Business Unusual » Social Media

Driving Effective PR: An Interview With Yetunde Taiwo

Clément Yeung — Mon, 02 May 2011 23:23:15 +0000

I caught up with Yetunde Taiwo of ICY Public Relations to find out what a Public Relations is all about and how she has been able to build her own business to generate a substantial monthly revenue by driving both traffic and sentiment through social media channels.

Follow her on Twitter: @yetunde.

Driving Effective PR: An Interview With Yetunde Taiwo is a post from: Business Unusual

The Suitcase Entrepreneur: An Interview With Natalie Sisson

Clément Yeung — Sun, 01 May 2011 21:02:00 +0000

Natalie Sisson is an entrepreneur known for her blog The Suitcase Entrepreneur (formally known as WomanzWorld).

She is also a representative for the Nike Women Under 30 CEO movement, a blogger for Forbes, a mentor for the Visa Business Network and has grown a thriving online community by being hands-on and practical with running a business whilst on the go.

I catch up with Natalie on the Huffington Post in this in-depth interview and find out what makes a successful Suitcase Entrepreneur:

Click here to watch the whole interview on the Huffington Post.

The Suitcase Entrepreneur: An Interview With Natalie Sisson is a post from: Business Unusual

Website Optimization Tips: Four Fast Fixes To Get Your Business Found

Marj Galangco — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 07:29:19 +0000

Imagine you just paid someone over $5000 to develop an online shop for you so you could sell your awesome creations online. Four months on and you still haven’t made a single sale. Knots in your stomach form whenever you think about it and anxiety grips you every day. What are you supposed to do now?

This is a common situation that many business owners find themselves in. If you are in a similar situation – that is, if you are looking for ways on how to improve website traffic, increase web sales (improve conversion rates) – here are four fast, cheap and simple website optimization tips that you can implement right away:

1. Do Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of making your website pages get found more easily by people who use search engines to find specific information.

SEO begins with keyword research, or the process of finding out which keyword phrases many of your prospects type in the search engines when they are looking for someone like you. For example, if you are a dog trainer in Dallas Texas, your prospects might be typing in Google the following :

“dog trainer in Dallas”

“Dallas puppy trainer”

“best Labrador trainer Dallas”

Once you have found what keywords are highly-searched for, use those high-demand keywords as basis for your website content. Here are a few things you could do to accomplish this:

Write your web site copy using the keywords. For example, you could create an ‘About Me’ page and write about why you are the “best Labrador trainer in Dallas” .
Once you have written content based on the keyword phrase, you could also put the said keyword phrase on that webpage’s meta title tag, header tag, and the page description.
If you have an image on that webpage, be sure to write the image title and ALT text for that image using the keyword phrase, too.
When you create links to that web page, use the keyword phrase as the actual clickable text (a.k.a. ‘anchor text’) that links to the said page (avoid just using ‘click here’).

The above action points are just part of what’s known as “on-page SEO”. You can boost traffic to your business just by knowing how to build perfectly optimized web pages.

Get started now and use Market Samurai to do your keyword research.

2. Build a Squeeze Page.

It’s shocking how most business websites are mere brochure websites. What you want is a website that generates as much leads for you as possible – on autopilot!

So what’s a squeeze page? A Squeeze page is a lead-generation page, basically designed for the sole purpose of collecting names and email addresses of prospects. For example, here’s a page we use to generate leads for us:

Once you’ve collected their contact details, you could seek to build further relationship with them via email marketing, or you could seek to engage them further via your lead nurturing process.

You can create your own squeeze page using Optimize Press, or you can just get us to build one for you. For a step-by-step lowdown on how to build your list of prospects on autopilot, read How to Make a High Converting Lead Generation Page.

3. Get Your Blog On!

One huge mistake many businesses still do is NOT including Blog Marketing as part of their marketing arsenal. I don’t exaggerate when I say you are practically killing your business by not blogging.

Another mistake many businesses make is actually blogging, but blogging about the wrong things. These are what I call the ME-ME-ME business bloggers. They just talk about their offers, promotions and their idea of a blog post is a sales pitch.

If you’re guilty of this, STOP. Instead, create content that delivers great value to your prospects:

Help them solve a specific problem.

Answer some of their burning questions.

Give free advice designed to truly contribute to their lives.

Communicate what you stand for, what you believe in, and why you are doing what you do.

Make some waves! Ask questions that provoke reactions and challenge commonly held beliefs or practices within your industry.

All of these things could increase your influence and get them to perceive you as a credible expert in your field. If you blog often enough about the things that truly matter to your prospects, your blog would start attracting traffic from the search engines and your readers could also forward your content to their networks, thus helping drive traffic to your website.

4. Get Social

The ROI you’ll reap from using Social Media marketing could increase even more if you have a blog that frequently publish awesome content. Leverage social media to connect with key people who could then help bring your message to bigger groups of your targeted prospects.

These key people may be owners of businesses whose products & services complement your offers and they are marketing to the same target market, influential people within your industry who you can partner with, etc.

Just find out where these key people hang out – whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or other blogs – then join them there, join the conversations they are having, provide value and continually engage them.

Many people have made Social Media complicated but it’s really just a tool or a technology, although a very powerful one. At the end of the day, it’s still all about connection.

Conclusion

Don’t just expect traffic to come to your website once you have built it. Traffic generation is an ongoing, deliberate process that you will need to learn how to do if you really want to make sales or generate leads via your website. There are many traffic generation methods, and two of the best ones are Blog marketing and Social Media marketing.

Click the link above to learn more about how exactly you can use these two tools help your business get found online.

From there you will be able to download:

Our special Social Media marketing strategy roadmap
Learn why you’re killing your business by not blogging
Business Blog Buyer’s checklist
and much more!

Website Optimization Tips: Four Fast Fixes To Get Your Business Found is a post from: Business Unusual

Blog Marketing: To Do Or Not to Do?

Marj Galangco — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 17:28:22 +0000

It’s shocking how many small businesses who are actively marketing themselves online still don’t have blog marketing in their marketing mix. Some common excuses I hear are “But I’m too busy already”, “But I’m already doing Social Media marketing”, ”But what would I talk about, and why should my prospects read my blog?”.

The truth is that if you are in the business of providing great value to your customers, or you are solving certain problems remarkably well, blogging will enable you to communicate this to your prospects in an effective, cheap and efficient way (if you’re not providing great value then you shouldn’t be in business at all).

Granted, a blog’s potential ROI (return on investment) will vary from business to business, but here are 5 good reasons to blog.

5 Key Benefits to Business Blogging

# 1 : Companies who blog get more traffic than those who don’t.

You can have a fancy, well branded website but without traffic it will be useless. Traffic is the lifeblood of internet marketing. It’s really simple: more traffic equals more leads, and more leads equals more sales.

Surveys have shown that companies who blog regularly enjoys an increase in:

Total number of unique visitors
Average time visitors spend on site
Average number of pages viewed per visit

Search engines favor blogs because blogs tend to get updated with fresh content compared to static company websites. So the more entries there are in your blog = the more indexed pages your website has = the more chances of it getting traffic from the search engines.

If you blog about topics that genuinely interest your readers, visitors stay a lot longer and page views are much higher because your visitors are getting value from consuming your content.

There’s also the case of Digital Word of Mouth, of course. Provided your blog is loaded with high-quality content and your blog has built-in Social sharing tools, it will be easier for your readers to pass on your message to their networks, thus helping spread your message without you lifting a finger.

In addition, when people share your content to their networks, they consequently build links that point to your site – which means more inbound links, which translates to better Search Engine Optimization.

2. Generate More Leads – for Cheaper!

In a survey conducted by Hubspot about Inbound Marketing, it was revealed that businesses spending 50% or more of their Marketing budget on Internet Marketing activities spent 60% less per lead than businesses that spend 50% or more of their marketing budget on Traditional channels.

(The survey conducted was based on 231 business owners or professionals familiar with their marketing strategy)

What would you do with the extra cash you’ll free up due to a 60% reduction on your cost-per-lead overheads?

In the same survey by Hubspot, it was revealed that companies who DO blog acquire MORE leads compared to companies that are not blogging. How much more leads? Well, as much as 67% more leads for B2B and as much as 88% more leads for B2C companies!

57% of B2C Businesses surveyed have acquired a customer from blogging, while 43% of B2B Businesses surveyed have acquired a customer from blogging.

Interestingly, when asked to compare the effectiveness of the top social media platforms like Twitter, LinkedIN, & Facebook to Business Blogging, the respondents revealed that they generated the most leads and sales from blogging. In fact, 46% of the businesses surveyed acquired a customer from Blogging.

3. Higher Conversion (More Sales!)

In an entry in Marketing Sherpa blog, Adam Sutton mentioned that:

More marketers said social media was a “very effective” way to:

Improve brand or product reputation (37% vs. 29%)

Improve public relations (36% vs. 27%)

(He was comparing SEO with Social Media)

This is hardly surprising because when you blog about topics that really matter to your target audience, you get to establish Thought Leadership. This places your company in a position to heavily influence your market.

With social media you also get to interact directly with your target market. Getting to ask them direct questions and receiving direct feedback…that’s any marketer’s dream, isn’t it?

What companies that use Social marketing ultimately get to do is have a direct interaction and a conversation with the very people they are trying to reach. So if you know what is going on in their heads, you can effectively mold your offers to hit the right buttons, thus raising conversion rates. This is priceless.

In a similar vein, in the 2010 State of Inbound Marketing report, Hubspot indicated that there is a direct correlation between frequency of blog posts and sales. Essentially, their survey findings show that ”companies that blog more get more consistent sales.”

4. Blogging is an Effective Tool for Thought Leadership

Many business owners still have myopic views and tend to base business decisions on financial ROI alone. Of course, while the ultimate measure of business success is the financial bottomline, one must not lose sight of other things that help achieve business goals.

Nowadays, influence, relationships, engagement and trust are very important currencies that when nurtured and built well, result to business success. And guess what? Each thoughtful post on your blog is a reflection of your expertise, insights, innovation, integrity, passion, commitment and values. You don’t have to win a Nobel Peace prize or discover the latest life-changing breakthrough to become a Thought Leader. If you can engage your audience and get them fired up and passionately share your vision, you could lead your market.

3 Common Excuses for Not Blogging

1. Blogging is Time-consuming

It’s true – blogging regularly would probably require you a time investment of 2-3 hours a week every week, and I believe this is the top reason why many businesses choose not to blog. As mentioned by Marketing Sherpa in their 2010 Social Media Marketing Report, many businesses try their hand on Twitter and Facebook Marketing not because they are getting their desired results from them, but because they are easier to do than blogging.

Do what works, not what’s easy.

Focusing on the required investment (rather than on the potential ROI) is being short-sighted. A wiser way of looking at it is to determine what returns you could get from investing those precious 3 hours a week. If your competitors (or similar businesses) are blogging and enjoying one or all 4 of the benefits enumerated earlier – ask yourself if that ROI is worth your 3 hours a week. If yes, then it is a no brainer.

2. Blogging Requires You to Raise Your Game and Play BIG

Blogging is one way of giving value to your target audience. And constantly giving value to your audience would require you to constantly innovate and strive to be better, bigger and brighter – both professionally and personally. That is simply part of the process of positioning yourself in the marketplace, building your brand, being a thought leader, and standing out from the rest of your competitors.

I think this is the part that scares more businesses – especially those who are afraid that they might NOT have much value to give.

“Oh, but what would I talk/write about? What if I run out of things to blog about?”

“But I suck at writing. I can’t sppel.”

“But I’m no guru or expert. Surely what I know is already available out there for free. ”

“But people might criticize me or disagree with what I say.”

If you are afraid to upset people by taking a stand, if you are afraid of playing a bigger game and getting out of your comfort zone regularly, if you are afraid of criticism and being labelled as a fool or being accused as ignorant, then blogging for business may not be for you.

3. You know how to get traffic and create engagement with your audience through other means.

If you already have too many clients and/or you’re actually crashing your servers due to “too much traffic”, or you are already getting too many leads/referrals, then you probably don’t need to blog (but it doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t benefit from blogging).

You may have too many clients, but do you have the right/ideal clients? Or are they the sort of customers who give you headaches, treat you bad, and don’t pay on time? Even though your existing network may currently be enough to provide you enough business, a business blog is a great way to start expanding that network, generate more prospects and semi-automate the lead-generation process.

Conclusion

As we have demonstrated, Blogging for business, if done the right way, could:

Drive more traffic to your website/offers
Lower your cost-per-lead overheads
Boost Your bottomline
Increase Your conversion rate
Help position you as a thought leader in your niche
Build up brand sentiment
Help you get more leads in less time while using up less resources

Of course there are costs involved in blogging, and most of it will be your time, commitment and energy. But as any wise entrepreneur would look at it, any business decision you make should not be about the cost – it’s about the ROI.

Take Action Now

For more resources about the importance of Blog Marketing & Social Media, click here. You will be able to access free videos and downloadable resources.

Blog Marketing: To Do Or Not to Do? is a post from: Business Unusual

Pushing for Transparency: How Scribnia is Leveling the Blogosphere

Clément Yeung — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 15:52:00 +0000

In this Huffington Post interview I catch up with Scribnia community manager, David Spinks, as he explains why, where and how bloggers need to be networking in order to gain more exposure and more readers. A must read for those of you that have your own blogs or columns.

» Read more here «

If you don’t yet have a blog, and you have your own business, click here to find out why you absolutely should be business blogging and how to start.

Pushing for Transparency: How Scribnia is Leveling the Blogosphere is a post from: Business Unusual

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WordPress Plug-ins To Turn Your Business Blog into a Traffic-Puling, Lead Generation Machine

Marj Galangco — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 10:27:06 +0000

If you are a small business / solo entrepreneur marketing your business online, I hope by now you are already blogging as part of your internet marketing strategy.

Traffic and conversion are the two main things you need to get right when you are actively marketing your business online, so it helps if you configure your blog to have functionalities designed to help enhance these areas.

(If you don’t have a business blog yet, head on over to watch our free videos here about why you need a business blog.)

If you have a business blog already, take a look at the following plug-ins and install the ones your blog is lacking.

Plug-ins that Help Boost Traffic

All in One SEO Pack – Optimizes your WordPress blog so that Search Engines are more likely to find your page, get indexed and therefore benefit from more traffic from the Search engines (Search Engine Optimization).

Ultimate Plugins Smart Update Pinger - How would you like it if every time you post something to your blog, several other websites are notified? Well that’s what “pinging” is. Services are only pinged when a new post is created (not when an existing post is edited).

SEO Friendly Images - automatically updates all images with proper ALT and TITLE attributes. ALT attribute is important part of search engine optimization. It describes your image to search engine and when a user searches for a certain image this is a key determining factor for a match, giving you more chance of pulling traffic using the images you use.

Twitter Tools – creates a complete integration between your WordPress blog and your Twitter account.

SEO Slugs – SEO Slugs plugin strips common words like “what”, “you” or “can” ‘a’, ‘the’, ‘in’ from a post slugs to improve SEO by making it more search engine friendly.

Subscribe To Comments – enables commenters to sign up for e-mail notification of subsequent entries. The plugin includes a full-featured subscription manager that your commenters can use to adjust what notifications they receive. The result: some commenters end up coming back to your blog.

SEO Smart Links –can automatically link keywords and phrases in your posts and comments with corresponding posts, pages, categories and tags on your blog. It also lets you set it up so that certain links are nofollow and open links in new window. Bottomline, it provides automatic SEO benefits for your site.
WP-Post Views - Enables you to display how many times a post/page had been viewed. Great to use as a social proof-boosting element.
Google XML Sitemaps - generates a special XML sitemap which helps search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com to index your blog more efficiently.

FD Feedburner Plugin – Redirects the main feed and optionally the comments feed to Feedburner.com. It does this seamlessly without the need to modify templates, setup new hidden feeds, modify .htaccess files, or asking users to migrate to a new feed.

Ping.fm - Integrates with Ping.fm’s Custom URL feature to collect pings and post them to your blog. By default, status updates are posted to a sidebar widget and blog/micro-blog entries become full-blown WordPress posts. Many other options are configurable at the settings page.

RSS Footer – Allows you to add a line of content to the end of your RSS feed articles. Great to use for your Calls to Actions!

SexyBookmarks – adds a (X)HTML compliant list of social bookmarking icons to each of your posts. Social bookmarking can help boost your traffic.

Plug-ins that Boost Engagement

CommentLuv – When someone comments on your blog, this plugin shows a link to the last post from that person’s blog. So what? Well, it rewards your readers who also happen to be bloggers, and it also encourage more comments from other bloggers (which is really helpful, because if you established great relationships with other bloggers they could promote you to their tribes).

Disqus Comment System – makes commenting easier and more interactive, while connecting websites and commenters across a thriving discussion community.
Smart Youtube – lets you insert YouTube videos in posts, comments and RSS feeds with ease and full customization.
podPress – gives you everything you need in one easy plugin to use WordPress for Podcasting.

Popular Posts - Displays a highly configurable list of the most popular posts in your blog. This gives you an insight as to what topics are hitting your readers’ spots. You just need to write more about those topics to boost further engagement.

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin - At the end of each blog post you publish, this plug-in adds a list of related blog entries. Very useful as it encourages your readers to read another article related to what they just finished reading, thus boosting page views!

Amazon S3 for WordPress – Allows you to retrieves objects stored in Amazon S3 and post them in WordPress.

Subscribe To Comments – Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry that they commented on.

Audio Player – a highly configurable but simple mp3 player for all your audio needs. You can customize the player’s color scheme to match your blog theme, have it automatically show track information and more. Great if you plan to post a lot of audio interviews, music, or any audio file.

Wapple Architect - Mobile marketing is the new frontier. Nowadays there are 5 Billion mobile phone users but there are only 1.7 Billion internet users. This plug-in makes your blog mobile phone-friendly!

WP-Super Cache – Helps your site load faster and protects your server from massive traffic surges.

Plug-ins That Make Your Blog Look Better

Fancybox WordPress - Acts like a JQuery Lightbox but looks 100 times sexier and adds additional functionality rarely found elsewhere. A definite must for displaying images and hyperlinks on your blog.

MaxBlogPress Favicon – Easily add favicon to your blog without editing any wordpress files. Adjust your settings here.

Plug-ins for Monitoring / Measurement

Blog Stats by W3Counter – Display stats for your blog on the dashboard and add the tracking code to your site with a widget.

Google Analytics for WordPress – This plugin makes it simple to add Google Analytics with extra search engines and automatic clickout and download tracking to your WordPress blog.

Pretty Link – Shrink, track and share any URL on the Internet but using your own domain name. Useful for tracking affiliate links.

Post Views Summary - A dashboard plugin that shows the most and least visited posts and pages.

Plug-ins for Stress-free Maintenance

Akismet – checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not.

WordPress Database Backup – On-demand backup of your WordPress database.

Login Lockdown – Keeps hackers out by restricting the rate at which failed logins can be re-attempted from any given IP range.

Scissors – enhances WordPress’ handling of images by introducing cropping, resizing, rotating, and watermarking functionality.

Redirection – Manage all your 301 redirects and monitor 404 errors.

Really Simple CAPTCHA - Really Simple CAPTCHA is a CAPTCHA module intended to be called from other plugins. It is originally created for the Contact Form 7 plugin mentioned above.

WordPress Plug-ins To Turn Your Business Blog into a Traffic-Puling, Lead Generation Machine is a post from: Business Unusual

Why You’re Killing Your Business By Not Having a Business Blog (10 Proofs You Must See)

Marj Galangco — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 23:40:24 +0000

To see the video series mentioned in the video above, click below:

How to Use Social Media Marketing Tools Strategically To Really Establish Your Expertise, Generate Leads, Create a Strong Credible Brand, and Bag Clients without hard selling

Video Transcript:

You’ve heard about it all now. Marketing your business online is all the rage, that Social Media is a cost-effective way to promote your business.

You’ve heard about thousands of successful small businesses & solo entrepreneurs who are leveraging Facebook and Twitter and YouTube and LinkedIn to market their businesses – even though they have no marketing or advertising budget.

And you’ve also heard about how you should be blogging.

But somehow… you still don’t have a blog.

If it’s because you’re unsure WHY exactly you should and you need some compelling reasons to commit to it, then you’re in the right place.

Because in this video I will give 10 Compelling, concrete reasons demonstrating in no uncertain terms why you are literally KILLING your business by still not having a business blog.

A business blog is a type of website that you can leverage as a communication platform with your prospects/customers. (Imagine you are publishing a newspaper or a magazine about topics relevant to your business. But instead of printing it, you just publish online.) You can blog about anything that will give value to your target audience in a way that builds engagement, trust and credibility. You can publish news, tips, descriptions of events, graphics or videos. Your blog can combine text, images, videos, photographs, audio files and links to other websites and other related media.

Proof #1 : Shopping online is a daily part of many people’s lives nowadays.

There are 1.7 Billion internet users all over the world.

In Europe alone there are 418 Million, and in North America there are almost 253 Million internet users.

If most people are now buying what they need online, wouldn’t it make sense for your business to also be marketing online?

I mean, how would you like a slice of that 1.7 Billion pie?

If you’re still not marketing online, you’re leaving money on the table.

Proof #2: The fact is that marketing as you know it is now dead.

Marketing as you know it is now dead because consumers are JADED and cynical nowadays.

Because people HATE being sold to.

Because people are banner-blind or ad-blind.

Because consumers are conditioned to turn off all the noise. So businesses are now experiencing that TV ads or billboards or cold calling don’t cut it anymore.

What used to work in Marketing doesn’t work as well anymore, AND they cost a lot.

Nowadays millions of businesses with zero marketing budgets are thriving using the internet :

They are building relationships and creating engagement with their target audience.
They are reaching millions of people all over the world with very little cost.
Their messages go viral because it gets passed on from one targeted reader to another.

The best thing about blogs is that they are interactive, and it is this interactive nature of blogs that gives you an edge to really engage with your audience (and get them to buy).

Proof #3: Companies that Blog enjoy as much as 60% lower cost-per-lead

In a survey conducted by Hubspot, it was revealed that Businesses spending 50% or more of their Marketing budget on Internet Marketing activities spent 60% less per lead than businesses that spend 50% or more of their marketing budget on Traditional channels.

(Based on 231 business owners or professionals familiar with their marketing strategy)

As you can see here, the average cost per lead is $332 for businesses who are still using mostly Traditional marketing methods

Whereas those who are using internet marketing have an average cost per lead of ONLY $134.

That’s a whopping 60% cheaper cost-per-lead!

Proof #4: Social Media & Blogs are the fastest growing category in lead generation budgets

In the same survey, it was confirmed that Social Media & Blogs are the fastest growing category in lead generation budgets and they continue to be ranked as the lowest cost lead generation channel.

Social Media & Blogs have directly generated leads that translated into customers. They are NOT just for brand awareness

It doesn’t even matter if you are in the Business to Business or Business to Consumer arena.

The findings are clear (and this is Proof #5): Companies who DO blog acquire considerably MORE leads compared to companies that are not blogging.

How much more leads? Well, as much as 67% more leads for B2B and as much as 88% more leads for B2C companies!

What would you do with 67% to 88% more leads?

Proof #6: Blogging is deemed the most important internet marketing tool by many businesses

You’ve probably heard how Social Media is all the rage for a while now when it comes to marketing on a shoestring budget.

In reality, blogging is really a form of social media but look here:

When respondents were asked how important these services are to their business, Company blogs were consistently given the highest ratings!

Proof #7: Blogging works for both B2B and B2C companies

57% of B2C Businesses surveyed have acquired a customer from blogging.

43% of B2B Businesses surveyed have acquired a customer from blogging.

68% of B2C Businesses surveyed have acquired a customer from Facebook.

33% of B2B Businesses surveyed have acquired a customer from Facebook.

51% of B2C Businesses surveyed have acquired a customer from Twitter.

38% of B2B Businesses surveyed have acquired a customer from Twitter.

Here’s the kicker: You can’t really leverage Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIN to its full potentials for your biz if you don’t have a business Blog!

Proof #8: Companies that blog acquire customers from blogging

Now let’s compare the effectiveness of the top social media platforms: Twitter, LinkedIN, Facebook and Business Blogging.

Check out which channel is generating more leads and more sales : Blogging!

46% of the businesses surveyed acquired a customer from Blogging.

44% of the businesses surveyed acquired a customer from Facebook.

While 41% of the businesses surveyed acquired a customer from Twitter and LinkedIn respectively.

Business Blogging really does generate leads and sales

This doesn’t mean you should just BLOG and not bother with the other platforms. You need to use all of them for maximum customer acquisition

But as I said before, You can’t really leverage Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIN to its full potentials for your biz IF you DO NOT have a business Blog!

Proof #9: There are 434% More Indexed Pages for Companies that Blog

OK let me explain what that means if you are unfamiliar with search engines and how they work…

So you understand that on your website there are several pages. When you create a page, it doesn’t automatically mean the search engines will INDEX that page. Getting “Indexed” is like getting registered. It’s like when a child gets born, they need to get a birth certificate. Until they do, they don’t actually appear on public records. It’s exactly like that.

But what this really translates to is that the more indexed pages your website has, the more chances of it getting traffic from the search engines.

And when you blog, (and you blog regularly) the natural tendency is to have more indexed pages. It’s really simple WHY that is.

Companies that blog generate content which leads to more indexed pages which attracts more attention from internet users and also leads to more traffic from the search engines which translates to more traffic in general.

And more traffic generally means more leads, and more leads means more sales.

Proof #10: 97% more inbound links for companies that blog

And you probably also know that one of the best ways to get more FREE traffic is by building links to your site. Generally, the more inbound links your site gets, the more traffic you will enjoy.

Well it’s been shown that Blogging attracts more links- that 97% more inbound links for companies that blog!

Conclusion

Blogging will help more and more people see your offers and allow you to interact with your target prospects, which then translates to a high likelihood of increased sales.

YES, YOU NEED TO BLOG – NOW.

Traditional Marketing is becoming less & less effective and they’re more expensive, too.

Shift your focus more on internet marketing – specifically, inbound marketing.

The sooner you shift, the more ROI you will reap – faster!

But before you go and hire a Blog Designer, WAIT!

I dont want you to go thinking Blogging is the end all and be all of internet marketing.

The truth is, there are inherent challenges in business blogging.

And there are many businesses who have tried and failed to make their business blog work for them. I don’t want you to do the same.

So click below to see a free series of video presentations:

How to Use Social Media Marketing Tools Strategically To Really Establish Your Expertise, Generate Leads, Create a Strong Credible Brand, and Bag Clients without hard selling

Why You’re Killing Your Business By Not Having a Business Blog (10 Proofs You Must See) is a post from: Business Unusual

Business Blogs: The Complete Buyer’s Guide (Checklist Included!)

Marj Galangco — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 15:27:41 +0000

So you want a business blog designed, installed and set up for you.

You’re probably a business start up, or it just dawned on you how you’re practically killing your business for still not having a business blog. You realize how you need to start promoting your business online, and how it’s absolutely crucial to your internet marketing efforts to have a business blog.

Before you go and hire someone, here’s a handy list of things that business blogs must have in order for you to turn it into a traffic-pulling, list-building, awesome marketing tool.

Here are the things your business blog must have or must be (ideally) in order to really help you get leads, make sales and bag new clients:

(As a kind of blanket disclosure, we’ll be putting a lot of links to services in here and you should assume that they’re affiliate links.)

1. Hosted in your own domain

Because you’re establishing a business blog, don’t set one up under a domain you do not own, like:

www.easisell.blogspot.com
www.easisell.typepad.com

This is a big mistake that a lot of home-based businesses do. A blog is a business asset that you’ll be building for the long term. If you put it on a domain you don’t own, and if that domain goes down, your blog will go down along with it. Do you really want to take that risk? You need to be in control of your business assets.

Plus, if it’s on a domain you don’t own, you will not be able to customise your blog. You will not be able to brand it and truly make it your own. It will look exactly like millions of other blogs out there.

If you still don’t have a domain for your business, we’ve found Namecheap to be the best value for money when it comes to buying domains.

However, if you’ve already bought a domain for your business, you don’t really need to buy another domain (unless you want to). You can easily set up a blog on a subdomain of your existing domain. But of course, if you want your blog to have a separate domain of its own for branding purposes, you can do that, too.

As for hosting your blog, your web developer should be able to provide this for you as well as setting up and configuring the blog for you.

2. Professionally Designed / Credible-Looking

Ideally, have a blog designed for your business from scratch. This makes your blog look unique, professional and therefore adds credibility. Take this route especially if you are targeting affluent markets, or if you are in a niche or industry where uniqueness, luxury and creativity are expected.

Do not make the mistake of getting a blog done for you and set up while only considering the set up costs. You really need to choose an appropriate blog suited to your business needs.

For example, if you’re a high-end Interior Designer, or a Photo Studio, or Real Estate agent, you will make more impact if you showcase your goods using images and videos heavily on your blog. So having specific functionalities like a gallery view or a lightbox will be beneficial.

Be prepared to accept that a fully customised blog with advanced features and functionalities could take weeks to create, though. And if you hire a reputable designer/developer, it could cost anywhere between $5000 to $20,000 (depending on the complexity of your requirements).

If that price is outside your budget range, don’t worry, you have some options. What you can get is a non- or semi-customised Premium WordPress Theme, and just focus on publishing great high-quality content and then just upgrade your blog later on when the money starts rolling in. For start ups this actually may be the better route.

If you’re going down this route, choose from high quality Premium Themes with a fully customised header as much as you can. Pick a theme that is uncluttered, with elements that make it very easy on the eye and easy to read. Pick a design so that your viewers can easily locate the information they could be looking for. You really want your visitors to get drawn to the content of your blog posts, so get rid of any element that could take away their attention from that (although it wouldn’t really hurt to display banners ads or text ads linked to your own offers on the sidebar).

The most important thing about your blog’s design is the user experience. So don’t prioritize “pretty” over usability. Trust me, although a super fancy and beautiful website is really nice to have, what is most important is the quality of experience your website gives to its visitors.

So don’t overly obsess about how amazing the blog could LOOK – as long as visitors know how to easily find what they are looking for, and as long as you provide extremely valuable information, establish credibility and create engagement, your investments will surely pay off.

Source: State of Inbound Marketing Report - http://bit.ly/aewfHr

3. Listbuilding Elements

One of the most important feature your business blog must have is the list building element.

Building your list will transform your business into a sustainable business, because it will enable you to generate leads and communicate with those leads over and over again.

Over time, as you build trust and credibility and build relationship by providing so much value to them, they will eventually trust you and buy from you or buy products your recommend.

When you get a business blog, make sure you get one that has a customised opt-in section (either on the sidebar or a pop-up opt-in, just like in www.easisell.com/blog) with a proven high-converting design and copy. You will need to create a freebie to give away in exchange for the prospect’s name and email, so get started putting together a freebie now (make one that really rocks, like our Digital Marketing E-guide). It’s been shown that you’ll have more people subscribe to your list if there’s a visual representation of your freebie. So as much as possible, hire a graphic designer to create an illustration of what it is you are giving away.

You will also need an autoresponder linked to your opt-in and set it up so that it automatically sends an email to your subscribers notifying them every time you post a new blog post. On top of these updates, you also want to build a relationship with your subscribers by sending them valuable tips, videos or content about once to twice a week. The autoresponder we use and highly recommend is AWeber, due to its ease of use and reliability.

3. Integrated with Social Media

The best way to leverage your blog is to drive traffic to it using the best Social Media platforms for business: Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and LinkedIN.

You will need to learn how to use these social media platforms, and then you must integrate these platforms with your Business blog.

Make it so that your blog enables readers to connect with you on Facebook /Twitter/LinkedIn/YouTube directly from your blog.

The more people you connect with using these platforms, the more traffic you will build up over time.

Also, get a blog with Social Media sharing enabled. This simply means having a blog set up so that they are literally one-button click away from sharing your content with their social networks.

Of course, have the RSS feed set up and configured so that it’s extremely easy to subscribe to your blog, too.

4. Search Engine Optimized

Search Engine Optimization for blogs involves configuring certain elements of your blog (Onpage SEO) and building links to your blog (Off Page SEO) using Social Media marketing tactics so that it could attract more traffic from the search engines.

One of the main things that will truly help is conducting Keyword Research so that you know what keywords your target market are typing in the Search Engines when they are looking for offers like yours. Once you have these keywords, you could then create your blog’s content around these keywords, to increase the likelihood for your blog posts to appear on the top of the search engines for those highly-searched-for keywords.

If you have a well-researched keyword list, and you use them as basis for deciding what to write about, your blog could have increased chances to attract more perpetual traffic at no cost.

5. Plug-ins That Help Drive Traffic, Increase Engagement, & Make Your Life Easier are Installed and Properly Configured

A Plug-in is a tool that adds a specific functionality to your blog, and you simply install it as an “add on”.

There are plug ins that help you get more traffic; there are ones that make it easier for your viewers to share your links to their friends/colleagues; There are Plug ins that help you build your list; there are plug ins that help boost the level of engagement with your audience; etc.

There are many plug ins available that you can add to your blog – and most of them are free.

However, many business blogs don’t have business-boosting plug-ins installed mainly because business owners hardly have any time to read up and keep up to date with these things.

But, by not using the best plug ins, you are leaving so much money on the table, because your blog could attract more traffic IF it has plug-ins that are configured properly to boost your blog’s traffic-pulling ability, engagement and conversion.

Source: State of Inbound Marketing Report - http://bit.ly/aewfHr

6. Elements That Measure Your Blog’s KPIs

If you are going to blog, treat it like any other marketing campaign – measure its effectiveness and your ROI.

Questions you might want to ask every month to measure your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are:

Is your traffic growing?
Are you getting new links? If so, from where?
What Social Media Platform is driving the most traffic to your blog? (and are they converting?)
Which Blog posts seem to be getting a lot of attention/ the least attention?
How many leads has the blog generated so far? And is the number of leads increasing? (i.e., is your subscriber number growing? How fast?)

You can use Statcounter or Google Analytics to gain intelligence about the effectiveness of your internet marketing efforts. From this you will be able to make informed decisions on how to best move forward.

If SEO and Social Media are going to be the major traffic strategy you’re going to utilize, I recommend you complement Google Analytics by using Market Samurai to track your links, your search engine rankings, and to reverse engineer your top competitors’ SEO strategies, etc.

Download Your Checklist

To download your Blog Buyer’s Guide Checklist click here.

How to Succeed with Your Business Blog

Of course, having an awesome-looking, kick-ass business blog set up and configured for you with is just the beginning. The real work begins when your web developer hand over your blog to you.

The success of your blog will really depend on you – the quality of your content, the frequency of your posts, the level of engagement you’re able to create with your audience, the amount of traffic it gets, and the effectiveness of your sales funnel.

So once you have it set up, you will then need to learn and implement:

How to write attention-grabbing blog titles (Titles are VERY important)
How to create engaging, remarkable content that gets passed on
How to drive traffic to your blog using SEO
How to drive traffic to your blog/offers using Social Media (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIN)
How to do Video Marketing
How to get more and more subscribers
How to build a solid relationship with your subscribers
How to convert your leads into buyers in a more streamlined fashion

If you’re feeling overwhelmed already, it is totally understandable.

We at Easisell recognize the challenges that businesses face when they first start marketing online. That’s why we are in the process of putting together some blog packages that meet the needs of small businesses and solo entrepreneurs.

Unlike other blog developers though, we won”t just stop at providing well-designed blog packages with all the ideal functionalities and elements, but we will also arm you with the basics of what you need to know about list building, traffic generation, Social Media, and of course, lead conversion!

To access more educational resources about how to really use Social Media Marketing and Business Blogging to generate leads for your business, click here.

Feel free to forward this blog post to business owners you know who still aren’t blogging. Share it on your Facebook profile, Tweet it or forward the link (Thank you!).

Business Blogs: The Complete Buyer’s Guide (Checklist Included!) is a post from: Business Unusual

Why It’s a Must to Build Your Personal Brand

Clément Yeung — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 16:16:28 +0000

Regardless of whether you’re online for business or personal use, you should be building your own personal brand now.

Photo courtesy of ÇP over at Flickr

I was browsing through the Third Tribe today (affiliate link – brilliant membership site) and I stumbled upon a recording of Chris Brogan talking about what it means to be an effective writer.

I could go on to talk about what he said, but I guess I’d rather ask you this question:

Why does Chris Brogan write in the first place?

Could it be that he simply loves it? Sure. Could it be that it has a massive impact on his bottom line at the end of each month? You had better believe it.

At some point in his career, Chris recognized that writing as much as he did and as on-point as he did worked to explode the influence he had on his audience and that by building a personal brand he was actually growing his businesses.

As a result of this, he is now able to generate thousands of dollars a month in revenue from his online ventures.

If you’re a social media fanatic like myself who can’t stay away from Facebook and Twitter, you’ve probably heard business experts like Gary Vaynerchuk talk about how personal branding is the now and the future of business.

If you have your own business (or you have ambitions to start your own business in the future) then you need to give this personal brand thing some serious thought.

How does Personal Branding work to give you more business?

Would you pay more attention to a faceless corporate email, or a Facebook friend who has spoken to you on more than one occasion?

There’s your answer. People don’t want to be shouted at; they want to be included in the sales process. They want to be acknowledged and heard and understood.

Your reputation goes a long way to determining the success of your business both now and in the future. The sooner you start crafting this, the quicker it will grow.

When you build your personal brand, what you’re essentially doing is becoming synonymous with your own values i.e. you are getting popular for all the right reasons.

Perhaps you want to be known for brilliant customer service or expert know-how. Whatever it is you think will benefit your business, you need to be driving a consistent message that props up those values.

If you do it right, people will remember you in their times of need.

Get the picture? Go and start branding yourself now!

Personal Branding Mini Action Plan

This is by no means a comprehensive marketing plan. What this hopefully do is give you a good framework of how to build your personal brand quickly and effectively.

Figure out what you stand for: Comic genius? Attention to detail? Trustworthiness? This will be your personality unless you decide to rebrand.
Get a blog: We all agree that having a message is extremely important. What’s just as important is having a place where people can engage with you about that message. There are many free blog platforms out there, but I say get it right the first time around by installing a private blog and you’ll have far fewer problems down the road as you grow your readership. Check out Free WordPress Site which is a service I’m launching soon with my business partners where you will be able to get a private blog installed free of charge (installation can cost as much as $1,000 dollars or more).
Set up your social media profiles: Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook. These are the most popular places to get started. There are many other social sites out there that you can tap into but before you create 101 profiles, you should know your audience and where they prefer hanging out so that you don’t waste your time.
Subscribe to the blogs and resources that will keep you up-to-date with what goes on in your industry: Yes, you need to be pushing a consistent message but your content doesn’t need to get old. Make sure you stay up to date with whatever it is that you do and people will come back to you to learn more.
Drive your message consistently and constantly… and you will be rewarded!

Remember – your reputation goes a long way to determining the success of your business both now and in the future. The sooner you start crafting this, the quicker it will grow.

————
Resources:

Follow Chris Brogan. Visit Third Tribe Marketing. Follow Gary Vaynerchuk. Visit Free WordPress Site. Follow me, Clement Yeung.

Why It’s a Must to Build Your Personal Brand is a post from: Business Unusual

Business Unusual #followfriday Recommendations Week 1

Business Unusual #followfriday Recommendations Week 1

Clément Yeung — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 18:46:59 +0000

This is the first of our weekly #followfriday recommendations series. #followfriday is a Twitter hashtag that is placed into tweets when users are recommending people to follow for that particular week.

For example, if I have noticed that Marj Galangco had been particularly interesting with her tweets one week, come that Friday I might tweet something like this:

#followfriday @marj_galangco – follow to find out about all the latest in the field of digital marketing and entrepreneurship. She’s also hot!

From now on, at Business Unusual, we’ll seek out the most active, insightful and exciting people during the week and put their names up here for you to see. These are hand-picked people who are going to give massive value to not just your business life, but also your personal life. Let’s begin with a bang shall we?

Disclaimer: The Third Tribe link is an affiliate link in Chris Brogan’s paragraph. The link for the Social Media Success Summit 2010 is also my affiliate link. Hey, I’m a Third Triber and a writer for socialmediaexaminer.com – what can I say?

Friday, April 9th

Umair Haque

@umairh – edge of your seat tweets, with his insightful and eye-opening commentary on marketing, economics and politics. Always pushing to educate and inspire positive change. Umair is the director of the Havas Media lab and writes for the Harvard Business Review.

Jonathan Fields

@jonathanfields – the definition of positivity. Jonathan’s tweets will keep you going throughout the day. Someone with a very interesting take on lifestyle design and entrepreneurship. Jonathan is the author of Career Renegade.

Mike Stelzner

@mike_stelzner – if you’re looking for facts about social media, Mike is your man. Not a day goes past without Mike giving incredibly valuable links to relevant, factual social media statistics. Mike is the executive director at Socialmediaexaminer.com and hosts the annual Social Media Success Summit.

Gary Vaynerchuk

@garyvee – full of passion and determination – this man knows what he wants and he’s out getting it – but along the way, he shows you how to do the same. An absolute MUST follow, business and individual alike! Gary runs the hugely successful WineLibrary.tv and heads up Vaynermedia with his brother A.J.

Steve Rubel

@steverubel – as senior vice president of Edelman Digital and a columnist at Adage and Forbes, Steve always has frequent tweets to keep you up to date in the public relations and technology industries. He is the first to adopt new technology and has a knack for giving a no-nonsense review!

Chris Brogan

@chrisbrogan – the best example I can find of a true “connector”. Chris is always out there linking together those who are searching to create something great with their resources. In fact, this post idea came from one of his tweets! He’s a NYTimes bestselling author and one of the organizers at the Third Tribe.

Business Unusual #followfriday Recommendations Week 1 is a post from: Business Unusual

Social Media Marketing Interview with Mike Stelzner

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1. Do Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

2. Build a Squeeze Page.

3. Get Your Blog On!

4. Get Social

Conclusion

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5 Key Benefits to Business Blogging

# 1 : Companies who blog get more traffic than those who don’t.

2. Generate More Leads – for Cheaper!

3. Higher Conversion (More Sales!)

4. Blogging is an Effective Tool for Thought Leadership

3 Common Excuses for Not Blogging

1. Blogging is Time-consuming

2. Blogging Requires You to Raise Your Game and Play BIG

3. You know how to get traffic and create engagement with your audience through other means.

Conclusion

Take Action Now

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Why You’re Killing Your Business By Not Having a Business Blog (10 Proofs You Must See)

Video Transcript:

Proof #1 : Shopping online is a daily part of many people’s lives nowadays.

Proof #2: The fact is that marketing as you know it is now dead.

﻿﻿Proof #3: Companies that Blog enjoy as much as 60% lower cost-per-lead

Proof #4: Social Media & Blogs are the fastest growing category in lead generation budgets

Proof #6: Blogging is deemed the most important internet marketing tool by many businesses

Proof #7: Blogging works for both B2B and B2C companies

Proof #8: Companies that blog acquire customers from blogging

Proof #9: There are 434% More Indexed Pages for Companies that Blog

Proof #10: 97% more inbound links for companies that blog

Conclusion

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Business Blogs: The Complete Buyer’s Guide (Checklist Included!)

1. Hosted in your own domain

2. Professionally Designed / Credible-Looking

3. Listbuilding Elements

3. Integrated with Social Media

4. Search Engine Optimized

5. Plug-ins That Help Drive Traffic, Increase Engagement, & Make Your Life Easier are Installed and Properly Configured

6. Elements That Measure Your Blog’s KPIs

Download Your Checklist

How to Succeed with Your Business Blog

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Why It’s a Must to Build Your Personal Brand

Regardless of whether you’re online for business or personal use, you should be building your own personal brand now.

How does Personal Branding work to give you more business?

Personal Branding Mini Action Plan

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Business Unusual #followfriday Recommendations Week 1

Friday, April 9th

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Proof #3: Companies that Blog enjoy as much as 60% lower cost-per-lead