Showing posts with label Internet Marketing Tips. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Internet Marketing Tips. Show all posts

Basic Internet Marketing Tips To Make Money At Home


These days, there are hundreds of styles and steps to make money at home. Those styles can help you make an income and can take your online business to a success. However, the problem is that we tend to do a lot of things at the same time until we lose focus.

What you have to do to easily make money at home is to stay focus on each step that you take. Then, you have to decide on the project that you have chosen and stay there until it is finished.
A lot of people abruptly become too excited to make money at home. The fact that it is easy and there’s a possibility that they could even earn a lot. To make money at home, you need to plan things first, don’t jump on the first product that offers you to become an instant overnight millionaire. You can make money at home by looking deeply into the opportunities that is coming across you. Moreover, you have to know a bit of the basics of internet marketing.

You don’t need to be an expert. You need the basics of internet marketing to make money at home. Some of these areas are, knowing some basic “html, ftp, codes, registering domain names, hosting.” Another important thing to make money at home is to know some of the techniques to make your online business stress-free. Without knowing some of these techniques, you’ll make yourself frustrated.
You don’t need to be an above average person to be successful. To make money at home, you need to finish one project after another, you have to be patient, you must work hard and have the desire to achieve your goal in internet marketing.

As a matter of fact, it isn’t easy on the first time, but once you have started to do well on to make money at home, you have set everything up properly, things really get so easy. But then again, you must work hard for it and be determined.
One thing you also have to remember is not to treat your business as a hobby. You do a lot of hard work for it. Business is always a business and you have to treat it as such. You will have to invest time and money to make money at home. You will also sometimes feel that you are getting nowhere. However, to make money at home, you should not just give up.

You have to begin with picking a product that will teach you the basic internet marketing to make money at home.
If you want to be successful like the others, you have to endure all the problems you may encounter face challenges.

Posted By Waqas A.11:24

16 Questions Critical To Starting An Internet Business

It is usually overwhelming for a prospective internet marketer at the point of starting an internet business.What with the many aspects he has to consider.


1. Does it matter whatever domain name I pick?

2. How much should I invest in this online business initially before it starts generating revenue?

3. What advertising sources do I invest in and which do I get free?

4. What website type do I use – static or dynamic?

5. What online marketing training program do I join to put me through? Which are the best of these online marketing training programs?

6. Which forums do I hang out at where I can find my colleagues in a similar niche? Which are the best of these forums?

7. How do I get my website set up? Do I design it from scratch, use templates or even go for an already completely set up website?

8. What plethora of internet marketing tools and resources am I required to keep and utilize?

9. On completion of my website set up, how do I subsequently keep updating it? Update myself or outsource?

10. If I learn to update my website, what software or web platform is most ideal for me to get this done?

11. What blogging platform do I use – blogger or wordpress?

12. Do I start with just one internet affiliate program and after making some progress begin to add others?

13. Of the available internet affiliate programs, which do I join?

14. How will the internet affiliate programs I intend selecting pay me my commissions?

15. How fast will I start to make money online with affiliate program?

16. Can my country’s nationals fit perfectly into the internet affiliate programs I intend getting involved with?


As you can see, these are all valid questions that arise in starting an internet business and I can go on and on.
It should by now be apparent that there are so many other necessary questions that you cannot even imagine, given the depth of your training and experience in internet marketing as at now.
It is thus best you seek guidance in starting your own small business, as some mistakes made at the outset cannot be corrected later on, along your internet marketing journey.
The objective of pointing out a microcosm of the necessary questions that should arise in starting an internet business therefore, is for you to get assistance before it is too late.

This assistance is best with an online marketing training program and many are free.
When you join such a program, it is like killing many birds with one stone, as you discover that most of these questions get addressed and you get tailored towards achieving your objective.
Of course, you have to join the best of these online marketing training programs which has the characteristics of a good online marketing training program, to get value, as there abound many out there that are mere theoretical programs which will not serve your purpose.

The questions identified above are not theoretical such as can be addressed in an e-book or a theoretical course but requires a multidimensional practical approach which is best given in a good online marketing training program.

Let us quickly drill down to just one of the above questions – How do I get my website set up? Do I design from scratch, use templates or even go for already completely set up money making websites?
When you are new to internet marketing and web designing, I will advise you to go for pre-setup money making websites as there are a lot of things to take into consideration in setting up a website for internet marketing purposes such as on-site search engine optimization.

It is also for this reason that it is advisable you get money making websites from an online marketing training program rather than just have a web designer design one for you as many things that are internet marketing related have to be taken into consideration if your website is to perform optimally in the search engines, which you may not know contributes about 70% of traffic to websites on the internet.
Again, perhaps you do not know yet, traffic is the lifeblood of any internet marketing business, as your website is as good as dead without traffic.

Is it any surprise therefore that in starting an internet business, you have to carefully select an online marketing training program to lead you along the right path?

Posted By Waqas A.11:20

5 Focus Factors To Use For Your Online Business

One of the biggest game killers for an online business is lack of focus. The internet is jam packed with distractions and time wasting activities. It is easy to waste hours doing useless things online without even realizing it.There are millions of websites and people trying to get your attention and that can be very distracting, if you let it. The key is to stay 100% focused on your business and perform only those tasks that will move you forward.After wasting hours and hours of my own time online, I decided to get serious and stay focused on my business. As you can imagine, it has helped me a ton and it will help you as well.


1. Stick To A Designated Action Plan
It is super important that you have an action plan for your online business. It is not a good idea to get online without a gameplan. If you get online without a clear idea of what you are going to be doing, you will just get lost in a never ending sea of distractions.Having an action plan will help you to navigate through all of the online distractions, so that you can focus on what is important for your business. Having an action plan
will also help you to stay more consistent with your efforts.


2. Don’t Check Your E-mail More Than Once Per Day
As you probably already know, checking your e-mail can be a very big distraction. If you have to check it more than once per day that is fine, as long as you limit yourself.
It is a better idea to check e-mail only after you have completed all your tasks for the day. This way it won’t distract you.Almost all e-mails can wait. In fact, you could probably check your e-mail 2-3 times a week and be perfectly fine. The trick is to eliminate your distractions and e-mail is a big distraction for most people.


3. Set Goals
It seems like everyone is always talking about the importance of having goals. Well goals are very important for your online business because they are going to help you to stay focused. You should have daily goals that are part of your action plan.When you are setting goals you should remember to set short term, medium, and long term goals for yourself. This is going to keep you on track to achieving what you want.


4. Keep Track Of Your Progress
It is also good to look at the progress that you have been having in your business. Being online makes it very easy to get all of the statistics you need to see. Google Analytics will give you all sorts of helpful statistics that you can go back to often.This will give you a good idea of what is working and it will also motivate you to get more good results.


5. Have A Clear Vision
This is almost like having goals for your business, except it is a little bit different. Goals are great for pushing yourself to reach new pinnacles of success. Having a clear vision means knowing where you are going.
There are so many ways to make money online that it can be confusing some times. You should know exactly how you are going to monetize your efforts and then stick to it. It will not be effective for you to try to make money a million different ways.


In Conclusion
Doing these 5 things above have dramatically changed my productivity online, and they will do the same for you if you apply them. There is no substitute for focused, consistent action in any business online, or off.

Posted By Waqas A.11:18

Affiliate Marketing Super Tricks

Affiliate Marketing such as CPA, CPS, CPL programs are only paid when a specific action is performed, however, affiliate programs can be really a good source of earning online. This action might be filling a form, a poll, a purchase or register, but regardless, you are not paid until you’ve lead your readers to act.

Here are Top 5 super tricks based on the concept above for affiliate marketing success.


1. Be Trustful and helpful
Think of affiliate ads as additional resources that complement your content. Give value to your content by making it trustful, helpful, useful and informative.
Readers are savvy. They know an affiliate link when they see one. If you break their trust by promoting a product you don’t believe in or take advantage of their visit with too many ads, they will leave and never come back.
It is your repeat visitors that will drive traffic. They are the ones who will give you linkbacks, spread the word, and recommend your site as the go-to place for valuable content. You need to build a relationship based on genuine content.
Don’t put up a list of your recommend products, hoping people will click on the affiliate linksand purchase the products. Take some time to write a detailed review, and use affiliate adsto point them in the right direction if they decide to act on your information. That’s whataffiliate ads are for.


2. Get to Know Your Audience and Customer
The most successful way to use affiliate programs
is to anticipate and meet the needs of your readers. Consider what are you providing that they are looking for and why they coming? Make sure the affiliate products you are promoting provide a solution to your audience’s problems. The more relevant the ads are to your readers, the more likely they will use them.
If you are writing about pets, don’t put up affiliate ads for computer just because the people who are coming to read commentary or get stats for their favorite pets aren’t thinking about those things when they’re on your site.


3. Be Transparent
Honesty and full disclosure is a necessary part to building a loyal reader base. Always disclose your affiliations. Your readers will appreciate your honesty, and will feel better about contributing to your earnings. If they sense that you are being less than honest about your affiliations, they are savvy enough to bypass your link and go directly to the vendor just to avoid giving you referral credit.


4. Try Different Programs and Select Carefully
If one particular program doesn’t seem to be working for you, try another one. Take the time to go through all the different options for products or services available through the programs. Put some thought into which products or services your readers may need or like. Also, change the ads around often, try different ones, and use different graphics and text to see which are the most effective.Affiliate programs don’t look the same. They offer different products, services, and payment structures. Some programs will have a lifetime payout on sales while others will limit it to 30-90 days. Some programs allow much more flexibility in the types of ad units available, as well as colors and design so it fits better on your site’s layout. Also, check your favorite vendors to see if they run their own affiliate program.


5. Write Timeless and Relevant Content
If visitors come across your older content first, and find that it offers dated information, they will leave right away. Of course, information moves forward, so relevant content changes quickly. You can make your content timeless simply by adding links to your updated articles on your old ones.Many platforms allow you to show “most recent” or “most popular” or “related articles” on every page, so no matter how old the article is, it will always show access to your new ones. Your old content can make money for you indefinitely.Keep up to date on the latest offerings of your affiliate programs. New ad units, advertisers, and tools are constantly being added to improve usability and be more visually appealing. Small changes go a long way in motivating action by readers. You may be left out in the dust by being complacent with your strategy.

Posted By Waqas A.11:14

Top 5 Web Design Mistakes Small Businesses Make


If you’re a small business owner, your website is the central hub of your company, and it’s a pivotal part of your marketing and branding.
Potential customers visit your site specifically for its content, meaning its appearance and usability are critical to its success and how those users view your company. However, getting your web design wrong can have a negative impact on your business.
Here are 5 common web design mistakes you must avoid to create a great user experience and grow your bottom line.

1. Poor Navigation

Many small businesses fail to make navigation a priority, but without careful attention to how people navigate your site, you could unintentionally be creating a frustrating experience for any potential visitor. People visit your site for specific information, and if they cannot find it they will quickly go elsewhere, leaving with the impression that your business is disorganized in more than just its website.
A good navigation structure should be seamless and will keep visitors on your site longer, which means potentially more readers, subscribers, sales or leads — whichever is your primary objective.
Website navigation affects both usability and accessibility, so it’s important to make it a primary concern. Most websites and blogs use common navigational techniques that are expected by the average visitor. The pages and sections of the site should be easy and logical for visitors to maneuver. Don’t make your visitors think about how to navigate your site; it should be effortless and natural.
There are several principles you can follow to create an effective navigation structure:
  • Use icons to aid navigation. They’re both visually appealing and easy to use and understand.
  • Create logical groups of related links, with the most important links on the top-level navigation bar and functional (dashboard, account, settings, etc.) and legal (copyright, privacy, terms) located elsewhere.
  • Provide location information so users know where they are on any given page and how to proceed to another area of the website. This can be achieved by using Breadcrumb navigation.

2. No Clear Calls To Action

The fundamental error of many small business websites is the lack of a clear call to action. We’ve all seen bland small-business brochure websites with nothing but endless descriptive paragraphs. If you aren’t leading users to commit to an action (buy a product, contact you or subscribe, for example), then you are losing them.
Driving traffic to your website is important, but that traffic is useless if your primary call to action is a plain “click here” link buried in a sea of text. Call-to-action buttons are a great way to grab the user’s attention, and these buttons can be the key to higher conversions. Investing time and consideration into creating successful calls to action can help guide users and address their needs while achieving your own business goals.
It’s important to keep the following best practices in mind when creating an optimal call to action:
  • The design of a call to action can be broken down into 4 simple elements — size, shape, color, and position. Each plays a vital part in determining how effective the call to action is in directing the user.
  • Don’t make your users work or think, or they’ll leave. It’s not that they aren’t smart, it’s that they want access to information quickly without spending unnecessary time searching for it.
  • Don’t overdo it with multiple, competing calls to action on every page. Decide what your primary target is and then define a clear objective per page. Your content should have answered, “What’s in it for me?” and your call to action should now answer, “What do I do now?”

3. Color & Contrast

Color and contrast aren’t usually high up on the list of priorities for a small business owner when it comes to creating a website. But it should be, because if your website text does not have sufficient contrast compared to its background, people will have difficulty reading your content, especially people with poor vision or color-blindness.
Aside from plain readability, color and contrast are important because they can be used to create visual interest and direct the attention of the user. It can equally be effective in organizing and defining the flow and hierarchy of a page, and it’s therefore an essential principle to pay attention to during the design process. Here are some tips:
  • Using a free a Color Contrast tool (which conforms to accepted standards) you can easily check to see how the contrast on your website measures up.
  • Research how major sites use color and contrast to improve readability and highlight specific sections, and use this knowledge to experiment with color schemes.
  • One of best ways to enhance contrast is by creating size differences between elements, making some things appear larger than others. This works especially well within a minimal color scheme, and it means you don’t have to necessarily rely on color.

4. Content, Content, Content

People visit your website for its content, and how that is structured is a huge factor in its success or failure. Unfortunately, an overwhelming number of small businesses get so caught up in overloading the user with information that they overlook how that information is presented.
Most people do not read unless it’s absolutely necessary, and they prefer to scan through information quickly to get to the points of interest. This is why it’s so important to establish a strong visual content hierarchy so users can quickly scan your site and sifting through relevant information. A logical content hierarchy also acts as a guide through each page and creates a more enjoyable user experience.
So when focusing on your content, it’s best to keep in mind these three tips:
  • White space is possibly the most important factor to consider. It will allow the user to focus on the meaningful content within each section.
  • Break up lengthy pieces of information into digestible blocks of text, utilizing headings, sub-headings, bullets, blockquotes and paragraphs.
  • Readable content is important, so use a good line height that is large enough to make content scannable. Margins and letter spacing also need to be taken into consideration.
When talking about content, spelling and grammar cannot be underestimated.

5. Clutter

We all know at least one small business website that seems to include everything but the proverbial kitchen sink. Many small business owners tend to cram as much as they can onto a single page — the end result is a busy, cluttered and unreadable page.
The more extraneous items there are on a web page, the more unprofessional it looks, and it becomes overwhelming, confusing and distracting for the user. A cluttered website will also affect traffic because visitors won’t return if they can’t understand or follow the content, which leads to low traffic, a high bounce rate and possibly a poor Page Rank.
Clutter also applies to images. Too many can be a huge distraction and just plain annoying. Images should be used to illustrate, capture attention and guide the user where required.
Follow these guidelines for a more streamlined visitor experience:
  • Challenge every item on each page and ask, “Does it really need to be there? Does it serve a specific purpose? Can I live without it?”
  • The key is to aid the visitor in finding the information they’re looking for, so make sure to differentiate between areas of content, advertisements and promotions.
  • Prioritize your content and decide what is the most important to your visitor and potential customer — and sell it well.
Even the greatest content can become lost in a mess of words and graphics, so de-cluttering is essential.
These are just five web design mistakes that many small businesses make. What other mistakes have you noticed on small business websites?

Posted By Waqas A.12:16

Making Profit From CPA Affiliate Marketing

Modern marketers knew the secret of affiliate marketing. If you want your company to be known globally and make good business, affiliate marketing is the best. Strategically, companies have their products marketed through affiliate marketing. Cost per Action or known now as CPA is an unbeatable market strategy in advertising via the net.


Featuring products and business on sites is known as marketing through CPA! There are lots of innovations in marketing and many software products are sold to advertise your products, but CPA is a great way of earning lots, as it is efficient in earning you points and the payment is dependable, every time you sell one of the products online. Advertisers pay the website owner or the publisher every time a site visitor eventually buys the advertised goods on line. Affiliate managers will gladly assist you on how to sell through their existing affiliate marketing assistance and you can also view lots of other web partners whom you can learn from!
You can experiment on how to use CPA on your site. It’s good to place advertising ads on your webs, by connecting with social networks to increase site traffic. It’s good to read on tips to maximize traffic and profit.
It is important to place ads where you customer can easily see your products, so they can easily get attracted and click on it.
Choose ads which you think can attract majority of your site visitors. It’s good to put in relevant advertisements on your site, so it can attract clicks on your advertised products and eventually buy them.
Most internet marketers and webhosts offer CPA affiliate marketing. It is important to have your landing page really attractive to make your site visitor eventually express interest in the product you are recommending. The affiliate managers and marketers assist you on how to make your CPA affiliate internet marketing work, that’s how to increase page relevance and increase site visits.
It is important to make your site a possible income generating site to make your affiliate marketing service really earn you lots.

Posted By Waqas A.08:29

6 Ways To Make Your Blog A Success ~ Must Read


6 Ways To Make Your Blog A Success

The whole point of having a blog is to get traffic to it, and as difficult as this may seem, your best option is to work at it. The World Wide Web can be likened to a bottomless pit of information, with an endless flurry of users trawling it, day in and day out.  To get these users to consider your corner of the web, by which I mean to drive more traffic to your blog, there are a number of things that need to be done, things that cannot be avoided and have to be done with a generous dose of passion.
It is heartbreaking to see the number of blogs out there that have excellent content but can’t seem to succeed. They have rotten rankings and fail miserably. Don’t let same fate plague your blog, kick back and crack the Technorati 1000 by getting your house in order.
1. Make Your Blog Successful Or Die Trying: First thing to remember is to never give up, to keep on trucking, or rather writing, and remember that if the content is crap, no marketing effort will make it a success. No one starts a blog just for the hell of it, ensue that you have something to say. More publicity, promotion and, consequently, traffic will come your way, but only if the content is truly great. If you cannot write, get a writer to do it for you. There are loads for freelance sites online, where a blogger will write for you at a small cost.
2. Be An Expert: You know the old saying jack of all trades, master of none, become the master of your subject matter.Read and learn; write with intelligence and knowledge about your subject; with experience, your reputation will grow and people will seek you out. This will attract more comments in your blog, which can help you get cross promoted; always respond to your comments too, it is vitally important.
3. Be A Better Publisher: Publish full feeds particularly on controversial matters, this gets the attention of content scrapers which re-post your content and creates traffic. Use Feedburner too as this will allow you to find out how many people are subscribing to a particular feed.
4. First Impressions Always Count: Do you remember your mother telling you this? Well she was right and design matters. Set yourself apart from every other blogger with your design and be serious about it. If you cannot afford a professionally developed blog, then learn about photoeditors and CSS. You can also tweak your Wordpress theme, your blog, when done, has to scream out loud to people, READ ME AND LEAVE COMMENTS. A professional theme will get more readers to your blog.
5. Get Up-To-Date With SEO: Find out what makes it tick and what will make your blog tick too. Your blog needs to be tricked out with unique title tags, and keyword rich headlines to enjoy complete SEO wellness.
6. Be A Good Host: Host contests, polls and other interactive features to encourage even more participation in your blog. Make them fun or funny, controversial or challenging, but keep your readers interested. Your little corner of the blogging happy-hunting-ground needs to buzz with a life of its own. Make your blog successful, it will pay dividends.
Get your blog in order using these six tips, then set about promoting it using the prevalent internet marketing methods like social bookmarking and other means of social media,  and you’ll find your blog flooded with traffic in no time.

Posted By Waqas A.19:02

4 Indispensable Tips On Viral Marketing


If your goal is to promote your business, whether it is online or offline, you cannot do better than to rely on viral marketing. Viral marketing, in case you were worried, doesn’t involve viruses; the term alludes to the super-fast rate at which viruses spread. Viral marketing involves relying on techniques that will help spread your (promotional) message through a ‘viral process’ and reach a web-wide audience within a short amount of time.
The success of your viral marketing efforts depends on how expertly you play your social graph to use as a medium though with to push your message. However, if your message finds no takers, it can hardly go viral, which counts on people indulging in some furious sharing, and no one shares bad content. So, it would be a good idea to remember that a successful round of viral marketing needs both good content and some decent social networking skills.
Here are some handy dandy tips that you can fallback on in your hour of viral marketing need. (I love puns, can you tell?)
1. Giveaways. Everyone loves free things. Free makes everyone happy. I could delve into the exhaustive scientific studies that attest to these statements, but really, there is no need for it. The giveaway model always works, it works off the Internet, it works equally well on it too. You can offer ebooks or Internet tools, or even sample mp3s if your music is what you wish to promote, and set the ball rolling. Just ensure what you give away is not sub-standard junk that you won’t use yourself. If people like the stuff, they’ll share, talk about it and generate interest in your business.
2. Videos. Create a really cool video about your business and upload it on YouTube and your site. You just need to take a look at the most popular viral marketing examples till-date to see the importance of this exhortation. Videos are very viral-friendly, so using them as a medium can almost guarantee you viral success. And it wouldn’t hurt if they are funny too.

3. Social Media. Work your Network. Today, it is fairly impossible to hope to market virally without using social media. That very fact has also made viral marketing far easier than it was before. Ensure you build a strong social network, then pass your message on to the social sphere through your connection. You can also use it as an avenue to enhance your other efforts too, share your YouTube video on Facebook or retweet a link on Twitter.

4. Visibility. Create a buzz. Then sustain it. The idea is to have people talking about your business. All the time. To constantly reside in their collective conscience. Memes are a great way to create viral buzz, the Armageddon meme started by the promoters of the movie 2012 was successful in generating so much viewer interest that it raked in over 500 million in profits no one was really surprised. If creating a meme is beyond you, write a post on a current topic, take a slightly controversial stance, then promote it on various social sites. That will sure get people talking.
When done the right way, mostmarketing efforts on social media has the potential to turn viral. What distinguishes a success from a failure, in most cases, is the initial momentum it manages to build. A slow build up doesn’t a viral campaign make. So, follow the tips mentioned above and learn to launch your viral marketing campaign right off the bat.

Posted By Waqas A.18:59

How engaging is your Facebook page?


How engaging is your Facebook page? When people land on your page, do they feel inspired to engage with you, or do they simply “like” your page and never return?
Getting someone to “like” your page is simply the first step in a long two-way relationship. It’s not the end goal. Once someone has identified themselves as a fan of your organization, that’s when the real work begins.
Here’s how to engage your Facebook fans.
Aim to be Interactive
The idea is to pull your users into engaging with you. The dialogue should be a two way street. Engaging users isn’t just about putting out great content, it’s also about pulling the user into interacting with you in meaningful ways.
A lot of brands make the mistake of just sending content at their user in a one-way street. Instead, aim to be interactive. Get your user base involved.
Ask Questions
One easy way to get your user base involved is to ask questions. Multiple choice questions as well as open ended questions both end well.
The questions can be related to your market or current events, they could be personal or they could just be random and off the cuff. Experiment with different kinds of questions to see what your user base responds best to.
Create Polls and Quizzes
There are many, many tools you can use online to create interesting polls and quizzes.
Polls and quizzes are a fast and easy way for people to interact with you and with one another. The quiz should ideally be very short, only about 10 to 15 questions long. It should feel like a fun and entertaining thing to do, rather than a survey.
Try Hosting a Contest
To take user engagement to a totally different level, try hosting a contest with a juicy prize. 
There’s nothing that generates user engagement quite like a good contest. A good contest will bring people around a common cause and can get a ton of people to really excited and passionate about your brand.
If you can, try to tie your contest back to your Facebook page. For example, make it so that whoever is winning is posted on your Facebook page every night, so friends of your fans will naturally join your page to see if their friend is winning.
Should You Get Personal?
Getting personal with your fans is one effective way to engage your Facebook fans. If your brand allows for it, you should absolutely go for it.
Instead of just keeping your status updates business related, try asking your readers random things about their personal lives. “What did you want to be when you grew up?” or “Have you seen Avatar yet?” can help build rapport and commonality, even when they have nothing to do with your target market.
Share Meaningful Content
Another way you can engage your fans is to regularly share meaningful videos, news articles and content pieces.
A good percentage of these content pieces should be created and published by you. However, there’s no harm in also linking to other people’s content if you believe your audience will love it.
Don’t overdo the content linking; but as long as what you’re linking to is relevant and your user base is getting value out of it, you’re good to go.
Comment on News Events
One area that often gets a lot of people engaged is news items. If there’s a hot news item going around, comment on it with your own thoughts and opinions. Then ask your audience what they thought.
Make sure to avoid political discussion however, as that’s an easy way to alienate people.
These are a few different ways you can engage your Facebook fans. Get creative. There isn’t a set formula when it comes to Facebook. The key is getting people to communicate in a two-way street, so they feel part of your brand’s experience, rather than just being talked at.

Posted By Waqas A.06:57

4 Fundamental Building Blocks of Successful Social Media Contests


A good social media contest can bring in tons of new visitors, build excitement among your existing user base and create buzz in the industry as a whole. Pulling one off successfully requires a lot of planning. Just one or two mistakes can not only bring down your whole contest, but even put your company in jeopardy.
Here are four of the most important things to know before starting your social media contest.
#1 – The Legalities
When you’re doing an online contest, you should almost definitely have a lawyer look over your legal disclaimers and the contest as a whole to make sure you’re fully compliant.
Different states have different laws about what you can and can’t do in a contest. Sweepstakes can never require a purchase. Contests that are based on skill or participation have special rules as well.
Your contest will need to have appropriate disclaimers. These should be written by a lawyer. It’s important to realize that you can actually get sued if you don’t have your legalities down.
#2 – Understand Cheating
Cheating is an often under looked aspect of online contests. If there’s real monetary value to the prizes you’re offering, there’s a very good chance you’ll attract people who won’t play by the rules.
Forms of cheating include using proxy servers to vote on their own submission, hiring out voting or other processes overseas or even downright hacking.
Start by studying how contest players game various different kinds of systems. Then implement basic protections, such as one vote per IP, cookies to track users, etc.
Finally, check your logs regularly to see if there’s any suspicious activity. For example, if you suddenly see 2,000 users an hour coming from Vietnam voting on one user, you might start to get a little suspicious.
#3 – A Prizing Strategy
Having a great prize is at the heart of every successful contest. Your prize has to be good enough that people will spend time, put in energy and enroll their friends all for the chance to win.
If you want your contest to really take off, you’re going to have to have prizes that are worth at least hundreds, if not thousands of dollars.
Popular generic prizes include iPads, computers, gaming consoles, around the world tickets, vacations and cash cards.
Industry specific prizes tend to do really well. For example, if you’re in the fishing market, give away top of the line fishing rods worth hundreds of dollars. If you’re in the hotel market, give away a free 5 night stay at your hotel.
If your prizes are great, you could make a lot of other mistakes and still succeed. With bad prizes, you could do everything else right and people still won’t be excited about your contest.
#4 – A Viral Strategy
Finally, you need a strong strategy that gets people to pass your contest along to their friends. If you’re running the contest on social media, you need a strategy to get people sharing and linking your contest. 
How do you make that happen?
There are a few different ways you can do this. One common way is to use liking as a voting mechanism. In order to vote for their friends, people first need to come to your page and “Like” it.
Another common method is to post the results on a page that’s only visible to people who’ve liked your page. That way, if people want to follow their friends’ progress, they need to first like your page.
You can also center the contest around how many other people you can get to join the contest.
Spend some time thinking about the viral strategy of your contest. Why would people want to post your contest to their friends? How can you increase the virality of your contest?
These are the four most important things to think about before you launch your contest. On one hand, knowing the law and having proper anti-cheating provisions will help you protect yourself from losses. On the other hand, having stellar prizes and an effective viral strategy will help you skyrocket your contest’s success.

Posted By Waqas A.12:21

5 Powerful Ways to Connect With Sports Fans on Facebook


Sports fans are one of the most rabid and passionate groups on the planet. For zero monetary gain, they’ll follow every move of their favourite sports team, know the details of every player, memorize the scores of every game and just generally put their heart and soul into the game.
Marketing to these fans involves understanding and using a different kind of psychology. Fans can be unforgiving of marketers who don’t speak their language. Speak to them in the right way however and you’ll have earned yourself the most loyal followers in the world.
Here are five tips for marketing to sports fans on Facebook.
1. Host a Discussion
Sports fans love to talk. They love sharing notes about their teams, reliving highlights from the last game, bashing on opponents and even just plain chatter. They love sports and they love talking about sports.
Not everyone can make it to an in person sports game. Sports lovers want to feel like they’re part of the game experience, even if they’re not there.Hosting live discussions allows them to talk about the action as its happening even if they couldn’t make it to the game itself.
2. Talk About it All Week
One big mistake marketers make is only marketing to sports fan when there’s a game on. However, sports fans are sports fans 24/7 – They want to talk about it all day, all night, whenever they can.
Before a game, there’s the leadup. They can talk about the players, the matchup, who they think will win, trash talk the opponent, get excited, etc.
After the game, they can discuss what happened and celebrate or commiserate the results.
Don’t just market to them during game time. Market to them all week. Every day.
3. Get Some Team Interaction
If you have a large enough audience, try reaching out to the team itself to see if you can get a team member to do something for your group.
Even if it’s just something as simple as a quick shoutout from their Facebook account, it can make a big difference.
Of course, if you can get them to do something more elaborate like a video or a Q&A session, that’s even better.
Fans love to get real interactions with their teammembers. If you can bring them that, they’ll follow you to the ends of the world.
4. Get Creative
Bring your fans content that they’ll love. Come up with creative contests, content giveaways, exclusive interviews, live videos and anything else you can think of for content that your fans will love.
In between games, come up with different things that you can entertain your fans with. For example, create trivia polls that test your fans’ knowledge of their team. Or show replays with your own analysis of the game.
Or you could host specific discussion panels. For example, talk about whether or not a specific strategy was a good idea from the last game.
If you can give special rewards, such as free tickets to winners, that can also go a long way towards getting your fans excited.
5. Ask Them What They Want
With most audiences, marketers tend to just send whatever they’ve got at their audience and hope it sticks. With sports fans however, you’re dealing with much more of a community.
Instead of just marketing to them in the way that you think they want to be marketed to, try asking them what they want. Sports fans will often be willing to share great ideas that you can easily implement.
These five tips will help you connect with and market to your sports fans. Marketing to sports fans isn’t easy, as they’re truly a fanatical and dedicated bunch. But if you can earn their trust, that rapid excitement can turn into devotion towards your brand.

Posted By Waqas A.12:15

Not Generating Leads from Social Media? Here’s Why


If you’ve been working on your social media for some time but haven’t gotten the results you’re looking for, don’t fret. Chances are you’re making one of these seven common mistakes.
Social media isn’t a lever you pull that instantly generates leads. Instead, it’s more of a gradual dial that you need to turn up slowly, over time. Any mistake in the process could lead to your leads drying up.
These are seven of the most common mistakes people make in social media. Fix them and your leads will start flowing in.
1. You’re in the Wrong Social Media 
No matter how well you’re executing your social media plan, if you’re in the wrong type of media, your message isn’t going to be heard.
If you’re regularly publishing on Facebook and Twitter but you’re primarily targeting CEOs who only spend time on LinkedIn, then your strategy really isn’t going to work.
Figure out where your market spends their time. Then create a strong presence in those social media networks.
2. Not Putting Likes and Shares on Your Website
Inspite all that social media has going for it, one thing it’s not great at is getting initial traffic. It’s great for following up with readers and it’s great for putting out viral content. But the best way to get people into your social media funnel is still your own website.
Make sure that you have the like buttons, share buttons, tweet buttons and follow buttons embedded on your website to generate healthy social media leads.
3. Not Making the Most of Captured Attention 
When someone on social media comes to your page, you have something that’s extremely rare: Your customer’s attention.
Don’t waste it. Make sure that every inch of your social media real estate is filled with value adding, brand building material.
For example, if you have a Facebook page, make sure that you have everything filled out: make sure you have company information, website details, photos, etc all uploaded to your page.
4. Not Adding Value Through Content
Marketers who treat social media as just a platform to push advertising are missing the boat. Not only won’t they get buyers, but they’ll alienate their platform.
However, even marketers who don’t make that mistake still often don’t provide enough value. Giving updates about your company for example doesn’t count as adding value to your customers’ lives.
In order for your social media lead generation initiatives to really take off, it has to really make your customers’ lives better. You need to solve problems for your customers. You need to provide valuable content that your customers will be glad you shared.
5. Not Combining With Email 
Social media shouldn’t be a standalone endeavour. Instead, social media lead generation activities should always be combined with other ways of following up with users, most notably email marketing.
Email marketing is more effective than social media for following up. Something that you post on a Facebook feed might never be seen by your followers. On the other hand, an email you send is guaranteed to be delivered.
That said, email doesn’t have the viral power of social media. People don’t pass on emails the way they share things on Facebook or Twitter. The best way to get both follow up power and viral power is to use both email and social media in conjunction to build social media leads.
6. Not Clearly Directing Users to Take Action
As a website owner or marketer, it’s easy to assume that other people know what you want them to do. However, the reality is most people really don’t.
Don’t assume that people know you want them to visit your site, to give you their email, to call your company or to buy your product. Tell them explicitly what to do.
One simple reason you might not be generating the kinds of social media leads you want is because you aren’t asking for the leads.
7. No Clear Tracking Metrics 
Without clear metrics for tracking how you’re doing in social media, it can be very hard to tell if you’re succeeding or failing.
Pick one to five metrics that you want to optimize for, then steadily work to improve those metrics. For example, you might want to increase the number of times your content gets shared every time you post an update. Or you might just want to increase your visitor count.
These are seven of the most common reasons why social media users fail to generate leads. If the social media leads aren’t flowing in, look to see if you’re making one of these mistakes. If you are, that’s where your problem lies.

Posted By Waqas A.12:13