networking from 8:30 - 9 am.
Buffet breakfast is served with coffee, tea and juice.

Location: 

Renaissance Vancouver Harbourside Hotel
1133 West Hastings Street @ Thurlow > Map

Price: $25

REGISTER

Please pass this event information on to any health care professionals or any business professionals looking to improve their Internet marketing.

Event registration is mandatory to let the hotel know how much breakfast and chairs to prepare.

Register Here or contact us to find out more details.

ROI Web Hosting - We Are The Experts On Return On Investment

Need some expert help with Vancouver online marketing? ROI stays at the forefront of internet marketing by maintaining the best practices recommended by the giants of the search engine world, Google, Bing and Yahoo. This is a fast-paced world and as a website owner, you need professional online marketers to help you succeed. Our team of Vancouver internet marketers are here for you.

So you have a website? But are you getting enough visitors? Do you know how many people visit your site or how many are converted into clients or customers? ROI can implement lead generation tools and show you the numbers so you can feel the peace of mind that your marketing dollars are earning you more money in return.

Don't have a website yet? ROI designs search engine optimized websites. Once your custom designed, eye-catching website is up, we will work closely with you to get you a boost in business and to help you understand your website traffic. We always go the extra mile for our clients.

Start with a Google-Friendly, Eye-Catching Website

Vancouver website design generally falls into two categories: websites created to gain external leads and websites that function as an online brochure with no other aspirations other than displaying information. Although ROI Web Hosting has extensive experience building both kinds of websites, we specialize in the former because we thrive on that feeling of success in consistently driving buyers to your website, which acts as online all-star sales people working for you 24 hours a day.

We believe that websites for small businesses should be made to help you make more profit and that requires both strategy and aesthetics. At a basic level, your website needs to communicate well with search engines - this is called "search engine optimization" and can include a wide range of variables from your website structure, keywords and clean code to redirects, inbound links and sitemaps. With a solid foundation, you can start to think about visual appeal and what the viewer sees when visiting your website, otherwise understood as the information and images that will make up your company's home on the Internet.

Define Your Conversion Goals

A conversion goal is the action we want a visitor to take when they arrive at your website, and your company's conversion goal will be unique to you. As an example, you may guide visitors toward filling out a simple inquiry form to schedule a free consultation or quote.

A common conversion goal or action is to get customers to sign up for an email newsletter, which can be a useful means to educate your audience about the products or services that you offer. Keeping your potential clients on your email list may be a part of your Internet marketing strategy.

Get on Google AdWords

Google AdWords is pay-per-click advertising on the Google search engine. We select keywords that your potential buyers would be searching for and display ads to them. These ads link through to your website so that you can turn these interested website visitors into paying customers or clients. You only pay when someone clicks on your ad. ROI Web Hosting has $300 coupon codes to get you started ;)

Build Captivating Landing Pages

A landing page is a doorway to your website where we send our advertising campaigns. When a visitor comes to your website they want to find the necessary information they are looking for as quickly as possible. You want to give that information to them with as few clicks as possible.

Rather than sending these website visitors to your homepage, it's much more effective to send them to a landing page customized for the specific audience. Each landing page will have a specific purpose or keyword grouping, which is unique to each business. For example, we may divide keywords into "Vancouver" and "Coquitlam" keyword groups for our imaginary business selling garden gnomes. We would then make sure that website visitors from Vancouver would land on a page specifically about garden gnomes in Vancouver with keywords specific to the topic while website visitors from Coquitlam would land on a page with Coquitlam-targeted keywords. Users are far more likely to click your ad when it's directed at them. This helps convince the potential customer to pick up the phone and call us, or fill out a form for more information. Also, google gives you a better deal on your clicks when the keyword, ad and landing page contain the same content.

The landing page needs to have a conversion goal on it. This will help you get more leads and also evaluate how effective the campaign is and what you need to optimize it further. When a potential customer fills out the form a goal is triggered and we can track on our end various factors in how that customer found the website.

For more information about landing pages, check out our 3-part series beginning with "How to Create a Landing Page That Is Powerful and Effective."

This is a good start to learning how to make profit online, if you are interested in seriously ramping up your marketing contact ROI Web Hosting today to get started.

Our new downloadable PDF, 3 Easy Steps to Internet Marketing Success, was designed to increase your ROI online.

As the Internet marketing specialists of ROI Web Hosting consistently stay up to date on practices of the most effective small business websites, we're dedicated to regularly bringing you our newfound knowledge in the form of learning material. Our latest downloadable PDF covers the 3 Easy Steps to Internet Marketing Success, a guide to strategic Internet marketing. In an easy-to-read visual format, the PDF outlines the steps you need to take to make the Internet work for your business.

What Do You Get from the 3 Easy Steps to Internet Marketing Success?

Over 10 years of cumulative experience with Internet marketing has consistently showed us that one of the biggest oversights small and medium business owners make is the power of the Internet to bring in new business. Your future customers and clients are searching about your industry on the World Wide Web right now and you can reach out specifically to that target group. Results-oriented, Organized Internet marketing is founded upon a strategic Internet marketing plan that goes through the 3 steps we outline in our downloadable PDF so that you can connect with the people who are looking for you.

Strategic Internet Marketing

The concept of "strategic Internet marketing" refers to following a step-by-step process to first establish your business presence online, increase website visitors who are interested in your business, and then encourage your current customers or clients to continue to purchase from you. This is a method that has proven to be successful and profitable for businesses of all types of industries as more and more people are researching and even buying over the Internet through their desktop computers and mobile phones. Marketing over the Internet is also highly measurable, so you can monitor statistics on conversions and calculate accurate returns on investment.

An Overview of the 3 Easy Steps to Internet Marketing Success

Strategic Internet marketing doesn't have to be complicated. There are really only 3 components to keep in mind to turn your online presence into an automated source of customers and clients around the clock:

1. Create a Website That Converts

   Companies often use and view their websites as a stagnant brochure with little more than information. ROI Web Hosting specializes in turning a regular website into a lead generation and conversion machine. All it takes is quality web design and the right web copy, layout and tools.

2. Increase Website Visitors

   Successful business websites do not solely rely on their own networks for website traffic. There are hundreds of ways you can attract interested customers and clients to your website, but ROI Web Hosting always recommends and focuses on the three major players to increase visibility.

3. Stay Engaged

   An important source of sales happens through customer retention strategies, which involves marketing to those who have already purchased from you in the past or who have already shown interest in your product or service. This exercise in branding ensures that these people remember you, are motivated to buy from you again, find the purchasing process streamlined and are willing to recommend you to others.