6 Alternative ways to Promote Your Content.

How to keep your marketing fresh and increase traffic?

Most savvy online businesses will have a created variety of content, including blog posts, white papers, videos, slideshows and webinars over the years and nearly all of you will have used social media to spread the word about content.

Use alternative social networks, bookmarking sites, discussion forums, and new ways of using existing social accounts.

Cover photo promotion.

Most people use cover photos to promote big stuff like conferences and new books, but you can also use them to promote videos, slideshows and webinars too.

Cover photos are for more than just Facebook. Many businesses have a twitter account but they don’t have a cover photo for that account.

Reach out to followers and influencers

Reach out to an influential persona and ask them to share your content with their audience.One person who has a big following can get you thousands of visitors all for the cost of a single email.It’s always best to reach out to influencers you may have a connection with, though being a member of their audience or frequent commenters on their articles.

Write a message that is personal and respectful, and only ask them to share content that would fit their audience.

Post content on your LinkedIn profile.

Use LinkedIn as a place to push contain, interact with influencers and engage in discussion. Don’t forget to participate in others’ conversation.

Discussion forums

Discussion forum existed on the interest of pre-social media , however they defined not passed forum such as Reddit, Quora and Digg have staggering levels of engagement, register and post using your business’ name.

Interest-based networks

All the social networks you have heard of, there are also very specific niche networks based around particular hobbies.

Pinterest Pins.

The image is just a hook to get user to click and get redirected to your website to learn more.

Four Steps To Better Blogging.

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Blogging provides you with complete control over your message and allows to interact with your audience directly. Blogs are a great way to communicate with your audience and to demonstrate your expertise online.

Creating a blog plan can help you manage your time and increase your reputation and credibility online. Publishing a blog enables you with a complete control over your message and allows you to interact with your audience directly , helping build relationships with them. To make a blog worthwhile you need to be consistent in your approach, publishing content regularly and planning ahead. Blog plan is integral to managing your time and ensuring you create a successful blog. It also involves and planning ahead of time, your ideas and topics for blog posts in a calendar format, enabling you to manage your time effectively when writing your blog plan, consider the following.

Conduct research

• So some research and take a look at blogs in your area of expertise, blogs you’ve read before and blogs you currently reading.
• Look up your competitors blogs and people you admire in your industry to get an idea of what they are publishing and how the reader are interacting with them.

Set posting schedule

• Your blog should be planned out ahead of time and have a publishing deadline for example, every Thursday at 1 pm.
• When you set a posting schedule and the deadline, you no longer have an excuses to not regularly publish content on your blog.
• Schedule a time of writing your blog to help create a routine and ensure that you never miss an op[opportunity to connect with your audience.
• Write your blog posts in batches and scheduling them to publish on your website.
• Website platforms like WordPress, allow you to schedule your posts ahead of time.

Create content.

• When thinking about what to write, consider creating  blog posts around your area of expertise and trends in your industry.
• Planning ahead of time also means you can identify and capitalist on key business events such as conferences and launches, and post about the events in the lead up or source available resources such as eBooks or info graphics to share.
• Here are a few blog post ideas you can include in your blog plan calendar.

*Highlight special products and services

* Meet someone intersting at an event ? Interview them via email and blog about it.

* Read simething you don’t agree with ? Write a blog post about it.

* Note down everything you do in your role. Tell your readers about how you do each task.

Create a blog calendar

Plan ahead and map out a blog content schedule for 6-12 months in a blog calendar. A blog calendar should include :

• Blog post tittles and ideas
• Themes
• Topics
• Dates

This can be done easily in excel spreadsheet or Google calendar and is a great way to avoid repeating the same topic. Planning your activities and updates will enable you to share fresh contents and ideas with your audience. Blogging allows you to control the message, connecting with your audience on a personal level and it procides a platform for you to inform and position yourself as a thought leader and expert in your industry.

Why Your Business Need Niche Target Markets

When you decide to go into business you need to be absolutely clear about who will buy your product and why.

There six questions you must be able to answer about your target market, who,when,where,what,why and how. The answer to these questions will tell you the type of people you’re aiming at but it won’t tell you how many of them there are.

Once you have answered these question, it is time to further  break down your target market into niches that will provide you with more clarity about your customers. And now what? It is time to do it again.

That is right your target market can be broken down further into niches that will help give you even more clarity about your customer and how you can curb their frustration.

Let’s break this down further – Once you have answered the above question with confidence and clarity, have a look at the market that you have defined and see how you can break it down even further. Eg: My broader target market is business ownerd ranging from start-ups to $5 million businesses. Within this there are other sort of niches that i can target separately. Such as traders, professional services, manufacturing, retail, boutiques, hospitality, entertainment and arts.

As broad category they fall into my target market, but have a think about each niche and the questions we posed above. By defining and identifying these niches I can improve my focus even further,

Consider vertical market too – And even in these niches, there are further vertical markets you can target, for example, within trades you have plumbers, electricians, carpenters, tilers, roofers, and the list goes on and on. Within the professional services, we have doctors, lawyers, accountants, architects and much more.

You can even break down doctors down into chiropractors, physios, GPs. oncologists, podiatrists, surgeons and cardiologists. The high-level categories are very useful, once you break it down even further you will really be able to identify with clarity and confidence who your target market is, why they buy from you and how you can reach them.

In my business, when I really want to focus what i am doing I might spend the who quarter just focusing for example tailors.

The Drain man, Vital Jammal,  who will be the guest speaker, at our 100J at the end of October is a great example of finding a niche. They are registered plumbers, but they just clear and recline drains.That’s it.They don’t do taps or hot water service or showers.

It’s just like a brain surgeon compared to a GP, they are plumbers with specialists solutions. The industry is plumbing but the niche is drain -clearing.

Define your marketing strategies – While the overall #1 Big Outcome might be the same for an architect and a physio – say, to increase business by 100% in 12 months- how they each go about it will be different, so this allows me to tailor offers even more specially to meet these clients’ needs.

Will the architect and physio read the same industry magazines, attend the same events and have the same colleagues. Not likely. So my marketing has to be different. What is investment and ROI for each? What are their frustrating and their freedoms? When will they buy from me? While their goals may be broadly similar, everything my business does can be refined to better meet the needs of these two different businesses, thereby, increasing the chances that hey will purchase from me and not competitors.

Each one of the niches you identify needs to be defined and dissected, just like your overall target market. You need to ask the who, where, what,when, why and how questions again then identify its size, how much of it you currently have and how much of it you would like to have in what time frame.

This is the start of creating a marketing plan with clarify and confidence and turning your business into a well- oiled machine.

Who are you building your business for? What is the cut? The underlying foundation? If you don’t know who these people are and what they want, the only way you can solve their problems is by getting lucky, and luck is not a solid business fundamental or a strategy for success.

Is Your Brand Aligned?

Consistency is essential in the busy world of brands.

Man with a Notepaper with Brand Concept

I’d like to ask you to answer this critical question “How well is your brand aligned?”

• Do your radio ads share a common message with your social media conversation?
• Does your cover image on Facebook share similar brand identity with other printed collateral?
• Do you have a top 5 (maximum) core messages that you use consistently?

What compels someone to take action is probably not the same thing that got them interested in the first place. So therefore if your different touch points don’t align, you’re not building much needed trust with each interaction.

Let me explain.

Last week I spoke at a brand launch in front of the organisation’s membership. We had brochures for our upcoming Supercharge workshops there with a discount code for those specific members. Several days later the workshops were promoted in an e- newsletter for a different organisation.

We were able to note through the use of booking codes that people who went to the brand launch booked only when they got the email from the other organisation. The email looked just like the printed flyer at the event, but it was the second interaction that compelled them to take action.

One advert in isolation is often not enough to get someone to take action. In fact the email alone was probably not enough by itself either, it helped that I’d had an interaction with them the week before. The word familiarity comes to mind.

The Point

Have one simple strategy that includes a consistent look and feel to your brand (identity) and core messages of value that you share across all marketing platforms.

This way you know they’ll complement each other and have a better chance of impacting on the heart, mind and actions of your audience.

Make Online Video Part Of Your Marketing Strategy

Video content is not only possible for small businesses but important.

With 85 percent of the online market watching online videos, and one minute of video content equaling the impact of 1.8 million words (a whopping 3600 typical web pages) according to latest research, video has never been a more important piece of marketing strategy than it is now.

The same experts said that 62 percent of respondents consuming online video from smartphones.

Smartphone users watch, talk about, and share ads and content from retailers more than TV viewers or desktop users. They also view video content on smartphones as a more intimate experience, developing a personal connection with brands at two times the rate of TV viewers.

The psychology of videos

Why do consumers respond to video content so powerfully? Susan Weinschenk, Ph.D., consultant to brands such as Disney, Amazon and Walmart, explains that there are four reasons why humans love video:

1. Our brains are wired to respond to faces – we tend to trust faces as a believable source of information.

2. Voice helps us understand content more readily.

3. Emotions appeal to our senses.

4. Movement causes us to pay attention – from primal stone-age times we have had to be alert to movement as a potential sign of danger.

These four factors are all things we cannot get from reading, and can only partially get from audio content.

Videos as website freebies

One simple way you can leverage the appeal of videos is through free video content on your website, or a free video training series as an email opt-in series.

Many websites give away free content in exchange for capturing email addresses. A survey conducted by marketing automation company thinkCongo found that over 90 per cent of prospective customers prefer videos to white papers, case studies, webinars, free trials, toolkits and ebooks.

5 social media strategy small businesses need to Succeed.

Social media can be a powerful tool and has the potential to connect a business with customers and infliencers across the globe. Creating an accoiunt on a social media channel is relatively simple, however gaining the followers and maintaining a presence can be a challenge. Before signing up to every social media channel available, it is a good idea to create a social media strategy.

A Social media strategy needs to have the following elements to be successful.

1. Plan
2. Map out your business aims and goals and how social media channels can help.
3. Does your business wants to promote products, create brand awareness, be seen as a thought leader, support sales, or engage with customers ?
4. Plan ahead and decide what it is you want to achieve, This will determine how you engage with your audience.
5. Research
6. Determine who your target audience is, that is who you want to engage with on social media. By researching the target auidience you can identify their characteristics, interetsts abd priorities which can be used to help determone the social media channel/s to use. Not all social media channels are the same in how they engage users. Facebook and LinkedIn have different purposes so how you interract with your target audeince and wht you post should be adjusted to suit the channel.
7. Content strategy
8. Content needs to be consistent for your business to succeed on social media. To create engagement, identify the main 3-5 topics that relate to your business and your area of expertise that will be appealing to your target audience.
9. Use these topics to create content that you want to be recognised for.
10. When it comes to engaging audiences, images are just as importnat as the story.
11. Measure Success
12. The only way to know if your strategy is working is to review the results.
13. Analysticas is a great tool to assist with the understading how many people saw, liked, shared, commented and clicked on your posts.
14. Utilise tools such as Hootsuite, which let you know which content was popular.
15. Review and assess
16. Once you have obtained the analytics, it is important to review how you engage with your audience.

A good social media strategy is fluid. What works today may not work in a month’s time. Stay on top of online trends and researching the competition will also provide added insights and help to understand what is engaging to your audience.  With the right strategy , a social media presence can hel[p you meet your goals.

Increase your online visibility

Improve how your site interacts with search engines, so your target audience can find you.

What is search engine marketing ?

Search engine marketing (SEM) refers to the overall process of marketing a website on search engines. This includes submitting the right ad, optimising it well through style and placement, and ensuring it ranks highly in searches by paying for priority positioning where possible. But it doesn’t end there.

It’s also about improving how your site interacts with search engine overall so your target audinec can find you. SEM is a continual process and not a one-off task. For that reason, while many samll business owners choose to manage their own SEM, some may decide thie is an area better left to experts.

What are search engines ?

Crawler/ spider-based search engines, such as Google create their listings automatically. They « crowl » or « spider » the web according to the search request and present the searcher with a list of all releted links found. People then search though thier findings for the most relevant results.

How quickly is your business found, and where your business ends up in search results, will generally depend on how closely matched your business is to the search query and how easy your website is to find by the crawler or spider. Changing your web pages can impact the way you are found and listed which is one reason why sometimes you might suddenly have more traffic after a change to your site. Page tittles, text and other elements can all play a role.

Search engines can also make changes to the way their crawlers begave which can also impact the way you are found- this is one opf the reasons why search engine iptimisation is one a one-off task.

How search engines work

When you search for anything using your favourite crowler or spider based search engine, the search engine sahll sort through the millions of pages it can find and present you with the results related in some way to your topic. The matches should also be ranked, so the most relevant ones come firts.

Of course, the search engine don’t always get it right. None- relevant pages make it through, and sometimes it may take a little more digging to find what you are looking for. Crawler/ spider- based search engines go about determining the relevancy by following a set of rules, known as an « algorithm » search engines are unlikely to share their rules or algorithms because it is a key ingredient in determining which search engines work better and who has the most successful search results. They can change the way their algorithm is set which can affect the way the crawler or spider behaves as mentioned earlier. This in turn can impact the way your site is listed and ranked. One way to help ensure your listing is not impacted by these changes is to pay for your placement.

Search engine submission : listing your business

Search engine submission means having your website listed with search engines. This does not neccessary mean you will rank well every time, but search engines shoud be able to locate your site.

Two ways you can get listed with search engines are :

1. Search engine optimisation (SEO) – This means adapting your site and employing methods to help increase your chance of being found for free.
2. Paid-for listing , also known as « pay-per-click » or « pay-for-performance » we will call them P4P.

Search Engine Optimisation

The location and frequency of keywords on your web page can help or hinder your listing on search engines. An Algorithm may assume your website is more relevant than your competitor’s because the search them is in your website address or at the top of your home page whereas the same search term does noyt appear until your competitor’s third page. This means every word on your website can impact your business chances of being found. So it is important to ensure you consider the relevance for information when you are designing your website.

Frequency can also play a role in how search engines determine relevancy. A search engine might analyse how often keywords appear in relation to other words in a web page, Those with a higher frequency might be deemed more relevant than other web pages, Some search engines « index » or collect more web pages than others. Some search engines also index web pages more often than others. The result is that no searh engine has the exact same collection of web pages to search through. That naturally produces differences, when comparing their results.

Search engines may also penalise pages or exclude them from the index, if they detect search engine « spamming ». An example is when a word is repeated hundreds of times on a page, to increase the frequency and propel the page higher in the listings. Search engines can watch for common spamming methods in a variety of ways, including following up on complaints from their users.

Pay-per-click (PPC)

Generally search engines offer some form of PPC listing service. If managed well, PPC advertising can be one of the most cost-effective marketing solutions for businesses on the internet. Unlike SEO, PPC provides the opportunity to ensure a higher ranking on search engines in return for a fee. Website owners can usually bid for keywords so can determine how much they are prepared to spend.

Search engines can also place a minimum price point on page placements to ensure top spots are not being sold too cheaply in the case where there is only one person bidding. Search engine might also offer reduced prices for websites with a high –click through. This means popular sites aren’t deterred from advertising because they have to pay every time someone selects them. ( This means an advertiser with a high click-through rate might pay less in positioning #1 than an advertiser in position #2 with a lower click-through rate). When someone enters a keyword in search engine, ads are usually displayed. The highest ranking ad is likely to be determine by a combination of relevance Click-through rate (popularity) and the amount paid.

The highest bid can usually ensure  a high place than everyone else, but may only guarantee you the highest placement if you have paid the minimum fee for that spot based also on the site’s click-through rate. Importantly, through , PPC means website owners don’t pay unless the person searching actually selects their ad. To help increase your options of ranking highly in cost-effective manner, it is important to build up a strong click-through rate. A good way to do this is to ensure your site is user –friendly and promote it so people are more likely to recognize it and click on it when they see it.

How To Get Your Content Shared Online

It’s all about being relevant, having personality and capturing the audience in the first two seconds. The beauty of online content is that it can be shared freely across social networking platforms and websites. Sharing content enables you to establish your expertise and thought leadership by engaging directly with the target audience.

For businesses and thought leaders, publishing content on social media is important as it can assists in building a good reputation, establishing trust and attract wider audience.

Here are some tips on how to increase the chances your content will be shared online.

Be relevant

It is important to be original and make your content as interesting. brief, relevant and as focused to your target audience as possible. Promoting that is useful to your audience is more likely to result in the content being read and shared online.

Here are some content ideas to help appeal to your target audience.

1. How to ideas where you discuss a step-by-step system
2. Quotes that offer inspiration and motivation
3. Tips to help your readers with a common problem.
4. Checklists that simplify tasks and action steps.

Having a personality

Add personality to your content . People are more likely to engage and interact with a business that feels like a friend, particularly on social media. Consider that tone of the voice being used in your content to ensure it sounds like a person rather than a business. Try using words such as “we” and “us” rather than “the company”. This will help make your audience feel more at ease.

Use emotion

Creating an emotional response from the audience such as laughter, cringing or crying which will cause an eager interest to read more and potentially share the content wit their network.

Create a strong opening line.

A catchy headline will draw people to your content and increase the likelihood it being read and shared. The headline and first sentence in your content is your chance to be entertaining and interesting and your only chance to draw in the reader.

Use Visual

The image you post on your social media can help to tell your business story and share a message. Posting regular, candid photos is an excellent way to do this and everyone loves behind the scenes footage. Facebook and Twitter have redesigned their new algorithms to place more emphasis on visual and showcase images. Connecting with your audience online is a great way to increase your profile and level of engagement and feedback.

Get The LinkedIn Advantage

How to use this social media to get the best results.

LinkedIn is specifically for business and professionals. There are over 706 million users from virtually every industry and profession across the globe.

LinkedIn is a non intrusive way of staying in touch with business contacts and here is how can take advantage of it.

1. Have a good profile

Add a summary of your professional experience, details on where you are working now, and your previous positions as well as a professional pic. You can also add links to blog posts, media coverage, videos, SlideShares and other online media that highlights your expertise. Instead of using the default URL LinkedIn automatically, customise your public profile’s URL to be your actual name. Having a similar URL on your LinkedIn, website and blogs. on your website you can add the LinkedIn badge to each of your staff bios so potential clients can read more about them.

2. Connections

LinkedIn allows you to quickly add your contacts via outlook. You may search for people you want to link with and also LinkedIn suggests people you may known and then you can send them a message asking them to add to your network. The more connections you have the more networked you are. Networking, people would much rather work with people who their associates are connected to. After each networking function I attend I add the people I have met to my LinkedIn connections so I can easily stay in touch with each other without having to email or call.

3. Join groups.

Joining groups is a great way to build your online networks of connections to LinkedIn. They allow you to find communities of professionals who share a common experience, passion, interest, affiliation or goal. You can join a Group or even create a Group. They can then create discussions, make news announcements, even jobs that go specifically to members of the group.

4. Recommendations

Recommendations are an effective way of promoting, and getting promoted by the people who you work with. People who are happy with your work can write a brief description of their experience on your LinkedIn profile. Ask clients or co-workers to post recommendations, which future employers and clients can view to gauge your skill and level of trustworthiness.

5. Improve your Google PageRank

Influence what people see when they search for you online. Make sure you add not only important ( credible) information but also your website and blog URLs to your profile. Remember to create a public profile and select “Full View.”

6. Utilise LinkedIn Pulse

All LinkedIn members are able to publish their own content. For businesses and thought leaders this is a good way to share your knowledge, and build a reputation and credibility. To publish a pulse post, simply log in to your LinkedIn account and click the pencil icon in the ‘share an update’ box.

8 creative tactics to promote your blog.

1. Use ‘Click to Tweet’ option

Consider incorporating a click to tweet option for short snappy and witty quotes. Often users won,t want to share your whole post but they will happily share one key gen of knowledge.

2. Create 6 second video previews

A fun to convince users to read your content-heavy blog post is to create a 15 second video preview using Instagram. A teasing video is likely to engage a wider audience. Video that are shared via Instagram or Facebook are four times more likely to be shared than other video formats.

3. Use lesser known, hipper networks to capture new audiences.

Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are the big players in the social media market, don’t be limited to just them. There are some smaller niche sites such as Quora and Tumbr which have smaller, but very loyal population of users.

4. Re-post popular older blog posts for newer readers

Don’t just post your new content. New readers will not seen some of your popular posts from the past.

5. Social bookmark your blog posts.

There are a number of high profile sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon and Reddit that you can social bookmark your blog posts.

6. Create blog graphics.

Big, bold and colorful is what is currently on the trend in the online world. Use free tools such as Canva to create blog graphics or infographics.

7. Cross post across social media accounts.

Post links on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Do it consistently using Hootsuite to make posts to go live at optimum and regular posting times.

8. Create relationships with other bloggers.

Building relationship with other bloggers and thought readers in your industry should be a priority. Take a genuine interest in them and work, read and share their blog posts, and give shout outs to them on Twitter using their @Twittername.