In the last post “Pinterest…Pin Your Interests” emphasized on the importance of being visually stimulated. Once again we are going to continue to emphasize how important images are to every business, because we all know we like being visually stimulated.
This time, I am calling out all Iphone and Android owners to download Instagram if you have not already. Instagram has over 27 million users and have been purchased for 1 billion from Facebook. Instagram is a downloadable app and a social network that allows the users to take pictures, edit photos with different filters, and share it through Instagram. You can also share your pictures through Facebook or Twitter. Instagram works similar to Twitter, where you can use hash tags (#) so people can find your photos. In order to create conversations with people you can always use the ‘@username’ to directly create a conversation with someone.
So what makes photos such an important tool for marketing? Photos can be utilized within story telling. Story telling is the foundational strategy to developing and strengthening your brand. If you can tell a great story about your business through text, you can also create a story through images. Since taking photos are easy and instant, it is easier to share it with many people. HubSpot simply states it as “a great way for people to experience brands in a different way, and it elicits emotions that may not have been experienced through text alone.” Some big companies that are using Instagram to build their brand are: Starbucks, RedBull, Marc Jacobs, Tiffany & Co etc. When the big companies are using it, you know there is value to Instagram.
Instagram may or may not be your desired way to market your business, but depending on your business it can be very handy.
Ways to Instagram your Business:
1.) Day in the life of your company: Fans and customers are always curious what you do at work. They want to know what it’s like to work where you work.
2.) Company News: You can promote and advertise new blog posts, services and events on Instagram by taking a pictures of your new blog, or already made campaigns.
3.) Contests: There are fun ways to create contests on Instagram. You can always ask your fans to take a picture with your product and use a hash tag (#) on Instagram to get fans to participate in your contest.
4.) Events: If you create a hash tag (#) with your event. This can encourage people to take pictures and use that hash tag to spread the event pictures around.
So do some social media touch ups and use Instagram to strengthen your brand! Have fun Instagraming!
BNI Dynamo cleans up at the BNI Awards Of Excellence on Tuesday, April 24th, 2012.
One of the largest BNI Networking Groups in the Tri-Cities area, BNI Dynamo was awarded a Notable Networking Award to Preet Pall of The Bronson Group.
5 year honorable mentions for Preet Pall and Erica Cusumano of Dominion Lending Center, and a 10 year honorable mention to Paul Hendriks of Knowledge First Financial.
BNI (Business Network International) is a business and professional networking organization that offers members the opportunity to share ideas, contacts and most importantly to gain new business by the passing and receiving of referrals. With chapters throughout Canada and more than 5,000 chapters worldwide, BNI is the largest professional business networking organization.
BNI Dynamo meets every Wednesday in Port Moody at the Old Mill Boathouse from 11:45am – 1:30pm. Last year BNI Dynamo passed referrals that lead to over $400,000 in closed business.
We are currently looking for these professions to join our group:
If you are interested in checking out one of our meetings please contact Lindsay for more information. 778-229-5383
If you are all about visuals, Pinterest is the social media site to be on. It is a large social media platform that gathers everyone’s interests in one place. This is the perfect place to be if you want to know the current and up and coming trends. Their mission is to “connect everyone in the world through the ‘things’ they find interesting.”
Pinterest is beautifully organized by its pin-board/grid type layout which makes it visually stimulating.
Pinterest home page
It is easy to use and allows you to share your hobbies, interest, events and more. Pinterest provides you with a ‘pin it’ button to add to your bookmarks. This allows you to ‘pin’ any image, blog, or website directly onto Pinterest. You can also create different categories that suit your interests, plus you also have the option to share your ‘pins’ on Twitter or Facebook. Another cool and handy thing about Pinterest is that the images are a direct link to the original source.
Pin Board Categories
My experience with Pinterest has been more than awesome. I must say I’m pretty much addicted to it because I can find everything that I like on one site. What’s even better is that people are very active and supportive on Pinterest. My first ‘pin’ ended up getting more than 140 repins within less than an hour, 84 likes with more than 30 follows, in one day. I must say, it’s pretty liberating to see that people ‘repin,’ like and follow you because they also have the same interest.
Here are a few reason why you should use Pinterest?
So, I suggest you get yourself started with Pinterest, explore and connect with people who are interested in the same things as you. For businesses, I suggest you to experiment with different strategies that can drive in new customers or traffic to your website. Pinterest allows room for you to be creative with your branding approach. Until next time, Go and PIN your INTEREST.
Maintaining your brand is important for every company. There are many social media platforms out there that give you the ability to connect with your target audience/customers. Your engagement is important to produce happy, stimulated, loyal and engaged customers.
When you begin to establish your social media presence, first thing first:
Community is important
Second thing:
Content
Some Social Media Sites to get your hands on:
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
4Square
Instagram
Storify
Google +
There are other options, such as, SEO which will help expose your company, but imagine having both SEO and a strong social media presence together. Your brand and company will increasingly experience
For more check out: Check out 10 top Execs share their social media secrets
For all you social media addicts out there, Storify is another social media platform to add to your list. Storify is similar to Hoot Suite where you can organize all your social media, but Storify has one extra element than Hoot Suite. In Storify, you can create a story that will organize all of your social media platforms. How do you exactly create a story in Storify? Well, Storify is essentially like blogging but you have access to all your social media where you can implement certain Facebook comments, tweets, videos etc, into your blog directly.
The pros about Storify are:
The Cons:
(but that’s not any different than learning the new Facebook timeline)
If you love to write and your social media seems a bit cluttered or unorganized, then Storify will help. I believe having a strong story attached to your 140 tweet or your Facebook statuses will have a bigger impact to your readers and followers.
Longevity Graphics has been building websites and implementing internet marketing strategies since 2002. Our competitive advantage is the experience that we bring to the table, the extensive knowledge of Google Webmaster standards, ranking factors, conversion optimization, and the personalized customer service that we provide to all of our clients; big and small.
When working with our clients on an internet marketing campaign, we utilize many different platforms to get the best results for the unique needs of the client. 3 platforms that we almost always recommend include:
Google Adwords is a pay-per-click option that allows our clients to drive immediate targeted traffic to their websites. We can control the placement of the ads (whether you come up first, second, third or on the side), the cost of the clicks and the daily/monthly budget and target the ads geographically. This is a great platform to start receiving great results when implemented correctly. If you have tried implementing a Google Adwords campaign and failed to see results that were bringing you a return on your investment, it is worth speaking to an expert who knows how to optimize your campaign.
Google Places is a great way to target geographical search queries interested in working with a business with a specific geographical region. The benefit to Google Places is it’s FREE, the listings out rank organic results and your customers can add reviews to your listing which can help to promote the benefits of dealing with your company.
In the example below, you can see that The Last Door is coming up for the search querie “Recovery Centre For Men New Westminster” within the Google Places section of the search results page which is out ranking the organic search results.
Google+ is an interesting new platform that we are urging our clients to take advantage of. Google is starting to display Google + profiles within the search results pages (seen below). Not a lot of companies have started using this platform for marketing and you can really get a jump up on your competitors by utilizing this platform.
In conclusion, when developing an internet marketing strategy don’t forget to utilize these great Google platforms to help boost your exposure. Gaining targeted traffic in all areas of the internet will help to develop your brand, increase your leads and at the end of the day you will see an increase in your return on investment
Seeing hash tags (#), re tweets (RT) and a whole bunch of @usernames within twitter may seem confusing, so why is it there? It is there to create conversations on twitter. Here are tips and reasons why it is important to create a conversation on Twitter.
Social media can help you with search engine optimization(SEO) because it creates exposure and can direct traffic to your website, although, it seems like a lot of work and dedication. Don’t feel discouraged if you don’t have the time. There are experts out there that can provide social media services and other SEO services so that will increase your companies exposure.
If you’ve done any SEO, you know it’s all about keywords. Once you establish what your site is about, you do keyword research, keeping an eye out for low competition, high traffic keywords you can take advantage of. Then, you implement your keywords throughout your site, trying to fit them organically into the content of the page as well as in the meta tags.
Writing or editing content to include keywords can be tricky. Overloading a page with keywords is dangerous, however, as it might be considered spamming. This is dangerous because it can result in a penalty to your ranking.
Then there’s the ‘keywords’ meta tag. If you don’t know its history, then it probably seems like an essential meta tag. The truth about the keywords meta tag is that it’s not only deprecated, but using it can actually benefit your competition. All you really need to know to be justified in rejecting this tag is that Google doesn’t support it. When the keywords meta tag was used by search engines, it was abused by crafty marketers who stuffed it with unrelated (but popular) search terms to boost the rank of the site. It’s clear why a meta tag that allowed the manipulation of search engines had to go.
You aren’t penalized by Google for using the keywords meta tag. However, you are essentially giving away your keyword research to other people who are doing SEO for a competing site. Right-click and view source – that’s all they have to do. Of course, if someone really wants to figure out what keywords have been used on a site, they can go through each page and read through all of the copy and meta tags. The difference is that using the keywords meta tag makes it so easy to copy that they won’t be able to resist.
Pay-Per-Click/Google Adwords Landing Page Recommendations
When designing the landing pages for the pay-per-campaigns like Google Adwords or a Yahoo/Bing campaign it is good idea to start by designing 2 completely different designs (1 short page, 1 long page). You provide all of the most important information above the fold. (The fold is everything that is on screen without having to scroll.)
Important elements include:
Above the Fold:
Below the Fold:
Landing Page Testing
Once you have launched a pay-per-click campaign, it is a good idea to test certain aspects of the page to identify what your audience will respond best to in order to achieve the best conversion results. You can easily test different aspects of your landing page by implementing Google Website Optimizer. Here is what I recommend testing:
Building websites and landing pages for conversion optimization is something that I love to do and have developed skills in for many years. If you are creating a landing page and would like a second opinion on what you have developed, I am always happy to give you my opinion, so send me an email. [email protected]
You’ve probably been to a Facebook page where you’ve seen fan-gating (or ‘like-gating’) taking place. Fan gating directs non-fans to a specific tab on the page, usually featuring an image and some text to entice the visitor to ‘like’ the page in order to get more information or access to a promotion. Take a look at the page we built for 2nd Look Day Spa as an example.
It’s important to be clear about what the visitor will gain access to by clicking the like button. No incentive, no clicks. Arrows are also an essential element to draw focus to the like button.
Once the visitor has become a fan of the page, they are directed to another tab on the page, or a new page can load within the iframe. This is where you have the information or promotion that you promised on the before-like page. In this case, 2nd Look Day Spa is offering a printable coupon.
Although there are numerous apps that incorporate fan gating for your Facebook pages, most paid apps charge a monthly fee to use them, and the free apps will include a ‘powered by…’ credit below your Facebook page. Your page – and by extension, your cause or business – will look more professional if you have a crafty web developer build your fan gated Facebook page for you.
Fan gating can quickly increase the amount of targeted fans of your Facebook page in a short time if you use the right incentive and proper design. Gaining fans from your target audience is a self-explanatory benefit – you want to reach out and engage with as many as possible. It’s silly to not take advantage of fan gating if you already plan on having a Facebook page. Contact us if you’d like to have some Facebook marketing done for you!