Don’t have much time to check your social media?

Many of us don’t all have lots of hours free to sit in front of a device and check our social media as and when things happen, find new people to engage with and track down those influential people that can make or break your business, so if you can only spare 20 minutes a day what should you do?

There are lots of things you can be getting on with:

Check that Inbox - Ensure that if anyone had contacted you directly through any social media channel ensure that you get back to them within 24 hours at the very least.

Follow relevant people – the sums are easy, the more people you follow the more likely you are to get followers yourself; the more followers you have the bigger the audience is for your message.  Take a look at Klout and Kred as both of these will show you who is influential in your chosen topics and these are the people you should be following.

Do a few directory searches based on your niche and hit the follow button..

Tweet – and tweet often!  Use HootSuite and set your tweets to schedule automatically; HootSuite will then send your tweets out at the best time.  As and when you think of a tweet to send simple compose it and AutoSchedule it, HootSuite will send it out at the right time for you.  You’ll find that you won’t need too many Tweets to fill each day!

Reply – someone has copied you into a tweet or message for a reason, over time you will learn to quickly understand the value in the connections that you have built up and then quickly be able to understand whether entering into a discussion with them is both productive and useful; but like Inbox messages, don’t ignore them!

Following these small tips should take you no longer than 20 minutes a day BUT will provide you with huge benefits.

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5 Top Tips for improved search engine ranking

Having a website that gets found in Google, Yahoo! or MSN, etc. isn't hard to do, but it can be difficult to know where to begin. Here are our latest tips to help get you started.

Optimise for your Visitors!

It sounds like common sense, but very few businesses actually do it. Many businesses optimise their site for search engines, putting in keywords and phrases that are commonly used in search engines rather than actually researching what customers actually search on.

Search engines are looking for pages that best fit the keyword phrase someone types into their search box. If this person searching the internet is typing in search words that relate to what your site actually offers, then they are most likely members of your target audience.

You need to optimise your site to meet their needs. If you don't know who your target audience is, then you need to find out one way or another. Look for studies online that might provide the relative information, and visit other sites, communities, or forums where your target audience might hang out and listen to what they discuss. This information will be crucial to your resulting website design, keyword research, and copywriting.

Research keywords

Research your keyword phrases extensively, and never give up, the smallest of tweaks in the right direction can make a huge difference to your ranking.

The phrases you think your target market might be searching for may very well be incorrect.
To find the very best phrases to optimise your site for, use research tools such as Keyword Discovery, Wordtracker or any Google or Yahoo Search Marketing data you can lay your hands on.

Compile lists of the most relevant phrases for your site, and choose a few different ones for every page.
Never shoot for general keywords such as "parties" or "cars" as they are rarely indicative of what your site is really about.

You are aiming for a list of just ten good keywords or phrases, then start your optimisation.

Labels

It’s great coding too, but remember to label your internal text links and clickable image alt attributes (alt tags) as clearly and descriptively as possible.

Your site visitors and the search engines look at the clickable portion of your links (i.e. the anchor text) to help them understand what they're going to find once they click-through.

Don't make them guess what's at the other end with links that say "click here" or other nondescriptive words. Be as descriptive as possible with every text and graphical link on your site.

The cool thing about writing your anchor text and alt attributes is that you can be as descriptive (and relevant) as you want to be, and try to include some of those keywords too.

Copywriting

Great web site copy is one of the most powerful tools you have at your disposal to get you ranked well on the major search engines.

Write compelling copy for the key pages of your site based on your chosen keyword phrases and your target market's needs, and make sure it's copy that the search engines can "see".

This is a crucial component to having a successful web site. The search engines (i.e. Google and Yahoo!) need to read keyword rich copy on your pages so they can understand how to classify your site.

This copy shouldn't be buried in graphics or hidden in Flash or as coding comments. Write your copy based on your most relevant keyword phrases while also making an emotional connection with your site visitor.

There are no magic number of words per page or number of times to use your phrases in your copy, just do not use too many or too few! Try aiming for between 5 percent and 15 percent keyword density and you should be OK.

The important thing is to use your keyword phrases only when and where it makes sense to do so for the real people reading your pages. Simply sticking keyword phrases at the top of the page for no apparent reason isn't going to cut it, and it just looks silly.

Linking

Make sure your site is "link-worthy."

Other sites linking to yours is a critical component of a successful search engine optimisation campaign, as all of the major search engines place a good deal of emphasis on your site's overall link popularity.

You can go out and request hundreds or thousands of links, but if your site is poor, why would anyone want to link to it?

On the other hand, if your site is full of wonderful, useful information, other sites will naturally link to it without you even asking.

The jury is out on where it is fine or not to simply trade links, the approach of black and white marketing is to get as many one way links for our clients as possible because we know that this is the very best linking approach to take; but it does take time.

When you link to lousy sites, keep in mind what this says to your site visitors as well as to the search engines.

Conclusion

There are some things that you can do to your web site to help you get a better search engine ranking, but it takes time (a long time), it's hard work, and lots of people think its boring, I actually enjoy doing it!

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Improving website conversion

Most websites fail to convert visitors into buyers most of the time; this is particularly true of B2B sites where the sale might be more complex and include a higher price tag!

Getting plenty of visitors to the site of the first step to success; but more important than that is getting your traffic to make that all important buying decision whilst they are on your site.

Remember that lots more traffic doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll massively increase the rate of conversion; to do that you need to remove a number of barriers to purchase, they are:

1. Make Your Website Easy to Use
It stands to reason that when someone visits your site it needs to present itself correctly and be easy to use.

a) Evaluate the accessibility of your website (does it work with different browsers at different resolutions for example)
b) Is navigation clear and concise
c) Ensure the call-to-action button on your website is clearly visible

Each of these tweaks on their own seems simple enough but you need to ensure that you are making the right changes for your target market.

2. Focus on Getting Quality Traffic
Some sites that I have seen and had the pleasure to work on do not attract the right type of traffic; the sort of visitors that are really keen to buy whatever it is you sell.

The fact is a simple one …. in order to increase the number of online sales, you need to promote your products or services to the right people.

Find out who your target audience is and locate the sources where you can connect with them. In fact this is probably the most important strategy!

3. Enhance the Quality of Landing Pages
Landing page should be clean and simple in order to convert the most amount of visitors; do not think that this means very little content on the page, you need to put enough words on the page so that your proposition and benefits of your product/service is crystal clear.

Remember you can always test a couple of version of your landing pages to see which has the best impact.

3. Talk About Visitor Benefits
NEVER highlight the features of your offerings, already focus on the benefits and how you can help your visitors. What pain do they have and how can you solve it?

Visitors tend not to be too interested in your company, they have been attracted to your site, all you need to do is to convince them to buy, and talking about benefits will do just that.

I remember when I first qualified as a marketer, we were taught ‘Features and Benefits’ (FaB), this is no longer true!

4. Create an Urgent Demand
Anyone trained in copywriting will have been taught to ensure that that to compel your readers to take action and take action quickly you should try to create urgency.

Mentioning a time limit or a stock limit can quickly infuse urgency into visitors, but also getting across the point that the benefit of your offering is that they can ease their pain quicker!

5. Demonstrate Credibility
No matter what you sell you must earn trust, this is the same when selling stuff on line and it is in person; if you are not trustworthy then you will not sell anything!

This is a huge challenge for many businesses as they fail to show credibility. Some of the most useful ways of establishing credibility includes sharing customer success stories, media mentions and security verification, add contact details (including telephone number, email address and postal address) for added credibility.

6. Build Your Brand
Conversion rates will improve as your brand grows. (yet another useful fact).

The more people know about your brand, the more sales you will make. So, make sure your day-to-day activities include an element of brand building, it’s also true that better known brands find it easy to sell things and so become more profitable!

If you’re not using social media then try it today to help your brand; Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are all great for getting yourself known.

7. Keep Your Word
All wrapped up with your brand and building a great brand image is ensuring that you deliver what you promise; in fact I believe that delivering on a promise is exactly what a brand is.

Always ensure your customers get what they were promised in the first place.

If you need help on any of this then just get in touch with me (andrew@andrewscaife.com)

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Easy to Read = More Online Sales

It pretty much stands to reason that when a visitor lands on your website they will be more engaged with it if they can understand it!

By their very nature, website visitors are impatient people. If they have to work to understand your web pages (navigation or content), then they will go away to find an easier site than yours. Your competitors!


Many websites that I get to look at or look after contain some very technical language that is very difficult to understand for the seasoned professionals never-mind the average web surfer. Some webmasters also like long and complicated sentences.

Long and complicated sentences are not a sign of intelligence, it doesn't suggest to your readers that you know about the topic or more educated than them, it just shows that you really don't care about the readers.

Here are some very simple tips to help you.

• Write short sentences on your pages
• Use paragraphs
• Use headings and sub headings to structure the content logically
• Use bullet points
• Avoid using complicated words. Don't say "Dulcet" when you mean sweet or sugary!
• Use relevant  images on your pages

Follow these simple rules and your website visitors will flock to your pages and engage more with your brand/business.

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Enhancing Campaign Longevity

I’m rather pleased with one of my latest promotion projects. Irwin Mitchell’s business employment team have launch a report off the back of a survey that they had commissioned based around recession-based employment tactics; the results are actually very interesting, and as the EBusiness Manager it was passed to me to see how we can get as many people as possible to download this document online.

My simple but effective plan was actually devised in just a few moments – the plan is to have two phases of online promotions:

Phase 1 utilises our social media footprint to bring visitors into the report landing page. We have our finger in a number of social media pies, but Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook were chosen as our number 1 options for this phase. We devised an Infographic (the first within the business) to help promote the full report, and also enables it to go viral (although we don’t really expect this thing to go global, we wanted an easy way for others to promote it).

With ReTweets and refreshing in statuses, I reckoned that this probably has a core lifespan of 2-3 weeks, so I needed a Phase 2 to help promote it a little longer.

Phase 2 gives us that longevity. A video from our Head of Employment will be shot and again posted on our website, YouTube and other social media sites. This refresh of our promotional approach will also see us repurpose the video content to provide audiocast.

Results: 
I’m posting this soon after we launched the report and the campaign activity, but initial analytics are very good. Traffic to the Employment section is higher than usual and of course although this went out in a press release also, traffic from social sites has doubled (Twitter and Linked in performing the best with Facebook in clear third!)


Extras:
We have tried two approaches for the actual report PDF, it’s a free report anyway, but we are trying the use of both a sign-up form (visitors leave us their name and email address to collect the report) and one where it’s readily available without providing us any details at all. I’ll post back our resulst when we have them.

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Infographic: Guide to advertising on Twitter by Alchemy Social

Earlier this year Alchemy Social unveiled an infographic guide to advertising on Twitter.

The brilliant guide looks at how to target the public, what motivates people to become followers, and what enhanced pages should look like.

The key findings were that a massive 94% of people follow businesses for discounts and promotions, 87% simply for fun and entertainment, 79% for access to exclusive content and 69% to follow company news and updates.

The full story can be found here.
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What should you show on your website?

There are a number of basic things that you should show on your website in order to attract and convert the best number of visitors.

Show your qualifications and achievements, achievements

• Always show evidence of what you have done
• Demonstrate your understanding of your target market and the problems they have.
• Speak to your audience through stories – we respond much better to them.
• Prove that you care about your audience – ask questions.
• Be proud, but also be humble 
• Always put you customers first

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Is Your Website Suffering from a Personality Disorder?

The old adage is true … People buy from People!

Injecting personality into your website is one of the most effective ways to convey a human touch, to convey the fact that your website and therefore business is backed by real people!

Visitors are interested in accessible, unintimidating websites just as we’re drawn to friendly, easy-going and downright nice people.

But not all of us are blessed with this effortless charm. Likewise, many websites exhibit a lot of traits that simply put visitors off them.

Is your website suffering from any of these common “personality disorders”?

• Does it talk about itself more than the visitor? 
• Does it forget to say how good it can be for your potential client? 
• Does it provide simply outrageous claims that it can’t back up! 
• Does it talk the talk? Keeps rabbiting on about things that just aren’t important! 
• Does it talk with forked-tongues? Talk gibberish? Talk in jargon so that no-one will understand it! 
• Does it talk negatively about itself? 
• Does it show too pics like a boring uncle who shows you their endless and dull holiday snapshots? 
• Is it anti-social or does it allow you to follow it on one of the many social networks? 
• Does it lack goals, drive or enthusiasm? 

If it exhibits any of these personality disorders then I need to take a look at it as soon as possible for you, if it shows any of these disorders then no-one will give it any attention!

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Improving Your Business in an Economic Slow Down

Now is the very best time to take a look at your business to help you move it forward.

Here are some tips on how to make that happen.

1. Find out what your competition is doing

This is a really fantastic opportunity to let your sales and customer service staff get reacquainted with past customers and communicate with current ones and through their discussions find out what your competition is doing.

Old customers are one of the best sources for competitor intelligence information, they left you for some reason, now is the time to find out why and what it would take to gain back their business. Was it price? Was it service? Was it quality? Were there performance issues? Maybe the competition just had a better product. Get as many details as possible to help bring improvements to your product and/or service.


Keep in mind that your old customers might also be in a "slow" period due to the slow down, so they may welcome talking or meeting with you find out how you can help them!


2. Training

Like most businesses you'll go through periods of time when you really couldn't afford the time people would need to be away from the business to learn new skills? Well right now could be the right time to allow them out to hone their skills or develop new ones by sending them to seminars and workshops (these can be really useful and cost effective). Or bring in a trainer to help teach team building, teach teams how to be more creative, or develop sales and customer service skills.

If you are concerned about the cost of outside training, why not cross-train your employees internally so your team is more flexible to deal with business issues going forward.


3. Don't cut your marketing budget

Chances are this is what your competitors are doing, and cutting yours too will simply mean that you could miss out on good market opportunities.

That said, a careful review of your marketing spend is sensible, look at what you are doing and why.


4. Check your Sales Literature

Now is a good opportunity for you to check your sales literature and web site to see if the sales messages are still working for you or whether you might need a refresh.


5. Revise your business plan

This is one of the most critical activities that you will need to perform if you are feeling a slow down in business.

Chances are your sales forecast will need to be revised, which means your overall budget will need to change. Get your business plan up to date so you and your employees have a solid strategy to work towards.


6. Ask your employees for suggestions

It's not just said for fun, your employees are you best asset, they know your business well and either know your customers or your internal processes and systems extremely well.

Find out what ideas they have for a new product or service, or how to make improvements to save money or increase performance.


7. Network

This is one of the best source of leads for any size business. Join a peer group, find a breakfast club, get back involved with a trade association, speak to existing customers. Nurture these sources and they will bring you business.


8. Remain positive

Listen to the news, read the newspapers or specialist press, and business gloom and doom is everywhere. You can't ignore it, it's always there reminding us how bad it is!

But is isn't always bad, chances are that you have a good core business, with great employees, focus on that. Get back to basics. What motivated you when you got into business? Revive the positive attitude and enthusiasm that made you successful in the first place.

Keep away from all those negative influences.

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