As the online world continues to develop, business must adapt to frequent changes. Facebook has been an important part of marketing for many businesses, but how much time should a business be investing to Facebook now?
The past few years of changes in the social media market have led analysts to say that Facebook may not be a worthwhile advertising tool anymore, and that many people are becoming disinterested with this form of socializing, as many only use Facebook to whine about what’s wrong in their lives.
But this doesn’t mean you should give up on building a group of Facebook fans or a community around which you can create awareness.
After all, Facebook did reach the 1 billion users mark this past month and still other reports show that a Facebook boasts 77% of B2C companies acquiring new customers successfully through this platform. The key is to find balance in the amount of time you spend on Facebook, based on what you know about your target market.
Does Facebook still work for marketing businesses? Let’s say you have a good number of fans on your Facebook page. Did you know that only about 16% of them actually see your posts?
Analysts believe it is because too many businesses post spammy or uninteresting updates, which may cause fans to simply tune a brand out. Before looking at ways to improve the visibility of your posts, let’s look at what people use Facebook for.
How Users Are Putting Facebook To Work
Facebook is not a marketplace yet. Instead, it is a controlled way for people to connect with existing friends.
Most users completely ignore the ads, and use Facebook to interact with people they already know, not to look for new contacts. The point is that Facebook is a relational tool, not so much an advertising platform. So you should plan on spending time building connections and rapport, not just blasting posts with your latest product offerings.
Generally, news breaks first on Twitter because it is accessible and simple. Instead of only connecting with established friends, users can tweet with famous people, organizations and businesses that they would otherwise be unable to have a personal connection with.
Facebook lacks the same speed and accessibility that businesses need to reach customers if the goal is fast exposure.
The Investment Decision
To decide how much time, if any, to invest in Facebook, study your target customer. Do they use Facebook? How often? Do they use another social network more often? Has your business seen any benefits from being on Facebook? Look at your marketing strategy to see if your time and resources could be spent more effectively somewhere else.
The key lies in determining whether you should use Facebook as a relationship builder or just have a simple presence where people can find you if they search for you.
There really is very little in between- either you build aggressively or let it sit. If you try to build a Facebook community halfway, it will be a huge waste of time.
If you do decide that your business can benefit from Facebook, the following are some keys to making it your efforts more efficient.
1. Post updates that are completely unexpected or different- take people by surprise with humor or another specific brand voice that will stick with and interest people.
2. Not all posts need to be related to your business. Facebook is about building relationships, remember? Figure out with information your customers love to see or read about and share it!
3. Share free resources, freely, such as Detroit Institute museum did. If customers see you as a generous business, they will develop positive feelings toward you.
4. Make certain discounts, coupons, free resources only available on Facebook to encourage users to keep an eye on you.
5. Pictures, videos and articles are highly popular on Facebook. This is one “leg up” that Facebook has over Twitter. Make sure every update includes an image or video, if possible.
6. Do not post every day. Update consistently but not as frequently as you would on Twitter. As a small business, you may only need to post once or twice a week.
7. Post when people are on Facebook. According to the Huffington Post, the best times to post are weekends by far, followed by evenings and early mornings.
8. Use the Promote button for your most important posts to push them to the top of the news feed. This does cost money with the exact rate depending on your geographic location and how many users you wish to reach, but can be worth it for advertising posts.
Conclusion
If your target audience is engaged on Facebook and your particular business is about building relationships before and after the sale, then Facebook could very well be one of the best investments of time you could make.
You might find that you are missing out on customers if people are searching for your product on Facebook, or if they are searching on Google and your site isn’t at the top of the search, but your Facebook page might have been.
About The Author
Yo Noguchi is a writer and marketer for benchmarkemail.com a better way to send and receive emails and communicate with people.
Guest post by Celina Conner
Guest posting is today’s future-proof link-building strategy. Well, we can hide it that a lot of link builders have been abusing this link building strategy. On the web, you can sell products without even having an inventory of it. You can copy ideas and make quality articles on your own and present these in your blog.
Start attracting customers who are finding answers to their problems and have them purchase your products from affiliate marketing. Your campaigns can be shared not only through your main channel but you can also use social media and use other’s blogs for promotion.
In fact, most marketing courses today have included the study of online marketing, social media and social networks in their curriculum. In this article, we will discuss on some tips on how you can make your guest posts benefit your affiliate marketing efforts.
1. Improve site traffic through guest blogging
Through guest blogging, you can open up to a completely new online community for free and connect to many other bloggers with related niche. For instance, your focus is on photography and your business is marketing different types of lenses of high-end cameras or e-books to enhance skills on photography, you won’t want to write this topic on a website that talks about flowers and decorations even if they are meant to be taken pictures with in a gathering or party.
Rather, you would want to start getting more exposure with photography bloggers who are in the same field of interest. Their readers belong to the same circle and if they get interested at your offerings, they will visit your website and get to know more about your profile from there.
Guest blogging creates this golden opportunity to grow targeted traffic and at the same time gain quality back links from different sites.
2. Respond to guest posts comments
Once you are done with the guest post, encourage readers to interact with your post by asking them questions in the middle or at the end of your article. You will have greater chances to get them hooked when you pique their minds.
Make sure to answers their comments and make them feel comfortable at connecting with you. Customers feel more at ease when they know they are receiving equal feedback from businesses and site owners.
3. Control niche traffic through guest blogging to sites focused on niche
When you post an article with a relevant topic to another website with the same niche as yours, you are creating this sense of continuity of relations on your expertise. People would reach out to you and see you as an authority when you are talking about one single thing all the time and not divert their attention.
You may share your other interests in a different website or blog. But take control and stick to only when and pursue that when you are targeting viewers to visit one affiliate marketing site. Think that they are not in need of other answers related to health when reading about a guest post on photography.
4. Target their needs
Affiliate marketing is not only helping the original business owner to market their business’ products but it should be thought of as your own line of business. When you set up your blog, the story does not end. Neither does it end when visitors click your affiliate links. What you need is to put a good structure in place and plan how to target the needs of leads.
Guest posts provide value to readers by giving them helpful content that is useful and informative. The best thing to do this is know your audience and analyze their position to meet their needs. Know why they are coming to your website and what specific information they are looking for. You may conduct an online survey and read more commentaries to know what drives them in visiting your site.
5. Write Evergreen Articles
Guest posts should consist of timeless content. This means that the content should not be dated with time and current trends but one that can answer problems and be a helpful solution regardless of time.
You can add simple tips to readers by providing recommended links and sharing other related articles. Focus wisely on choosing right products to promote and on providing excellent content and you won’t get outdated as well even with the changing methods and techniques in affiliate marketing.
Conclusion
Google can be considered too fickle, with its ever-changing search algorithms. In reality, webmasters cannot all understand how Google operates with its latest updates.
SEO may be a difficult field to tackle on but you can still continue to be successful in your affiliate marketing even without a strong knowledge and heavy practice of SEO.
This can be achieved through link-building by guest posting. By providing people with great content, you will have the potential to create passive income with your affiliate programs with content in your blog and guest blogs as rich foundations.
Author Bio:
+Celina Conner is a Yoga Instructor, a holder of a Marketing Diploma and a mother of a beautiful daughter, Krizia. She has a passion in cooking and formulating vegan recipes.
Guest post by Alex Smith
Exploding business growth is the result of maximum productivity, thorough visibility and high business performance. These can be achieved through continuous development, strategic thinking and the adoption of new online and offline techniques.
Today, businesses are facing difficulties to manage business elements systematically for well defined growth. In order to become a successful entrepreneur you need to think in a realistic way and take viable actions on different platforms to support business activities and internet marketing efforts.
Today, it is the high time for businesses to embrace new social, SEO, and SEM strategies and technologies to encompass success. Today’s, online marketing solutions are bringing together the best-of-breed techniques that help businesses to grow profusely.
A lot of people have this understanding that using social, SEO, and SEM techniques are good for small as well as medium scale businesses. These techniques help in the most challenging and grueling market environment.
Marketing A Business Online
It is good to undertake online marketing practices seriously and launch a strategic program accordingly. That is why it is necessary that you leverage these integral and online business solutions to remain competitive in your niche.
One of the major and challenging steps is to find a suitable keyword that best suits your product or service or brand. It helps in targeting the right customers at the right time. It helps to catch targeted customers in no time, It also helps you to optimize your website and explain descriptions for your online promotion.
Here the description will be based on your final set of keywords. This is why it is vital to do keyword research in the beginning of the marketing activities.
After knowing the exact set of keywords for your business, you need to carryout extensive research and analysis. It helps you to determine your exact competitors.
By analyzing, accessing and assessing your competitor, you will be able to know what actions need to be performed to beat them in near future. This will give you proper and invaluable insights about your competitors.
Then comes the phase of optimization for your business website! Whether the website is of ecommerce or a general website you need to optimize it thoroughly. Optimization may include link building, on-page optimization, off-page optimization, article writing, distribution, press release writing, etc.
It should also include social marketing. You need to integrate social icons on your website so that the same content gets updated on social websites also. It not only brings visitors to your website, but also helps to get good search rankings.
It will empower & energize your online business and turbo-charge its growth rate. It will help your business to get new visitors, returning visitors and establish market reputation over time.
About Author
Alex Smith is a ghost writer, contributing in search engine optimization, internet marketing, social media optimization, article writing and publishing, online reputation management etc, to help clients getting high rank and generate only targeted traffic from genuine sources.
Guest post by Alex Smith
Traditional advertising and promotion is a thing of the past and is not relevant for today’s hyper kinetic and competitive environment.
In fact, it cannot produce the desired results or in other words these old methods of marketing have become obsolete.
Today’s new techniques are more powerful, result-oriented and effective. Today, marketing starts from content creation, as it the thing that can attract readers searching for original and informative data.
Unquestionably, content marketing has become the most vital part of an advertising and promotional campaign. Effective content can compel readers to purchase a particular product.
Describing the genuine value of product or service to the readers in the simplest form is the most effective thing in content creation.
Today, content creation and social sharing is the most economical method to exponentially develop your business as well as building your brand. However, it does not suffice to develop any type of business related content.
Your content should be engaging whether it is in blogs, videos, research reports, articles, case studies, etc. It should follow certain writing standards and fulfill customer’s expectations.
To make your content powerful and directional, you need to develop it after establishing a baseline data and theme. It will help you write under strict boundaries and give relevant examples.
Only relevant content can successfully drive traffic to the website. Along with this, your content needs to be smartly crafted around the product, service, that your target audience is using.
Basic research about consumer behavior is also necessary before devising relevant content for readers.
The Best Way To Develop A Content Marketing Strategy
Today, article writing is the best method to establish company’s image and attract targeted customers. However, if you are unable to create quality content then you must hire a professional internet marketing firm.
It can easily handle the task of content creation and marketing in a unique manner. These companies can handle all factors of content marketing for maximum return of investment.
These companies have content development experts, web analysts & SEO professionals that can inscribe high-quality content that help to boost your website’s visibility and enhance reader’s experience.
It certainly increases search engine rankings and traffic to the website. They create informative and intuitive content that encourage people to connect to your website.
In addition to driving quality traffic to your business website, content marketing (content creation and distribution) also gives you the ability to establish your identity in your industry.
This builds strong customer loyalty, business base, and customer confidence, which can translate to repeat business as well as referrals. So, if you want indulge into content marketing then you should consider creation and sharing of content for the purpose of promoting a product or service seriously.
It can not only generate short-terms results, but also help in establishing long-term relationships with customers.
About Author
Alex Smith is a ghost writer, contributing in search engine optimization, internet marketing, social media optimization, online reputation management etc. He helps clients getting high rank and generates only targeted traffic from genuine sources.