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7 Types Of Marketing You Can Do Yourself

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StrategyDriven Online Sales and Marketing Article |Marketing Your Business | 7 Types Of Marketing You Can Do YourselfYou don’t need to hire a marketing company to promote your business. Whilst creating adverts and designing packaging are probably best left to professionals, there are many other forms of marketing that can be easily DIYed. This could save you money and give you more control over the voice of your brand. Here are just 7 types of marketing that you can do yourself.

Networking

Building connections is a great form of marketing. By meeting influential people and telling them about your brand, you can spread of knowledge of your business through word of mouth. Networking events are a popular ways of building connections. You can also use sites like LinkedIn to build connections online. Other forms of networking could include attending conferences, trade fairs, local launch parties, joining local business groups and reaching out to people directly via email.

Web design

It’s also possible to build your own website using a free website builder like WordPress. You don’t need any programming know-how to use these website builders, making it an easy DIY way of acquiring a website. These are hosting providers out there that can offer cheap web hosting with SSL, allowing you to keep to a tight budget. Paying for a more expensive host and paying a web designer to build your site may be necessary if you’re a larger company, as it could help with the speed of your site and authenticity of your brand – however smaller companies can simply rely on a cheap host and DIY website.

Social media

Social media marketing is also something you can easily do yourself. Setting up a Facebook and Twitter page is free and easy and you can build an initial following quickly by inviting all your friend and family to follow. Social media can be a great tool for keeping existing customers in the loop when it comes to events and promotions. It can also be a great tool for attracting new customers by promoting posts – this is something you can do yourself via social media without the need for a social media marketing company.

Blogging

Blogging is another effective DIY marketing strategy. Generating blog posts on your website can help you to keep your website active and utilise more keywords, which can boost your search engine rankings. Your posts can also be a chance to boost your reputation – most companies use blogging as a way of offering advice to potential customers, helping to demonstrate expertise and improve credibility. You can even create guest posts on other people’s sites to expand your web presence.

Vlogging

Vlogging involves creates video content. YouTube is the most popular platform for this – many companies have YouTube channels that they dedicate to giving advice. This is great for one’s credibility as it demonstrates a willingness to show your face and the fact that you’re confident enough to give advice. When starting a business YouTube channel, it could be worth investing in a good quality camera and microphone in order to keep a sense of professionalism. Setting up a YouTube channel is free and you can use other mediums to promote your videos such as Facebook and blog posts.c

PR

PR involves reaching out to journalists, influential bloggers and media outlets in order to encourage media coverage. A lot of businesses use a PR company to do this, but you can quite easily do your own PR. By researching into media outlets and finding people to contact, you can then start emailing them with requests for coverage. It’s best to have some kind of angle in order to encourage coverage – this could include a new product or an upcoming event or an interesting story related to your business. By creating a press release you can help to deliver this angle in a way that grabs people’s attention.

Event marketing

It’s also possible to host your own events without using a marketing company. This isn’t always easy but it can be done. Event marketing could include attending a trade fair, hosting a conference or putting on a seminar. You can even host webinars online. To promote the event yourself, take advantage of social media and use email marketing to inform key people.

How Your Business’ Digital Marketing Strategy Can Best Utilize Online Platforms

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StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales ArticleIf you run a business, you will most likely have a digital marketing strategy in place, and this will probably be one of the main methods in which you communicate with your current customers, and reach out to further potential customers as well. Utilizing your online platforms effectively can see you easily boost your business, but to do this, it is important to understand how best to use the online platforms that are available at your fingertips.

Blogging

Blogging is a brilliant way in which you can not only connect with your customers and potential clients but further keep them interested once they are part of your community. Starting a blog or adding a blog as a permanent feature to your website shows potential customers and consumers that you are interested and engaged in current issues and matters, and you are also a company that values customer retention through the means of sharing information. With appropriate consideration, your business can easily develop and start a blog, where you can post informative pieces that your customers can relate to, and learn from. You can keep up with trends by publishing content that is relevant to your customer base, and the regular posts will mean customers are more likely to come back to read more as time goes on. Of course, adding a blog to your website or business will require a certain amount of effort and research, as it will be obvious if your content is not of a strong quality. You should aim for a balance of quality as well as quantity, with varied posts with the aim to inform and entertain your immediate readership. It is a cost-effective way to promote your business easily, and what you stand for, so what are you waiting for?

Social Media Strategy

Your social media strategy is another vital part of your digital marketing strategy that, when properly implemented, can bring in serious opportunity for your business. Social media can even be a free method of marketing, which you can tailor to suit each platform, as different social media platforms cater to different audiences. Instagram, for example, will require a completely different marketing strategy to a Twitter feed, due to the nature of the content you are sharing and the demographics of each platform’s users. The younger generation that has grown up in a digital age will use social media more, so effectively targeting certain age groups with a media strategy that will specifically appeal to them is a great way to boost business and see potential growth.

Unsure as to whether this is the case? Let’s take the travel industry as an example. It may interest you to learn that a whopping 68% of Millennials found inspiration for their most recent trip through Facebook, and 60% through Instagram. These stats go to show the way in which businesses need to market themselves is rapidly changing. Be sure to stay ahead of the curve if you have a business in the travel industry. Through photos, offers, and blog posts, you can maximize interest in your business and be one step ahead of your competition, in this case, travel agents. To find out more about developing an effective social media campaign, check out a professional Facebook ads agency for hotels who can help you to market your venture using avenues such as paid social for hotels, to inspire potential customers on social media.

Conduct Surveys

Conducting surveys and asking for regular feedback is another way to easily further customer retention as well as potentially gain further business. With every visitor to your website, you are essentially given an opportunity to see how your business appears to ‘the other side.’ Feedback surveys are a win-win situation, as not only are you showing your customer base and potential clients or consumers that you care about the experience they are having, but you also gain an understanding of the areas of your business where you can improve. Getting a customer’s perspective can be invaluable in terms of understanding the best way to improve your business for the better.

Cashing In On Your Passion: Turning Your Blog Into a Business

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Blogging is now a huge deal in the online world, and it’s fair to say that readers can’t get enough of the ‘written by the people, for the people’ format. Their honest content and down to earth style is seen as a breath of fresh air after years of glossy magazines with airbrushed models and columns written by journalists. The companies of the world have tapped into just how influential bloggers can be, which gives aspiring writers and bloggers the opportunity to earn money doing something they love. Many have even been able to turn it into a well paying full-time career. If you’ve been blogging for a while but want to push it to the next level and start earning some cash with your passion, here are a few things to bear in mind.

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Look Into Ways To Monetize

You can monetise blogs in a number of ways. The first and most obvious is Google AdSense, it’s completely free to set up, and there’s no hassle involved. The ads sit in your blog’s sidebar, and you get a little bit of money every time someone clicks on one. The main issue here is that unless you have a very large following, it probably isn’t going to make you a millionaire (or even enough to pay the bills) however it’s a little bit of extra income that can gained with no additional effort from you. Getting as many views and traffic to your posts as you can will bump these earnings up, so good promotion is essential. This information on Search Engine Optimization from Ignite Digital states that harnessing the power of search engines is one of the best ways to gain traffic. Along with Adsense, there are other affiliate schemes which work similarly, so do some research and find out which would suit your blog best. You usually insert a banner ad or a link within the text of your posts which earn you money for clicks, or a percentage of any sales made. The main way bloggers earn the majority of their income is through sponsored posts. These usually offer a generous payment in return for a link or mention, the only problem is they can be unpredictable. Because you have to wait for companies to contact you, you will probably find that some months you get a lot of work and others are quieter. If you plan on quitting your day job, you could do some freelance writing work from home during these times. This is useful as the work is almost always there, and you can pick and choose how many projects you take on.

Pay Tax

Once you start to earn money as a blogger, you are classed as self-employed, meaning you will need to pay tax on your profits. The exact process you will go through all depends on the country you live in- but it’s something that you will have to do. As they say, only two things in life are certain- death and paying taxes! Keep good records, if you spend any money on your blog as a business such as investing in equipment these can be deducted when it comes to tax time. Self-assessment is usually quite simple to do yourself, but you can always hire an accountant if you’re unsure.

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Boost Your Domain Authority

Because blogging is competitive when it comes to sponsored opportunities, you need to do all you can to appeal to these companies. Domain authority is one way to go about this, this is a metric which can show how much influence your blog has online. Companies will want to work with influential sites, and so this is something you can work on. Getting backlinks from other good websites can boost this, you can do this by asking other bloggers if you can publish a guest post for them. Include a link back to your site at the end and you get a good backlink. Putting out high quality and regular content on your blog will also help with this.

Making A Blog Your Business

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Starting a business has never been easier and harder at the same time than in 2017. You see, the resources you need to start a company are available at the click of a button. Take a blog as an example. By signing up to WordPress and playing with the themes, it is possible to go live within half an hour. However, the hard part comes when you try to turn blogging into a business. Because the industry is saturated, it is almost impossible to stand out from the crowd and become a market leader. Well, it is until now. Here are the tips that will help you turn blogging into a viable business model.

Go Narrow

Going narrow has nothing to do with the shape of the blog. It does, however, have a lot to do with the content. Thanks to all of the sites on the web, there is an originality issue because the content overlaps. It is your duty, then, to try and be unique as possible when you come up with an idea for a post. Although it sounds easy on paper, it is devilishly hard when push comes to shove, which is why the content should be as narrow as possible. Why? It’s because the more specific it is, the more chance you have of being an expert. Also, there should be fewer articles online about fly fishing in Africa.

Don’t Put All Your Eggs In One Revenue Basket

Of the success stories you hear, most of them revolve around wealthy advertisers that funded the site. So, because it’s human nature, bloggers attempt to replicate this model to make money. It is worth noting that money for advertising is a viable option, but it isn’t the only one. To make blogging a successful business, there needs to be a variety of revenue options. For instance, don’t be afraid to sell products and services through the site. This tactic gives the customers the opportunity to spend money instead of only converting via a signup form. And don’t worry because it isn’t tacky as long as you don’t shamelessly promote at every opportunity.

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Choose A Good Host

There is a reason people want to know who the best WordPress hosting company is, and it’s because a host can make or break the business. Although you are the one in charge, they have the power to limit your ability to do business. It might not happen on purpose, but it happens all the same. Think about the cost, to begin with. A host might want a lot of money to play the hostess with the mostess, and you might not have the cash. Then there are the issues of security and support. A bad host could leave you open to attack if they don’t take online safety seriously, while some are not available to fix issues. Before you sign on the dotted line, you need a host that will cover all of the bases you find important.

Build A Community

Have you ever wondered why social media platforms are effective? If you haven’t, the answer is simple: they are a small community. Yes, people can talk to their favorite celebrities, but that is a bonus. The reason most people sign up for Twitter and Facebook is to interact with other users and check out shareable content. And, it is a business model you should try to replicate. If people can come to the blog and mingle digitally as well as consume content, they will have a reason to return. Not only is it as an excuse, but it is also a compulsion because people get addicted to interactive features.

Play The Long Game

One sure-fire way for a blogging business to fail is to expect too much too soon. Why? Well, it’s because the mentality forces you to make decisions that are bad for the business. The obvious example is changing the model after a couple of weeks. After six months or a year, there is an argument to re-evaluate your strategy to improve and expand. However, that isn’t the case after a short time as you need to give the blog time to grow organically. The most lucrative bloggers in the blogging industry make money now, yet that wasn’t the case in the first place. In fact, it can take up to 18 months to make enough to live off and be comfortable. If that is too long, then blogging isn’t the business for you.

As you can see, it is possible to make money from blogging, but you have to be ready to work hard and make savvy decisions.

30 Minutes To Build Your Freelancing Blog

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If you’ve always had a soft spot for the digital world, you may be interested in embracing the blogger life. Bloggers work primarily online – although they can do their research and meetings offline too if this is necessary for their articles – and have found a way to monetize their writing hobby. Here’s a little hint for you, it isn’t the actual content that generates revenues, but the advertising that can be published on the website, as display ads or as part of a link building exchange – all in the sake of white hat SEO. So here’s how to build your perfect blog site in 30 minutes only.

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Time 0-5 Min: Get The Basics Sorted Out

Before you start writing, you need to consider how you want your blog to be called. This will be the domain name of your blog, which is the URL of your home page. Domain names are renowned for being extremely difficult to find, so if you need a little inspiration, why not try a domain name generator like this one. It’s a brilliant way to find awesome combinations! Additionally, you will need to sort out a server solution for your website – here for ideas – , as most blogging platforms only offer limited storage space for free. If you want to become a professional blogger, you’ll need to produce a lot of content; ergo you need a lot of storage space!

Time 5-10 Min: Shape It

Now, it’s time to be looking out for design and layout options. First of all, think about your logo, as a logo will make your blog appear professional. You can find plenty of affordable tools online to design your logo, or you can simply get in touch with a designer on Fiverr.com if you want a unique touch. You will find some great blogging platforms, such as WordPress, that offers hundreds of customizable layouts to give your blog its identity. Some come even for free, so in a matter of clicks, you can have the template you want.

Time 10-25 Min: Build Your Brand Message

It’s now time to prepare all the main elements of your blog: Build your brand online, as seen on the blog. You need to know what your brand is, which means you need to know what makes you unique as a blogger. Are you a mother of three talking about parenting? Are you a survivor of a disease who wants to help people recover their health issues? Define who you are, and make sure to explain it in your About-me page. Also, add a contact page with your blog-related social media platforms – which you need to create – and a contact form for readers who want to contact you.

Time 25-30 Min: Go Life

Last, but not least, your first post on the blog needs to be as good as you can get it. How to write the perfect blog? It’s simple. Focus on who you are writing for – for instance, if you are the mother of three mentioned earlier, it’s likely that you are writing to all parents, future, and present – to identify what your audience is interested in. It will give you the boundaries of topics you can discuss. And then start writing your first post! It doesn’t have to be long – 300 to 500 words is a healthy average. Finally, check your grammar before publishing!